Pku and Turenscape received ASLA 2005 Awards

American Society of Lanscape Architects (ASLA) announced 2005 professional awards on 11st July, 2005. The two projects presided by Turenscape and Peking University have received two professional awards: ASLA Honor Award, Planning and Analysis and ALSA Design Honor Award. These two projects are "Against Planning" in Taizhou City and Shenyang Architectural University Rice Paddy Campus. This is the second time that Prof. Yu and his team has received planning and designing international professional awards, while the first time was their Zhongshan Shipyard Park project which had received ASLA Design Honor Award. According to ASLA official site announcement, the july selected 33 projects to receive awards in plan, design, residence, community, etc. from a field of over 520 entries; the competition was very fierce. In the award-achieving projects, except there were two projects in China, one respectively in Spain, Israel, and Canada, the others were all in the native country of U.S.A. The designers who have won the awards are the top units of the world too, including SWA, EDAW, HOK, Peter Walker, Michael van Volkenburg, Gustafson Guthrie Nichol, etc. which are all very famous in China. Peking University and Turescape are the only designers received two professional awards except units in U.S.A. The case of Taizhou "Against Planning" is one from region to city location that steps the yardstick planning and designing case. Take Taizhou of Zhejiang Province as an example, use the approach of "Against Planning": do the planning of the unbuilt region at first in order to ensure the security and hearlth of the earth life system; use the theory and method of landscape security pattern to set up an ecological infrastructure which can meet the compositive function needs of ecological prevention of flood, biological protection, native culture heritage protection, recreation, etc.. Serving like that the social infrastructure can guarantee citizen to receive the social economic service, the ecological infrastructure can guarantee citizen to receive the ecological serivice continuously. The approach of "Against Planning" was put forward under the situation of the relationship between people and environment becoming worse seriously because of the fast urbanlization and also the situation of current planning method lacking badly. Yu Kongjian, presider of award-winning projects, and Li Dihua leading Peking University group have engaged in "Against Planning" and the theory and practice of ecological infrastructure for many years. What they wrote 《Urban Landscape Way: Communication with Mayors》 published in 2003 have been overprinted for five times untill now, which makes this ecological planning idea to root and bloom in a lot of cities in China. Taizhou City is a case among them. The Professional Awards Jury Comments: analysis is very comprehensive... creates framework from which various architectural and landscape architecture forms can emerge... starts with ecological and environmental issues. "Rice Paddy Campus" is the landscape design project to create a new campus for Shenyang Architectural Univeristy. In order to meet the need of scale expanding, the Architectural College moved from Shenyang City to the new campus located on the south bank of Hun River. In 2002, Professor Yu Kongjian was invited to preside the landscape design of the new campus. Facing the challenges of small budget, short timetable and so on, he led his design group, brought forward the scheme of beautifing the campus environment by rice and blending rice fragrance into reading sound, which was adopt by university leaders who also had innovative consciousness, such as Zhang Fuchang. In the final rice paddy campus, they use native Northeas Rice, buckwheat, etc. crops and native weed as materials, build a rice paddy landscape with unique modern sense and native fragrance: convenient footpaths in the campus join dormitories and classrooms; white poplars divide the rice paddy into pieces of reading space in pleasant size. Every mid May, the campus will celebrate transplant rice seedlings period; every by the end of Octobor, the university will celebrate harvest period again. All students are in a farm culture experience that only long history farm country has; the high quality rice harvested is the gift that the university presented to the honoured guests. "Father of Rice" Yuan Longping comments: "cultivating rice is similar with educating people, rice fragrance spreads in the campus". The Professional Awards Jury comments: "Productive landscape and a beautiful landscape...this will put the students directly in touch with agriculture ...biggest stroke is to put test plots in the middle of campus." For Chinese especially for our young students who are far away from land, far away from village, far away from agriculture, for a agriculture and high population country that can not forget the land benefaction nor can not waste land, "Rice Paddy Campus" has communicated designers" suffering consciousness and limitless affectionateness, presented objecting to pursuning extravagance and bizarrerie, sparkpluged "Colloquial Landscape" and idea of ordinary cities. Founded in 1899, ASLA has more than 100 years history and is the national professional association for landscape architects having more than 15,000 members and representing landscape architects from U.S.A 50 states and 42 countries all around the world. Landscape architecture is a comprehensive discipline of land analysis, planning, design, management, preservation, and rehabilitation; with architecture and urban planning, they form the three subjects of living environment construction. The final aim of landscape architects is to mix human activities, including urban, architecture, water conservancy, transport, etc. human projects in vital land harmoniously. 47 states of U.S.A have set up the enrollment system of lanscape architects; more than 70 universities have had landscape architecture major and more than 120 universities have had this major all around the world. While in China, the "Landscape Architect" was confirmed as an occupation by National Ministry of Labour and Social Security Ministry only since 2004. In 2005, State Department Committee approved Peking University to establish the Landscape Architecture master spot, and approved such 25 universities as Peking University for trying to recruit on-the-job master students of Scenery Garden. However, we still have no enrollment system of lanscape architects in China untill now. Shortage of talents and this subject and concept lag behind relatively has already become the bottleneck of the job development of landscape architecture. The Chinese professor and his landscape plan and design projects receiving awards can encourage the development of this subject in China undoubtedly. The Graduate School of Landscape Architecture (GSLA) at Peking University (PKU) was established in January of 2003. Now there will be about 60 masters enrolled every year, including 30 of on-the-job MLA and 30 of science Landscape Architecture. In recent years, they have insisted for the roads of discipline innovation, system innovation and education pattern innovation and have published 15 monographs of all kinds. This year 2 students in this school obtained the second-class awards in the student competition organized by United Nations Educational, Scientific, and Cultural Organization (UNESCO) and International Federation of Landscape Architects (IFLA). With over 200 designers, Turenscape was offically recognized and certificated as a first-level design institute by the Chinese government, engaging in the planning and design of urban, construction and landscape. Since the establishment of 1998, holding the national flag of ‘Design for China’, it has been internationally and nationally recognized in the field of building modern cities and landscapes but with vivid Chinese characteristic. It has received more than 10 national and international awards, including the ASLA Design Honor Award (2002, American Society of Landscape Architects), Human Habitat Award (2001, The Ministry of Construction, China), the Tenth National Exhibition of Arts, Gold Award, etc. From ASLA.org: Shenyang Architectural University Campus, Taizhou City, Shenyang City, Liaonang, China [url=http://www.asla.org/awards/2005/05winners/entry_090.html]http://www.asla.org/awards/2005/05winners/entry_090.html[/url] The Growth Pattern of Taizhou City Based on Ecological Infrastructure, Taizhou City, Zhejiang Province, China [url=http://www.asla.org/awards/2005/05winners/entry_075.html]http://www.asla.org/awards/2005/05winners/entry_075.html[/url] Related Link:[url=http://www.landscapecn.com/special/asla2005]http://www.landscapecn.com/special/asla2005[/url] [center][img]http://www.turenscape.com/upload/news/20057191352487.jpg[/img] Shengyang Architectural University Campus [img]http://www.turenscape.com/upload/news/2005719135232350.jpg[/img] The Growth Pattern of Taizhou City Based on Ecological Infrastructure[/center]