Cultural heritage sites in Vilnius: a critique of selected interventions in landscape architecture

Abstract

International researchers intensively explore the tradition of criticism in landscape architecture theories and practices from different angles: socio-cultural inquiry, historic prospective and retrospective, heritage perception and cognition, modern public engagement. Over the past two years, Vilnius City has witnessed a breakthrough in the public debate on urban open space, and several landscape architecture projects related to the revitalization of the cultural landscape have provoked the active public debate. Three selected cases have multi-layered evolution in which previous solutions have been deliberately or naturally denied by subsequent ones. The aim of the paper is to analyse and summarise the state of collective memory and tendencies of stakeholder’s opinions that influence the creative process in landscape architecture projects. The paper analyses the opinions of three stakeholder’s groups about the projects going to be realised: the public, the planning and design professionals and the client, with own regard to the project. The feedback material from the published articles, critical comments, record of public discussion and some other public and institutional media resources are analysed. The ecological, aesthetic and social-economic aspects of the feedback material are represented through the preselected criteria and the detailed indicators. The main conclusion of the study is the notion that early and a wide-ranging discussion with the public during the process of landscape revitalisation can harvest the best public acceptance of landscape change. In the analysed case, it showed the absolute stakeholder’s preference for the multi-layered representation and interpretation of the authentic landscape material and its mental memories that promote the continuum of landscape development as a contemporary public interaction arena. The shorter was the lifespan of the place, the more outrageous debates took place with little consent in all aspects. In case of the longer timespan of the place, there was more consensus between the stakeholders on the analysed aspects.