Green Design in Urban Squares: Ecological Urban Consciousness in Landscape Architecture Education

Abstract

Due to increase in population density in cities, unplanned urbanization, where built areas proliferate and concrete and impermeable surfaces are predominant, have started to capture cities. While this causes the natural environments and green areas in cities to decrease day by day, it also directly affects the formation of heat islands in the cities, air pollution and the decrease in the quality of life of people. Since landscape architecture is a discipline that deals with the planning, development, protection and design of rural and urban open spaces that can make the future better, teaching students the importance of the ecological city and the criteria of designs for this should be the primary goal in universities. The area, which was determined as an Urban Transformation area by Trabzon Municipality and planned to be designed as Karagöz Square, was studied within the scope of Karadeniz Technical University Landscape Architecture Environmental Design Project 4 in the fall semester of 2019-2020. The lecturer of the course aimed to teach the students the awareness of green design-oriented city square solution in line with ecological city criteria. Within the scope of this study, course data were examined with ecological city criteria.