HE Qixiao, Yang Lijuan
Faced with changes in modern lifestyle, increasing crowd pressure, and the rising prevalence of mental disorders, it has become important for studies on architecture and urban and rural planning to create spaces and places for urban residents to actively release pressure. This is from the perspective of improving the urban environment. The main theoretical basis stems from Camplan and his wife's attention restoration theory (ART). This theory deems that some environments can encourage people to concentrate their attention, block the spread of negative emotions, and restore a balance from psychological fatigue and stress interference disorder. Among them, the restorative environment, dominated by the natural environment, significantly impacts mental stress relief. With the deepening studies on restorative environments in foreign countries, we discover that the environment with restorative functions is not limited to the natural environment or urban green space, but also involves the daily life places where people work and study, including churches, zoos, museums, and cemeteries, etc. On the contrary, relevant studies in China have just started, and still focus on the natural environment, involving the quantitative meta-analysis of foreign literature, as well as building and summarizing frames based on the practical situation in China. Nevertheless, there are few explorations of other types of restorative environments.
Memorial space is a place for the spirit to carry on and inherit history through material construction. Space has special significance to the psychological cognition of people since it is endowed with profound spiritual connotations.
People's traditional culture and habit of offering sacrifices to their deceased and heroes have endowed memorial spaces, such as city memorial squares, with the potential effect of healing interviewees' souls and relieving their pressure. This is highly similar to the functions of restorative environments dominated by the natural environment. It is necessary to explore whether the memorial space is a potential restorative environment for modern urban residents from the academic trend perspective of expanding restorative environmental types, the practical needs of searching for ways to positively relieve pressure, and the recognition of the spiritual restorative characterization of memorial spaces.
One hundred and six visitors in three memorial squares (People's Square, Gele Mountain Hongyan Soul Square, and Hongyan Village Square) in Chongqing were invited to participate in the evaluation of the square environment. Keywords matching four features (e.g., charm, escape, consistency and scope) of the restorative environment in the interview information were extracted by combining thematic analysis (TA) of qualitative research and sensory restorative scale (PRS). Results showed that there were 11 types of keywords encoded by 350 times matching with charm, nine types of keywords encoded by 222 times matching with escape, five types of keywords encoded by 199 times matching with consistency, and five types of keywords encoded by 192 times matching with scope. Based on this, eight types of environmental elements that develop the restorative functions of memorial squares were summarized by combining the environmental classification technique (PSD) of the sensory perception dimension, including nature, culture, safety, tranquility, history, ceremony, broad vision, and multiple facilities. These eight types of environmental elements cover high-frequency keywords matching the four feature types of memorial squares and restorative environments. Furthermore, a potential spatial component framework of eight types of environmental elements was interpreted. Specifically, the spatial components of the charm dimension are influenced by nature and cultural elements in the environment, such as lawns, flowers, large arboreal plants, and fine bonsai, as well as stone landscaping and sculpture. The spatial components of the escape dimension are influenced by safety, tranquility, and historical elements, such as peaceful lake bodies, quiet mountain barriers, and ancient architectures like ancient monuments, temples, and towers. The spatial components of the consistency dimension are represented as ritual elements, including axes, matrices, and paving. This is also the innate superiority of memorial space.
The spatial components of the scope dimension involve the elements of broad vision and multiple facilities, including the landscape platform, such as the terraced, high table, and pick structure, as well as the facility components, such as seats and activity equipment that provide various types of interaction activities.