《Landscape Architecture》:A Review on The Art Of Survival
The Art of Survival is a dramatic title, but the prime author behind this attractive book believes the role of landscape architecture is no less than that, the key to human survival. Kongjian Yu, International ASLA, dean of the Graduate School of Landscape Architecture at Beijing University, and Mary Padua, International ASLA, assistant professor in the Architecture Department of Hong Kong University, have credited a publication devoted to the thought and designs of Yu and his landscape and urban design firm, Turenscape. Martha Cecilia Fajardo, president of the international federation of Landscape Architects, provides a glowing foreword to the book, and many of Yu’s previous speeches and articles are included, along with reprinted journal reviews of Turenscape’s work. While readers may well conclude the book is primarily promotional, the importance of Yu’s design ethic to china, and to designers, environmentalists, and scholars interested in china, should not be underestimated. Many writers inside as well as outside China have decried the country’s rampant development, but here is a leading practitioner providing not only criticism but real examples of other way of building. Apparently in harmony with local environments and cultural conditions. Equally as important as the text are color images illustrating the analysis process leading to the designs and photographs of built projects that comprise half the volume.
Yu believes that landscape architecture should recapture its role as steward of the land , protect and preserve natural systems and learn from them, develop with a light and deft hand, and keep people connected, perhaps reconnect them spiritually, to their places of livelihood and residence. Survival depends on land management techniques responsive to local environmental conditions and the vernacular landscape of significant indigenous architecture and plant species. Yu criticizes well-known architectural projects by foreign architects such as Rem Koolhaus for using an excessive amount of concrete and steel and for having exploited Chinese leaders’ lust for singular architectural statements-----a trend Yu cites as further evidence of China’s disconnect from its cultural heritage. Yu believes that China needs to rediscover its historic “Land of Peach Blossoms.” An iconic landscape where people live in harmony within a useful, balanced, and healthy environment, and he laments the fact that garden as ornament. Exemplified by the classical Chinese garden, has overwhelmed and replaced the sound practices of land stewardship with artifice.
Yu cites J.B.Jackson, architectural historian Spiro Kostof, and other well-known English-language writers on the landscape as having influenced his work. Reprinted articles by Gareth George of Beijing Today and Susan Jakes of Time Asia Magazine articulate the recent explosion of development in China and highlight the importance of Turenscape’s design approach. Of the 15 articles included. Yu wrote or coauthored 10. Some of these contain references to deities, spirits, and Mother Earth expressed in the language of fables that may draw a chuckle from American readers accustomed to dry, analytical delivery. Readers will find some of the articles written in basic but understandable English with a few clumsily translated phrases or Chinese hyperbolic expressions, but keep in mind, the images are as important as the idiom.
The projects described, apart from the wetland park outside Beijing, are not on the usual visitor’s circuit or in locations well-known to westerners, but they showcase a variety of design responses to different situations, from the village of Magang in Guangdong province to a derelict shipyard on the mainland across from Hong Kong to the grounds of a major university in Shenyang----these projects provided for analysis. This writer, in six visits to china, has never seen the combination of a simple and bold plant palette, modern use or reuse of architectural forms, and inventive means of interacting with water and the landscape shown in these projects. Rather, most new open spaces in china’s large cities and towns, no matter how well executed, recall familiar Chinese or European models.
The book is divided into sections titled “positioning Landscape Architecture in the New Era,” “The Negative Approach: Landscape Leading the Way,” “The Art of Survival: Landscape Architecture Recovered,” and “The poetic vernacular” which express the main points of Turenscape’s approach to land management and design. To this writer, the “poetic vernacular” best describes the Design expression evidenced here, being at once modern, imbued with local reference, artful, and sensitive to the needs of people and the environment.
Marilyn Clemens：ASLA, is an urban designer and writer living in Silver Spring, Maryland.
Yu believes that landscape architecture should recapture its role as steward of the land , protect and preserve natural systems and learn from them, develop with a light and deft hand, and keep people connected, perhaps reconnect them spiritually, to their places of livelihood and residence. Survival depends on land management techniques responsive to local environmental conditions and the vernacular landscape of significant indigenous architecture and plant species. Yu criticizes well-known architectural projects by foreign architects such as Rem Koolhaus for using an excessive amount of concrete and steel and for having exploited Chinese leaders’ lust for singular architectural statements-----a trend Yu cites as further evidence of China’s disconnect from its cultural heritage. Yu believes that China needs to rediscover its historic “Land of Peach Blossoms.” An iconic landscape where people live in harmony within a useful, balanced, and healthy environment, and he laments the fact that garden as ornament. Exemplified by the classical Chinese garden, has overwhelmed and replaced the sound practices of land stewardship with artifice.
Yu cites J.B.Jackson, architectural historian Spiro Kostof, and other well-known English-language writers on the landscape as having influenced his work. Reprinted articles by Gareth George of Beijing Today and Susan Jakes of Time Asia Magazine articulate the recent explosion of development in China and highlight the importance of Turenscape’s design approach. Of the 15 articles included. Yu wrote or coauthored 10. Some of these contain references to deities, spirits, and Mother Earth expressed in the language of fables that may draw a chuckle from American readers accustomed to dry, analytical delivery. Readers will find some of the articles written in basic but understandable English with a few clumsily translated phrases or Chinese hyperbolic expressions, but keep in mind, the images are as important as the idiom.
The projects described, apart from the wetland park outside Beijing, are not on the usual visitor’s circuit or in locations well-known to westerners, but they showcase a variety of design responses to different situations, from the village of Magang in Guangdong province to a derelict shipyard on the mainland across from Hong Kong to the grounds of a major university in Shenyang----these projects provided for analysis. This writer, in six visits to china, has never seen the combination of a simple and bold plant palette, modern use or reuse of architectural forms, and inventive means of interacting with water and the landscape shown in these projects. Rather, most new open spaces in china’s large cities and towns, no matter how well executed, recall familiar Chinese or European models.
The book is divided into sections titled “positioning Landscape Architecture in the New Era,” “The Negative Approach: Landscape Leading the Way,” “The Art of Survival: Landscape Architecture Recovered,” and “The poetic vernacular” which express the main points of Turenscape’s approach to land management and design. To this writer, the “poetic vernacular” best describes the Design expression evidenced here, being at once modern, imbued with local reference, artful, and sensitive to the needs of people and the environment.
Marilyn Clemens：ASLA, is an urban designer and writer living in Silver Spring, Maryland.
