Revitalization and landscape design of the park in Stari Mikanovci, Croatia; role of existing vegetation in generating new landscape solutions

In this paper, the procedures and indicators of systematic inventorisation and analysis of the existing vegetation of urban landscapes are presented and applied. The analysis of the vitality of existing trees was performed using the Visual Tree Assessment (VTA) method on the location of Park in Stari Mikanovci, Croatia. The results of these analyses were used as a basis for the protection and care of existing vegetation, but also their implementation in the design. For this purpose, four different conceptual solutions for the park design were formed. The process of generating different concepts tried to answer the questions: whether the maximum preservation of vegetation elements is a limiting factor in the creative phase of the design process, and whether consistent preservation of vegetation elements will generate similarities of design solutions. Four conceptual solutions were developed by four different authors who were given the same project task: (a) maximum possible preservation on the basis of analysis of the determined values of existing vegetation, and (b) uniform basic residential and recreational content of the park. All other components and features of the landscape are left as variable, arbitrary and author-determined parameters. Multi-criteria descriptive analysis of the proposed design solutions showed that the existing vegetation is not a limiting factor for the typology, diversity, disposition and degree of intervention in the creative phase of the design process.