Beykoz Akademi Dergisi

Öz

Examining the past and present of the human's ability to design and build his/her environment contains clues about how future designs and plans can be constructed. In this context, it is important to evaluate the historical process of palace gardens and urban parks, which are the combined works of nature and of man also included in the definition of cultural landscape areas.
With the idea of Renaissance in Europe, the dominance of human over nature began to show itself in garden designs. Towards the second half of the 16th century, gardens began to develop as areas that tend to be luxurious rather than a place to live in, and the representation of the absolute power of the monarchy found its reflections in those gardens. Garden architecture in Europe developed by being inspired by the Renaissance Gardens in Italy; In the 17th century, it evolved into the French “Great Style” and in the next century turned into a garden concept dominated by natural elements with its naturalistic landscape style. In Europe of the 19th century, when empires began to collapse, city parks, inspired by the discourses of artists and philosophers following the Industrial Revolution, began to be built as public meeting places. Within the borders of the Ottoman Empire, an approach similar to the understanding of garden art in Europe began to be seen by the 18th century.
In the study, the change process of the palace gardens, which were started to be built for the use of the dynasty and their relatives in Europe in the 16th century and in the Ottoman Empire in the 18th century, has been discussed with the influence of political, social and cultural dynamics. In this context, Luxemburg Gardens from Europe, Yıldız Palace Gardens from the Ottoman Empire Period were selected and studied as examples. Archival research has been carried out regarding the selected gardens and parks within the framework of the period they were built and their current usage conditions, functions and design language. The data obtained were evaluated as a result of on-site observation.
In this research, conclusion has been reached that the palace gardens, which were used by the dynasty and built as a symbol of absolute power, also constitute concrete examples of the acculturation process of the period. For centuries, the garden walls that formed the border between the people and the dynasty were transformed to open doors and urban parks were established that meet the recreational needs of the people. In the light of the information obtained on this subject, an approach is presented in which the symbolic meaning of the concepts of border and borderless is discussed.