Urban Design
mona mehranfar; Jamaleddin Soheili; reza afhami
Abstract
Highlights- The graphics used in the urban furniture in District Two of the city of Qazvin, Iran have created a sense of place in the citizens.- Seats, sitting areas, and square elements play the most important role in creation of a sense of place through urban furniture.- Visual structure and architecture ...
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Highlights- The graphics used in the urban furniture in District Two of the city of Qazvin, Iran have created a sense of place in the citizens.- Seats, sitting areas, and square elements play the most important role in creation of a sense of place through urban furniture.- Visual structure and architecture play the most important role in creation of a sense of place, environmental graphics, and urban furniture. IntroductionLittle attention has been paid in the current era to the field of environmental graphicsand the creation of new experiences to induce a sense of place, which has caused environmental graphics to encounter stability and inactivity. This is due to ignorance and insufficient concern for it in strategic research. Today, architects and designers have tried to crystallize the aesthetic aspects of these elements besides the functional aspects in the study of urban graphics, and what they create involves aesthetic meanings and creates a sense of place in the audience. Moreover, the issue of creating a sense of place, one of the most important factors in environmental quality in Iranian cities, has been largely forgotten in the field of environmental graphics in the current era. Today’s urban space is sometimes left open even in response to performance. Therefore, the purpose of this study was to investigate the urban graphics in District Two of the city of Qazvin, Iran in order to improve the sense of place in citizens and then to achieve a model of urban graphics reading.Theoretical FrameworkThe visual quality of the urban environment involves an area with two systems of esoteric and external existence that must be understood simultaneously in order to improve the promotion of a sense of place for the audience. Cities with favorable visual environments are capable of expanding citizens’ aesthetic experience, promote their mental image of the society, and strengthen their civic pride. Meanwhile, the visual environment of a city emerges through the complex system of signs and the social, economic, and cultural characteristics of their communities. In the process of human-urban interaction, the visual environment provides the conditions for citizens’ and visitors’ perception, cognition, and environmental evaluation as a common interface. Man’s main perceptions from the environment depend on visual perception and visual factors. Thus, visual data provide man with the possibility of communication with the environment, because they play an effective role in promotion of the reading of urban spaces and visual perception of the environment. If we fail to consider the visual principles, graphic works, and visual representations in urban spaces, chaos and visual pollution will be created in urban environments, and these visual inconsistencies will intensify people’s psychological unrest. Therefore, environmental graphics can contribute to the organization of the visual system, improvement of the visual qualities, and enrichment of the sensory-visual features of urban spaces and consequently provide visual and mental peace and particular effects to the audience. As a part of the performance of environmental graphics, urban furniture has an important role in beautification and quality improvement along with creation of a sense of place in urban environments. Therefore, it can be stated according to earlier studies that architects and designers have tried to crystallize the aesthetic aspects of urban furniture besides the functional aspects of these elements in their current studies, and what they create involves aesthetic meanings and a sense of place.MethodologyThe present qualitative-quantitative study is considered as a survey in terms of purpose. In the collection of qualitative data, library tools were used for a review of the studies conducted in the field, and the obtained data were evaluated using the method of content analysis. In the quantitative part of the present study, field tools (observation and questionnaire) were used. The researcher-made questionnaire of the present study, which was prepared according to the data obtained from library studies and the theoretical framework of the present study, was distributed to one hundred citizens in District Two of Qazvin, who were selected using simple random sampling. The Friedman test was first used to rank the criteria and indicators concerning the respondents to the present research questionnaire, and the data were analyzed using the method of content analysis in the following step.Results and DiscussionThe results indicate that the physical structure of urban graphics in District Two of Qazvin involves a balanced quality of significant signs that attract the audience’s attention, and specify the sense of place in the area depending on the form, color, and materials. Among the components of environmental graphics reading in District Two of Qazvin, the components of visual structure and architecture exhibit the greatest roles, where they have created a sense of place in the residents of this district proportionally to their contexts and the types of color combination used, because there is a strong mutual relationship between the components of proportion and color combination and the reading of environmental graphics.ConclusionAccording to the data extracted from the questionnaire and the opinions collected from the residents of the district, it can be stated in general that seats and sitting places and square elements are ranked highest according to the conducted Friedman test, while elements such as trash cans and murals are ranked lowest.
