When it comes to water environment design, it has been said since ancient times that "a city will be beautiful if it has water, and a home will be spiritual if it has water", and "a lucky place cannot be without water". As a landscaping element, water not only has ecological value, but can also regulate temperature and humidity, purify the air, and enhance living comfort. The shape, charm, momentum, and sound of water contain endless poetry, painting, and affection, enriching the spatial environment. Give people the enjoyment of beauty and unlimited associations. Waterscapes can play a special role in the landscape and can bring people wonderful enjoyment. However, with the increasing shortage of water resources, how to build waterscapes suitable for people to appreciate has become a problem faced by every landscape designer. This article is just I did a simple analysis and thinking, hoping that it can play a certain role in attracting new ideas.
1. Landscape Characteristics of Water
The reason why waterscapes are so popular among people and bring them endless fun is undoubtedly due to the characteristics of water itself.
1. Fluidity: The gravity of the earth causes water to flow continuously from high to low. This change in displacement puts the water in a continuous circular motion, fully reflecting the soft and lively characteristics of water. The intense states of varying degrees such as waterfalls, waves, rapids, and springs bring people a strong audio-visual experience. In addition, the seasonal element of wind also contributes to the flow of water. On the calm lake, "the wind suddenly rises and wrinkles a pool of spring water", which is poetic and picturesque.
2. Reflection and reflection: The reflection of water can increase the depth of field, expand the scene, and create a contrast between virtual and real, and a picture that complements each other. Under the sun, the water surface is sparkling, the new green, clear sky and buildings are intertwined and changing, and the field of vision opens and closes; reflections, backlights, reflections, crystal clear waves and colorful colors make the architectural environment poetic and picturesque.
3. Plasticity: Water is a continuous substance, invisible and passive. It has no fixed shape, but it can be shaped into various shapes through containers or nozzles. Guo Xi, a painter of the Song Dynasty, once said in "Linquan Gaozhi": "Water is a living thing. Its shape wants to be deep and quiet, wants to be smooth, wants to be vast, wants to be surrounded by water, wants to be fat, and wants to spray thin." He described water in great detail. of various forms.
4. Sound and color characteristics: Water does not have its own sound. The difference in the base and the amount of remaining air in the upper part determines the sound of the water. The pleasant sound of trickling water, the roar of waterfalls and waves are all conducive to creating an ethereal and transcendent artistic conception; although water has no color and is a transparent liquid, the plankton in nature and the blue reflection of light The function gives it rich colors; the mapping of the colors of the surrounding environment also allows the water surface to change with the changes in the color of the scenery.
2. Analysis of the Current Situation of Water Landscape
Chinese gardens have a saying that “all mountains are gardens, and there is no landscape without water.” This shows the importance of water to the landscape. However, the current status of the waterscape is worrying. The large fountains that can be seen everywhere in the city lie quietly in the water without spraying water. There are polluted rivers, creeks, and straight and deep flood storage dams everywhere, not to mention those pools that have long dried up. It is a very common waterscape phenomenon. This is a very sad waterscape phenomenon!
Although people have a water-loving nature, designers are also trying to meet people's needs. This is a good thing in itself, but the result is disappointing. Relevant media published a piece of news about "indiscriminate use of water enclosures for landscaping in cities that are short of water." The article points out: In some cities in North and Northwest China where water resources are scarce, there has been a trend of creating urban landscape water in recent years. Some cities "block rivers and build dams" to "encircle" river water within the city; some cities spend huge sums of money to "excavate land and build lakes" to artificially create water landscapes. According to a survey, there are currently 16 large and medium-sized cities in the Yellow River Basin that are building water landscapes. Zhengzhou, Xi'an, and Xianyang alone plan to invest more than 4 billion yuan in related "water encirclement" funds. Today, with the increasing shortage of water resources, how to create a pleasant waterscape and how to meet people's need for water has become a very important issue before our designers.
3. Issues that should be paid attention to in water environment design
(1) Waterscape design must strive to be innovative and have unique characteristics to have vitality. The architectural shape and landscape space layout of the same living area are the same. It should also be innovative and distinctive. However, the waterscapes in the environmental design of quite a few real estate projects are similar at present. Building "lakes", "islands" and "piers" has almost become a three-step process for waterscape design, almost all of which are "clones". Copying it will give people the same feeling and nothing new.
