Barnett Park : future recreation for Christchurch : based on experience, an assessment of an existing recreation reserve in urban Christchurch, an enquiry into the nature of recreation with the reserve as an example and a resulting design and management policy : [dissertation, Diploma in Landscape Architecture, Lincoln College]

Abstract

This is a design project, and it follows a design discipline as stringent as any science the difference is the kind of answer required, which dictates the kind of question to be asked. Whereas a scientist may gather only objective data, designers must give subjective data equal validity. Therefore, though the design process is both methodical and acidly reducing, it is not scientific.

The design process fully applied to the subject of recreation produces some unconventional results. The original meaning, personal re-creation, has loosely adapted to now mean general activity during leisure-time. Exploring the implications of such basics to dispel misconceptions is part of the design process to provide the user with what he wants. The potential of design for recreation has been crippled by leaving this phase out, continuing the misconception that urban recreation is a "thing" that people can "do" if only the see-saws or sports fields can be provided.

The aim of this exercise is to maximise possibilities - to resist unnecessary loss of potential. It recognises that formalising a space to one use excludes all other uses, and returns to the concept of recreation as a personal response to one's own needs.

The clarified understanding of the recreation process is the first, subjective, part of design for recreation. In the interaction of the subjective with the objective realm the common factor is the human nervous system, the senses by which we verify our existence. A strange sound or a wafting fragrance has the ability to eject people from their unsensate world of cares into the alive world in which they forget themselves, enjoy themselves, re-create. These sensory phenomena are the designer's vital tools, the design elements of his plan. The second more familiar part of design is the arrangement of these elements.