Research On The Cultural Heritage Of Contemporary Westen Urban Landscape

Cities are the symbol of history and culture, and also are the product of cultural process. In addition, the urban landscape which conveys the emotion by the materialized forms is a logbook of urban culture. Nowadays, people do not only focus on the form and the function of the landscape and begin to pay more attention on the transmission of the meaning of cultural patterns and the cultural heritage. But the symbolic grafting of the traditional culture and recycling the traditional culture only make the contemporary culture become vulgar and lost its center. Therefore, how to pass along the traditional culture by contemporary landscape becomes an important research topic.This article takes the contemporary west urban landscape as the research object, and uses the methods which the structuralism explores the deep structure through the systems of signification to reaserch cultural heritage of urban landscape. By the research of material-type cultural heritage of urban landscape on the landscape elements, to the research of non-material-type cultural heritage of urban landscape on landscape awareness, to the research of symbolic-type cultural heritage of urban landscape on landscape symbols, the article analyses the contemporary landscape architects's understanding and expression of the culture, and then explains the technique of cultural heritage of urban landscape.In material aspects, the cultural heritage of urban landscape mainly reflects in the cultural heritage of landscape elements. The cultural heritage of urban landscape is not a direct and face to face communication, but through the landscape form. Reflecting in the physical form of the landscape, the cultural heritage is the heritage of the form of landscape elements. From the analysis of natural elements, artificial elements and abstract elements, we can clearly find the traditional and essence form was retained though the successive processing. At the same time, with the change of the form of the landscape elements, these elements also integrate into the characteristics of the contemporary features and take shape a landscape form with the historical and cultural characteristics.In non-material aspects, the cultural heritage of urban landscape mainly reflects in the cultural heritage of landscape awareness. Because the western classical landscape architecture have a long history and a profound culture, the contemporary landscape architects pay more attention on its study and discussion, and the heritage of its idea, skill and the kernel of culture.They discard the aspects which is not suitable for the development of today's society and develop the essence. They make the vision of tradition and contemporary together and make the form of landscape with the traditional information and modern information.In symbolic aspects, the cultural heritage of urban landscape mainly reflects in the cultural heritage of landscape symbols. The contemporary landscape architects believe that the landscape is a text which is constituted by a number of landscape symbols. Therefore, they place the historical and cultural information in the landscape architecture by choosing, coding and organizing these landscape symbols and combined with a symbol, metaphor and other techniques, to convey the significance of culture.In the part of conclusion, the article gives a comprehensive summery of three forms of cultural heritage of urban landscape and the contemporary landscape architects's understanding and expression of the culture, in the hope of providing reference for the contemporary landscape design.