In fact, we should design the theme according to the development concept of the real estate, combine different geographical environments and climates, and design different types, different styles, and different themes of water features. It can be a broad lake or a winding stream; it can pursue natural shapes, or it can boldly use artificial geometric objects; it can be paved with pebbles, or it can be colored mosaics; it can reflect the artistic conception of the landscape of oriental gardens, or it can Drawing on the waterside life of the world-famous water city; it can be expressed on the ground, or the water can be led to high altitudes and roofs to flow down the river to form a spectacular waterfall. But no matter what type and style, what kind of expression is used, the most important thing is to create a distinctive water environment.
(2) The waterscape design should have layers and changes, and rich and colorful visual effects. Environmental design requires "points", "lines" and "surfaces". Waterscape design also does not require water strips of the same width. For example, a design of "nine twists and turns" and "sometimes wide and sometimes narrow" can be used. To emphasize the richness of lines, you can use novel fountains, pools or mysterious culverts at nodes to strengthen the origin of the points. Through water curtains, water curtains and lake surfaces of various shapes, you can enrich the expression of the water surface and give it more functions. At the same time, the waterscape design should divide the entire water system into different levels: there is the central lake and central waterscape that the entire community enjoys, which can be combined with the clubhouse and central landscape; there are also small water strips and waterscape themes of different groups that need to be integrated The green environment of the group has close contact with the residents. It can pass through the residential lobby and flow through the residents' private gardens. There are also water features in the private gardens or inside the residence, especially for low-density villas, which can be viewed from the residence. Passing through, separates areas with different functions, you can also stay in the garden and inner courtyard to form a planting pool for water plants, which can also become a children's paddling pool or a family swimming pool.
(3) Try to design a flowing waterscape. In terms of planning, experts and scholars including World Landscape Design Company all believe that planning should be divided into dynamic and static, and the same is true for waterscapes. Among flowing and static waterscape designs, we should pay more attention to flowing waterscape designs. The flowing waterscape gives people a dynamic beauty. The flow of water creates a vibrant scene and makes the landscape more prominent. Gardens and waterscapes can be better integrated, but there must be a good balance between "motion" and "quietness". The combination of waterscape, garden and architectural sketches forms a state of "moving but not moving" and "stillness in movement, movement in stillness". Therefore, waterscape design is not simply "water", but more important. Yes, allowing water to perform different "moving" expressions or performances according to the designer's ideas and the requirements of the environmental theme is an artistic expression and the "dance" of water. She should have rich expressions and beauty. Beautiful action.
(4) Make full use of the original natural rivers and water systems. If there are rivers and water systems at the base of the residential area and there is no pollution, when doing environmental planning, you should try to consider using the original rivers and water systems to plan and build waterscapes. At present, a very popular waterscape environment design in the world is the wetland concept design. Wetlands, forests and oceans are called the earth's three major ecosystems, including swamps, wet meadows, lakes, rivers, tidal flats, etc., which have the ability to maintain biodiversity and prevent Natural disasters and other functions. The most valuable resource in wetlands is water. The main consideration of using wetlands as environmental design is to maintain the original water system and river channels, maintain the original ecosystem and vegetation biological system, and carry out landscape shaping and planning on this basis. Of course, the entire water system must be prevented from being polluted and damaged. If it has been polluted, it must be cleaned up and cured to restore the ecology of the water system and provide residents with a good ecological water environment.
(5) Waterscapes should strengthen people’s participation and stay and support community activities. In the environmental construction of residential areas, attention should be paid to creating a space for interpersonal enjoyment and communication. The design of water features also emphasizes that people can participate and support community activities. For example, setting up venues for people to rest and relax around the main water features. Corresponding facilities, tables and chairs allow you to watch the waterscape at close range. At the same time, the waterscape should be accessible, touchable and playful at any time. Water can become the center of the space in the lobby, adding vitality to the indoor space of the lobby. It can flow through or Passing through the central clubhouse, a water-themed landscape is formed in the clubhouse, etc. In short, it is necessary to provide owners in the residential area with a beautiful water-themed landscape environment and space that they can participate in, contact and stay in, support community activities, and create a good improve the neighborhood atmosphere, promote the development of community culture, and achieve the important purpose of environmental landscape design.
