VIRTUAL: Prague Heritages
Abstract
The topic of this research are the historical arterial routes of Prague and their transformations under urban growth processes. The study combines qualitative and quantitative research of those linear land routes which connected the historical settlement with its periphery. Qualitative analysis enables comparative overview of route types based on historical maps. Quantitative aspects of routes are explored using space syntax methodology and theory by evaluating the selected routes’ integration in the contemporary urban configuration (i.e. spatial model of the street network). Therefore, results detect historical route parts (namely, it traces ‘the past’) that remain in ‘the present’ urban fabric of the 21st century city. This enables in general to understand complexity of a city by observing its parts / transects set by historical routes – for Prague seven arterial routes on both riversides. Prague’s historical routes show historical avenue type of transformations but nevertheless, most of the routes are still present in the contemporary urban fabric. Overall, the paper argues that the identified persistence of historical elements in urban streetscapes makes a case for considering these arterial links between the urban core and periphery a linear heritage category and a possible planning tool for their future transformations.
Tamara Zaninovic (nee Maric), PhD, mag.ing.arch, completed her Master studies of architecture and urbanism in 2011 at the Faculty of Architecture, the University of Zagreb, where she is currently employed as postdoctoral at the Department of Urban Planning, Spatial Planning and Landscape Architecture. She completed her doctoral studies in 2022 at Vienna University of Technology (TUW) with the dissertation topic ‘Streets as Heritage’. Her main research topics are streetscapes, cultural heritage, urbanscape, memorials, walkability and space syntax.
Garyfalia (Falli) Palaiologou is Senior Lecturer in Urban Design at Loughborough University, UK. Earlier she was Research Fellow at the UCL Bartlett School of Architecture at the Space Syntax Laboratory, funded by the Engineering and Physical Sciences Research Council (EPSRC). Her PhD research investigated the 20th century urban transformation of London terraced houses and Manhattan row houses, focusing on street micromorphology and street liveability. Her postdoctoral research looked at the use of space syntax methods to rethink zoning and delimitation practices for UNESCO historic urban landscapes.
Prof. Bojana Bojanic Obad Scitaroci, PhD, is a graduate architect in the field of architecture, heritage and town planning. She is professor at the Faculty of Architecture of the University of Zagreb. She is the author/co-author of five books, about fifty scientific articles, ten scientific studies from the field of landscape architecture, forty town-plans and studies and thirty designs from the field of garden, landscape architecture and heritage. She is a reviewer of scientific-research projects in the field of architecture, heritage and town planning. She has taken part at national and international scientific-expert conferences with topics related to the protection of the cultural heritage of architecture, tourism, landscape and space syntax.
12:00 pm - 1:30 pm
Wednesday 28th June, 2023