Interpreting urban voids as the morphological reading tool of Historic Urban Landscape: The case study of former British concession in Tientsin

Abstract

Following the extended cognition of historical urban landscape, former concession areas are considered particular zones with certain historic and artistic values and undergo a tremendous conservative change. Current economic service-oriented transformation raised the issue of environmental rupture, gentrification and the decline of landscape diversity. Giving a glance at the variety of urban voids, this study analyses the neglected formation process of parks, boulevards, plazas as well as the Hang-Dao, and their morphological characteristic through history, integrates them into the general urban construction process meanwhile clarifies their dominating role in historic urban landscape image. Take the whole British concession area of Tientsin in modern time as the target, use historic maps as a discussion base, superimpose historical images and textual information to sort out continuous evolution and formative identities of urban voids. The results reflect in synthesis diagrams of urban void system which are constituted by a dominated crossing-axis and a hierarchical layering grid pattern in two morphological regions. These formative schemes could be further elaborated into conservation planning strategies for historical urban landscape.