Peach Blossom Spring Utopia
[blurb] Combining modern hi-tech with the idealism of an agriculturalist age via the discipline of landscape design – what sort of effect would this create in today’s China? What sort of transmutations would result in the way we live and in where and how we live?
[body text]
A Peach Blossom Spring new China; is it a dream, an ideal or merely a mad fantasy? Ten years ago, when Yu Kongjian had just returned from America, the nature of his dream was perhaps hard to define in precise terms. Today, after ten years of persistent work, his vision of native landscape design, “a movement for urban Enlightenment,” does not seem to be a complete impossibility anymore.
Yu Kongjian hails from a small mountain village in Jinhua, Zhejiang Province, as he recalls, a place of unsullied beauty that had the unhumied stillness only found in an agriculturalist era. “Every evening bringing the cows home at dusk, the path would take me past a big tree that had stood there for who knows how many turning seasons. There’d always be old folk gathered beneath that tree, telling the old stories, about that tree, about our village.” At age 17 Yu left his home to come to Beijing to study. Just before he left, his mother gave him a small bag of soil and told him to carry it with him. The wandering scholar and the soil of home seem things from some classical tale but they are a part of Yu’s most profound memories. Just as the woods and hills and pools and streams of his childhood landscape are buried deep is his memory, so is that bag of soil still a treasured possession. These feelings for hometown and rural China permeate not only Yu’s memories but also influenced his later ideals and the way he conceptualized his profession.
Twenty-seven years later these ideals and concepts have evolved into something that he has given an evocative name – Peach Blossom Spring. “My ideal city is one built within the network of nature and cultural heritage and leisurely human rest and motion. The network is the ecological foundational infrastructure that the city depends on for sustainable development; it’s a ’Peach Blossom Spring’ for a new age.” “Land, life and soul all have roots.” In the Paddy Field Campus project at Shenyang Architecture University begun in 2002, Yu and his team of designers built a literati backdrop using rice fields. A project in Taizhou in 2006 used “reverse-planning” methods to preserve as far as possible the ecological and cultural links of a city with nature and history.
For Yu Kongjian, behind the native place sentiment is something more: a question of acceptance of Chinese culture. The living art of landscape design, using the simplest techniques, the most common elements of the native place and a sensible principle of design lay-out, can coordinate the land and the nature, culture and things of the spirit on that land. A harmony is created between the earth and the spiritual world, allowing a return of the lost world of the Peach Blossom Spring. According to Yu,This supports the achievement of a social transformation in a globalizing, urbanizing and industrializing world and is precisely what landscape design in China should be looking to do.
Anything is possible in an era of social transformation. The challenges presented by environmental and ecological crises, a crisis of cultural identity and the loss of spiritual beliefs are also opportunities. If they can be responded to appropriately it may be possible to create an ideal mode of living. And whether this is achievable or not, at the very least, we can see clearly that there are options and hope.
INTERVIEW WITH YU KONG JIAN
What role should landscape design as a discipline play in real life?
Yu: Landscape design involves making a systematic analysis and evaluation of the integrated composite of a piece of land and the things on it, then proceed to plan and lay it out in an appropriate fashion. Aside from this there’s also how to supervise and manage the landscape. It’s about the space in which humanity live and act, coordinating all the natural and human processes going on in that space and also the social and spiritual processes. The natural processes include hydrological ones, the flora and fauna, wind-blown topsoil, even the flight of birds. Human activities include dwellings, temporary shelter, working, our movement and rest. Then there’s the activities of humans and animals, the naturally occurring rules in operation. Through appropriate landscape design, ideally all of the processes can coexist in harmony and use the shared space in a coordinated fashion.
The “world factory” development model creates serious environmental pressures – is this something landscape design can help ameliorate?
Yu: Landscape design primarily coordinates the relationship between Man and nature. The essential question is how man uses the landscape – the land and the things on it; how to rationally and effectively make use of this system without destroying it, without damaging its form and functions. The damage that industrialism creates isn’t just in terms of form, like the smoke from a factory; it damages the human environment and more importantly, in terms of function, it poisons environmental processes. If we are to help reduce pressure on the environment, a rational zoning is of first importance. “Where should factories be sited?” It can’t be upstream on a river; wastewater mustn’t be released into the rivers; so first we need to pick the right location. Second, the design should be able to reduce as far as possible the number of harmful emissions and byproducts from the factory. So a landscape designer needs not to only avoid polluting the environment, but also to improve and control environmental pollution as well, by creating a rational layout. For example, peonies are no use against pollution and can’t absorb it, but wild grasses can positively affect the environment.
In a continually industrializing China, how should urban landscape design go about achieving a Chinese style of good living?
Yu:. The first thing we have to do is to guarantee a holistic natural system and design in ecological infrastructure that makes it possible for people to rest and be active within it. Second, we have to design a transport network that’s human-scale, like a bicycle network, a network for walking, not just one for cars. Automobile networks are usually designed by transport experts but for landscape designers what we’re looking to create is a space to be active in, a space for human outdoor activity. This could include cycle lanes, footpaths and human-scale gathering places, places to meet and interact. Third, landscape design has to handle the relationship between modernity and tradition. It should protect and preserve the local native legacy and historical cultural legacy. It should be able to keep all the things on the land that are a legacy of history that happened there, the monuments; the as we redevelop we can create new legacies. This is why this process is called “reverse-planning” because you turn things round to make your plan. It tells you where on a particular plot of land you shouldn’t build. You first make a plan for what you can’t build and only then plan for what you can. This is how you achieve a harmony between man and nature, a harmony between people today and history and also a harmony between one person and another.
