Vilniaus kraštovaizdžio tapatumas

Abstract

Straipsnyje rašoma apie Vilniaus miesto centro kraštovaizdį kaip fizinio pavidalo vizualiosios raiškos bei prasminių ryšių visumą, unikalius jo bruožus, pristatoma paties tapatumo nagrinėjimo problematika. Aptariamos išskirtų kraštovaizdžio kompleksų fizinių, estetinių ir prasminių savybių reikšmės nuo panoraminio mastelio iki artimojo plano elementų.

The identity of urban landscape is a complex notion, which is manifested in a large variety of forms. They can be unified into a whole by means of semantic relations, which can help us imagine and understand to what extent the urban landscape has changed, reveal authentic contexts, and answer the question why and how they disappeared. The frame structure of the identity of the Vilnius urban landscape consists of naturally, urbanistically and spatially integrated landscape complexes that include the entire range of physical, aesthetic and semantic properties, which can be realized as having a certain character and personified. The Vilnius topographical heritage is one of the main constituent parts of this character. The variety of geomorphology in a small territory creates large-scale compositions, in which architectural elements play the role of semantic dominants and highlights. The lookout area of the Neris and Vilnia valley opening from high ground most fully reveals the uniqueness of the Vilnius urban landscape. The unique and historically formed feature of the Vilnius character is many-faceted and polysemous landscapes, whose visually perceived limits are determined by housing developments and valley slopes, the depth of the view – by their form, and the meaning – by the compositional whole of the elements of a wild, cultivated and aestheticized natural environment and housing developments. The Vilnius urban landscape has undergone significant transformations – above all, semantic, and later, also physical. The transformations of the 19th and 20th centuries should be particularly closely analyzed – very numerous and diverse, they both supplemented the city’s identity literally or semantically, and denied it and were instrumental in its decay. It is particularly important to realize these deformations – now broken, but once intertwined in a myriad of lines, the causal relations of objects, places and people are rapidly sinking into oblivion, though they could help us restore the vital emotional link with the place. The research on the arrangement of natural and architectural objects of the Vilnius urban landscape with regard to each other reveals not only their spatial, but also semantic relations. The identity of the Vilnius urban landscape can be understood only as a coherent system of signs of the city’s uniqueness and their expression in urban landscape and human consciousness.