It may seem obvious that the urban space in our northern
cities should be design to function and inspire throughout
the whole year. This is not always the case. The urban
space is often designed on a summer basis and the winter
is regarded more as a problem then a resource and its
potential remain unused.
I have in this master thesis studied the impact of the
winter on people and spaces and ponder on how to design
functional and attractive places for winter. The project
ends in a design concept for Broparken in Umeå on the
theme "everyday winter day".
The work with this thesis has given me, as a landscape
architect, valuable experiences and filled a gap of
knowledge that I had in this subject. I hope that this thesis
can inspire Umeå kommun and others who are interested
in how northern cities can benefit by its climate and
develop towards a more complete city.
The thesis begins with a chapter that present the subject
from four different perspectives. The first part is about
aspects on urban design in northern cities and how this
work has developed until today. Different projects, from
underground walkway system in large north american cities
to Icehotel in Jukkasjärvi, are presented shortly. Different
trends and approaches are described and commented.
Further on in the text the seasons and their importance
to men, both cultural, symbolically and from a health
perspective, is brought up. So are also a number of studies
on the impact of winter on public activities.
The qualities of winter, the potential of snow and ice as construction
material and the principals for snow clearance is described
briefly.
The last part of this chapter presents the city of
Umeå, the arena of this work.
To gather experience and knowledge about how winter
changes and affects public spaces, I have observed and
documented a number of places in central Umeå during
a year. These observations can be summarized in five
aspects: spatiality, form, orientation, accessibility and
degree of details. I noticed for example that the spatial
structure generally is weakening in winter, that the snow
when covering the pavement makes it difficult to orientate
in and understand a place and that the degree of details
decrease in winter.
The design concept is presented in the third chapter, which
begins with a motivation of the choice of Broparken as
the place for the project, an analyse of the park and a short
history review. The standpoints on the subjects that has
been discussed earlier in the thesis, the conclusions from
the observations and the analyse of Broparken is put
together to a bas for the design concept to build upon.
The goal with the design was to create an attractive, impressive
and functional place, whic...