For example, the water feature in a house in California designed by Lawrence, the water gushes out from the fountain, collects in the high platform, and then pours down from the surrounding empty platform like a water curtain, falling into the in the pool below. The interface between the pool bank and the steps is the overflow outlet. The water overflows from the pool and falls down the steps and then enters the channel. It gradually becomes calm. In order to increase the sense of movement of the water in the channel and avoid monotony, some regularly arranged obstacles are set up. Water and stones, finally, the water flow gradually stabilized and merged into a larger, quiet pool, with the potential of rushing back to the sea. Although the scale of the waterscape is not large, it embodies a complete process of water movement sequence.
IV. Principles of water landscape design
The first is the principle of "small" rather than "big". The so-called "small" rather than "big" principle means that when designing water bodies, more consideration should be given to designing small water bodies instead of large water bodies that are boundless and uninteresting. The reason why there are so many large water bodies now may be related to people's psychological factors of "happiness with great achievements". Maybe large water bodies can make people feel the existence of water more and attract people's attention. However, after completion, large water bodies often There will be many problems: the difficulty of maintaining large water bodies may not be considered by designers at the beginning of the design; large water bodies often make people feel at a distance, rather than wanting to get close, because there are often people next to the water body. There are warning signs: the water here is deep, swimming is prohibited, fishing is prohibited, etc.; large water bodies are generally dug out manually, so most of them are "stagnant water". Once water pollution problems occur, it will be fatal. Small water bodies are easy to build. This is one of the aspects. More importantly, small water bodies are easier to meet people's needs for water and can better mobilize people's enthusiasm for participation. What's more, small water bodies facilitate better maintenance in later maintenance and management. , and in the case of water pollution, small water bodies are easier to treat.
The second is the principle of "quick" rather than "straight". The so-called "curved" rather than "straight" principle refers to the best design of water bodies in a curved shape. A very important aspect in the construction of our classical gardens is to "follow nature", that is, to follow the laws of nature in the design. We can take a look at the rivers and streams in our nature. Most of them are winding. Because such water features are easier to create changing effects. Especially in residential areas, it is easier to design a curved water that imitates nature! However, in reality, many people design water bodies to be straight. Perhaps they want to reflect artificial beauty and the ability of artificial to conquer nature!
The third is the principle of "lower" rather than "upper". The "lower" and "upper" here are in a relative relationship. It is better to be "lower" than "upper". This means that the designed waterscape should be consistent with the gravity of nature as much as possible. Do not design too many large fountains. They Most of them are sprayed upward, which requires energy to support them to offset the influence of gravity, which requires a lot of manpower, material resources, and financial resources. Therefore, in reality, it is best for us to make full use of the role of gravity and use as little energy as possible to form as beautiful a landscape as possible. This needs to test the designer’s innovative ability.
The fourth is the principle of "virtual" rather than "real". In areas where water resources are scarce, virtual water features are also a good solution. The virtual waterscape here is relative to the actual water body. It is an intentional waterscape that uses gardening elements with regional characteristics such as stones, sand, wild grass, etc. to imitate the shape of the natural water body in nature. made. Such waterscapes are of special significance to the construction of waterscapes in areas with serious water shortages. At the same time, such waterscapes are more likely to bring people more thinking and experience. This may be incomparable to real waterscapes, because real waterscapes often can only bring people a kind of visual satisfaction and a very superficial experience.
5. Development and Utilization of Waterscapes
It is human nature to be close to water. The development and utilization of water bodies can not only create a "poetic" landscape effect, but also use certain means to expand Space, extend and guide the space, and use the designer’s creative concepts to diversify the content of the landscape environment to activate the space and create affection.
1. Expansion of space. Large-scale planar spaces have certain control and space expansion functions in environmental space. On the one hand, the void form of water weakens the boundaries of space, extends the scope of space, and contributes to the expansion of space; on the other hand, the reflection in the water not only brings the movement of light waves to the water surface, but also creates a virtual space on the water surface, creating an open and open space. A profound feeling.
and This kind of waterscape is different from the large area of ????the water surface, and it is easier for people to directly engage in water play activities. It not only enhances the participation and interest in the landscape, but also satisfies people's psychology of being close to the water.
3. The level of space. As a visual object, waterscape has rich visual levels. Its diverse shapes and plasticity can be flexibly organized into various point, line, and surface waterscapes, forming a three-dimensional space through different overlapping methods; and using the surrounding environment, the building can cover, divide, and enrich the space, serving as a focal point. The effect of scene, counter scene, and background is used to obtain rich spatial levels.