POE Research on the Role and Effect of Landscape Design Supervision in the Creation of Large Parks: Gwanggyo Lake Park

Abstract

While pursuing rapid urbanization and industrialization, the Korean government has also endeavoured to create large scale urban parks. Despite the number of large parks having increased, issues regarding their quality have been consistently raised. Noteworthy, is the quality of Gwanggyo Lake Park, which has been positively evaluated by landscape experts and citizens, and the introduction of a landscape design supervision system is thought to be one of the important reasons for this evaluation outcome. This study conducts a post-evaluation of the role and effect of landscape design supervision on the process of creation of the park. Open interviews were conducted with five staff who participated in the design and construction of the park. As a result of the study, a landscape design supervisor was defined as the second designer, because the supervisor not only monitored whether the construction complied with design, but also played multiple roles in understanding the designer's concept and intention. The landscape design supervisor also responded to the current conditions of the construction site, which included variables and professional opinions from different entities, thereby establishing and producing the most efficient and reasonable alternatives. The landscape design supervisor plays a role in communicating between the public and construction teams. The landscape design supervisor helped maintain the concept and identity of the initial design of the park, raise its overall quality, and implement a design that reflects the special characteristics of the place. It also helped raise landscape designers' self-esteem and sense of happiness by properly reflecting their original design intentions in the construction. This study is an initial research for a post-evaluation using the method of interviewing, which is meaningful as an initial study to analyse the role of landscape design supervisors. It will contribute to future large park projects and the introduction of the landscape design supervision system in them.

Editorial introduction

“…Among the five papers, the first is written by two landscape architects, Jaemin Park and Younsoon Hong's paper (Park & Hong, 2019) is entitled "A POE Research on the Role and Effect of Landscape Design Supervision in the Creation of Large-Scale Parks: Gwanggyo Lake Park", begins with a longstanding urban park issue in South Korea, the inferior quality and design process of the park, as brought about by the mere progression of efficient construction in relation to legal regulations. In response to this issue, Gwanggyo Lake Park adopted an alternative method, a landscape design supervision method; the park is often accepted as the very first success case based on the method.…”