Visual perception of the historic city image. An urban landscape approach to integrate the residual margins of the historical area. Gjirokastra case study

This thesis investigates the integrity of the historic city image in relation to human’s visual perception and the possibility to extend this quality to the fragile margins of the historical area in order to achieve a historical urban landscape as a whole and to guarantee visual sustainability as an important component of historical urban development. In Albanian context, numerous historic cities or traditional settlements following the recent rapid urban growth and upgrade interventions have caused a degradation of the historical urban landscape reflecting a chaotic image made up of separate fragments which do not fit with each other visually and are not posed in harmony with the historical center. Thus, these inconsistent transformations not only harm the quality of the historical landscape as a whole, but they further disturb the visualizing of the historical center, putting at risk the preservation of the historic urban landscape as a whole. Hence, these new inconsistent transformations which provoke disorientation and distress at a psychological level, can cause a lack of interest for the visual frame of the traditional area and provoke a cognitive dissonance or rejection towards it, being foreign to the collective consciousness used to the idea of visual coherence and harmony of the historical center, which has the capacity to activate visual comprehension, and the desire to experience it. While on one hand, the current interventions seem to fulfill almost the best functional requirements which are numerically quantified and objectively discussed, on the other hand, the principle of visual integrity started gradually lacking as they still seem to be vague and subjective. Even the legal framework, when considering new interventions in the protected residual areas around the historical centers, although aims to conserve the historical city image by emphasizing the importance of interventions “in harmony” with the visual and morphological character of the historical center, do not provide objective parameters to assess this harmony. Accordingly, the aim of this research is to determine a series of constants that characterize the historical city image which will constitute the parameters of evaluation of its visual sustainability and will be used as tools for new interventions in the residual margins. Taking as a case study the historic center of Gjirokastra, in Albania, the research will focus on understanding and represent at an urban scale the visual perceptual characteristics of the historical landscape. The final outcome of the thesis is the representation of the synthesis of Gjirokastra image. These synthetic representations constitute the basis for the guidelines and recommendations for adjusting interventions in the residual area around the historical center. They can be further used as a design tool to transmit the visual quality in new design projects. Moreover, the research intends to be relevant and original, as it presents a methodology to analyze and define the quality of the historical city image, which has not been an object of previous studies in Albania, and which can be used in other historical cities or settlements in Albania and in a wider context.