Accessibility, visibility and connectivity between urbanites and edible landscape in the Persian gardens

چکیده مقاله

In the lack of practical information on the design and implementation of the public and semi-public edible landscape at the site scale, especially in Iran, this paper investigates the detailed information on the accessibility of the edible fruits by exploring the Iranian historical prototype. The case study selected from the World Heritage Persian gardens, Akbarieh Garden, which is located in the East of Iran. Initially established as a multifunctional landscape in Birajnd city about 200 years ago, the garden developed from food production to a complex web of applications, including museum, garden party, and ceremonies encounters. Therefore, the question is how the edible landscape at this traditional multifunctional landscape is preserved and how the public accessibility to the garden fruits is restricted? The authors applied a continuous/stop-motion walking method (CSM) inside the Akbarieh Garden to link the topic of under investigation with the perceived variations in the landscape. The research finds that the security of garden fruits has been provided through the application of four specific strategies. In more detail, there is the least contact between the visitor movement rout and the gardens agricultural zone. Thus, the visitors inevitably could attain the edible fruits by passing through the seven hierarchical sequences which the edible landscape located at the last phase. Similarly, the vertical ornamental green planes function like blinders to constrain ones attention toward the garden fruits. Moreover, there is a hierarchy of dominance within the garden, which their supremacy as a clear sense of hierarchy concentrates the visitors movement and views toward the mansion as well as along great axis length. Thus, the socio-environmental impacts of the fruits of this World Heritage garden is less than the modern urban edible landscapes where public accessibility, visibility and connectivity between urbanites and edible landscape are being regarded.