What role does Feng Shui play in Chinese traditional landscape design?
Yu: Feng shui is a value system, a methodological theory and a Chinese pre-scientific system for landscape design. As a kind of value system, it was one that says man should be in harmony with the land. As a methodological theory it meant looking up to observe atmospheric phenomena and down to see the form of the land. By observing them it was possible to create that harmony between man and nature. As an operational system it meant working by taking measurements and using a compass, and it also used form and design, design of buildings, of roads, the transformation of forms, changes to the plant cover. It was the accumulated experience of humanity over thousands of years that allowed people to understand how to adapt to their environment. It’s not a science but neither is it the kind of thing people dismiss as worthless superstition. It’s more a reflection of our experience, the human lived experience. So you first must recognize that it isn’t science and so not seek to evaluate it by scientific standards or expect it to deliver things by those standards. It’s like Christianity, that’s not a science but you can’t say there’s no God in the world. It’s the same thing. Feng shui was something that met human needs for a certain period of time and so it’s part of our legacy. You can’t evaluate a legacy in terms of whether or not it’s scientific, all you can say is it’s historical and cultural values and its social significance. We are after all living in a scientific age and science has revealed to us things that are outside of our experience, that stand above our experience.
How to combine modern architecture with traditional Chinese landscapes, or has it exist alongside them?
Yu: First, there’s no conflict between modern architecture and tradition. The modern should be modern and the traditional traditional; there’s no need to try and turn the modern into the traditional, nor the reverse. There are so many mistaken views now, like how many senior officials think a building can add tradition to a city. That’s nonsense. If a modern building doesn’t need that sort of roof then don’t give it one. A modern building should be thought about in terms of its function, energy efficiency, and convenience, not in terms of trying to create some classical look, some odd form. As to combining or existing alongside each other, tradition and modernity can absolutely exist beside each other in the same city, only you make sure the functions make sense and they can coexist happily. The thing that really shouldn’t happen is a waste of energy and materials, a scale that’s not human. It’s not about whether a particular building is “harmonious’ or not, it’s about how they interact.
Yu Kongjian’s career highlights
Head of the Beijing University Landscape Design Research Institute. Awarded a doctorate in design by Harvard in 1995. Worked as a landscape designer and project manager for the SWA Group in the U.S. between 1995 and 1997. In 1997 he established the Beijing University Center for Landscape Design and the Beijing Native Landscape Planning and Design Research Institute. He has run or participated in more than one hundred major planning and design projects in China and abroad and has received major awards in the U.S. for group planning projects in 2002, 2005, 2006 and 2007. He is now involved in numerous projects including Shanghai World Expo, a whole series of projects around the Grand Canal.
[body text]
A Peach Blossom Spring new China; is it a dream, an ideal or merely a mad fantasy? Ten years ago, when Yu Kongjian had just returned from America, the nature of his dream was perhaps hard to define in precise terms. Today, after ten years of persistent work, his vision of native landscape design, “a movement for urban Enlightenment,” does not seem to be a complete impossibility anymore.
Yu Kongjian hails from a small mountain village in Jinhua, Zhejiang Province, as he recalls, a place of unsullied beauty that had the unhumied stillness only found in an agriculturalist era. “Every evening bringing the cows home at dusk, the path would take me past a big tree that had stood there for who knows how many turning seasons. There’d always be old folk gathered beneath that tree, telling the old stories, about that tree, about our village.” At age 17 Yu left his home to come to Beijing to study. Just before he left, his mother gave him a small bag of soil and told him to carry it with him. The wandering scholar and the soil of home seem things from some classical tale but they are a part of Yu’s most profound memories. Just as the woods and hills and pools and streams of his childhood landscape are buried deep is his memory, so is that bag of soil still a treasured possession. These feelings for hometown and rural China permeate not only Yu’s memories but also influenced his later ideals and the way he conceptualized his profession.
Twenty-seven years later these ideals and concepts have evolved into something that he has given an evocative name – Peach Blossom Spring. “My ideal city is one built within the network of nature and cultural heritage and leisurely human rest and motion. The network is the ecological foundational infrastructure that the city depends on for sustainable development; it’s a ’Peach Blossom Spring’ for a new age.” “Land, life and soul all have roots.” In the Paddy Field Campus project at Shenyang Architecture University begun in 2002, Yu and his team of designers built a literati backdrop using rice fields. A project in Taizhou in 2006 used “reverse-planning” methods to preserve as far as possible the ecological and cultural links of a city with nature and history.
For Yu Kongjian, behind the native place sentiment is something more: a question of acceptance of Chinese culture. The living art of landscape design, using the simplest techniques, the most common elements of the native place and a sensible principle of design lay-out, can coordinate the land and the nature, culture and things of the spirit on that land. A harmony is created between the earth and the spiritual world, allowing a return of the lost world of the Peach Blossom Spring. According to Yu,This supports the achievement of a social transformation in a globalizing, urbanizing and industrializing world and is precisely what landscape design in China should be looking to do.
Anything is possible in an era of social transformation. The challenges presented by environmental and ecological crises, a crisis of cultural identity and the loss of spiritual beliefs are also opportunities. If they can be responded to appropriately it may be possible to create an ideal mode of living. And whether this is achievable or not, at the very least, we can see clearly that there are options and hope.
INTERVIEW WITH YU KONG JIAN
What role should landscape design as a discipline play in real life?
Yu: Landscape design involves making a systematic analysis and evaluation of the integrated composite of a piece of land and the things on it, then proceed to plan and lay it out in an appropriate fashion. Aside from this there’s also how to supervise and manage the landscape. It’s about the space in which humanity live and act, coordinating all the natural and human processes going on in that space and also the social and spiritual processes. The natural processes include hydrological ones, the flora and fauna, wind-blown topsoil, even the flight of birds. Human activities include dwellings, temporary shelter, working, our movement and rest. Then there’s the activities of humans and animals, the naturally occurring rules in operation. Through appropriate landscape design, ideally all of the processes can coexist in harmony and use the shared space in a coordinated fashion.
The “world factory” development model creates serious environmental pressures – is this something landscape design can help ameliorate?
Yu: Landscape design primarily coordinates the relationship between Man and nature. The essential question is how man uses the landscape – the land and the things on it; how to rationally and effectively make use of this system without destroying it, without damaging its form and functions. The damage that industrialism creates isn’t just in terms of form, like the smoke from a factory; it damages the human environment and more importantly, in terms of function, it poisons environmental processes. If we are to help reduce pressure on the environment, a rational zoning is of first importance. “Where should factories be sited?” It can’t be upstream on a river; wastewater mustn’t be released into the rivers; so first we need to pick the right location. Second, the design should be able to reduce as far as possible the number of harmful emissions and byproducts from the factory. So a landscape designer needs not to only avoid polluting the environment, but also to improve and control environmental pollution as well, by creating a rational layout. For example, peonies are no use against pollution and can’t absorb it, but wild grasses can positively affect the environment.
In a continually industrializing China, how should urban landscape design go about achieving a Chinese style of good living?
Yu:. The first thing we have to do is to guarantee a holistic natural system and design in ecological infrastructure that makes it possible for people to rest and be active within it. Second, we have to design a transport network that’s human-scale, like a bicycle network, a network for walking, not just one for cars. Automobile networks are usually designed by transport experts but for landscape designers what we’re looking to create is a space to be active in, a space for human outdoor activity. This could include cycle lanes, footpaths and human-scale gathering places, places to meet and interact. Third, landscape design has to handle the relationship between modernity and tradition. It should protect and preserve the local native legacy and historical cultural legacy. It should be able to keep all the things on the land that are a legacy of history that happened there, the monuments; the as we redevelop we can create new legacies. This is why this process is called “reverse-planning” because you turn things round to make your plan. It tells you where on a particular plot of land you shouldn’t build. You first make a plan for what you can’t build and only then plan for what you can. This is how you achieve a harmony between man and nature, a harmony between people today and history and also a harmony between one person and another.
What role does Feng Shui play in Chinese traditional landscape design?
Yu: Feng shui is a value system, a methodological theory and a Chinese pre-scientific system for landscape design. As a kind of value system, it was one that says man should be in harmony with the land. As a methodological theory it meant looking up to observe atmospheric phenomena and down to see the form of the land. By observing them it was possible to create that harmony between man and nature. As an operational system it meant working by taking measurements and using a compass, and it also used form and design, design of buildings, of roads, the transformation of forms, changes to the plant cover. It was the accumulated experience of humanity over thousands of years that allowed people to understand how to adapt to their environment. It’s not a science but neither is it the kind of thing people dismiss as worthless superstition. It’s more a reflection of our experience, the human lived experience. So you first must recognize that it isn’t science and so not seek to evaluate it by scientific standards or expect it to deliver things by those standards. It’s like Christianity, that’s not a science but you can’t say there’s no God in the world. It’s the same thing. Feng shui was something that met human needs for a certain period of time and so it’s part of our legacy. You can’t evaluate a legacy in terms of whether or not it’s scientific, all you can say is it’s historical and cultural values and its social significance. We are after all living in a scientific age and science has revealed to us things that are outside of our experience, that stand above our experience.
How to combine modern architecture with traditional Chinese landscapes, or has it exist alongside them?
Yu: First, there’s no conflict between modern architecture and tradition. The modern should be modern and the traditional traditional; there’s no need to try and turn the modern into the traditional, nor the reverse. There are so many mistaken views now, like how many senior officials think a building can add tradition to a city. That’s nonsense. If a modern building doesn’t need that sort of roof then don’t give it one. A modern building should be thought about in terms of its function, energy efficiency, and convenience, not in terms of trying to create some classical look, some odd form. As to combining or existing alongside each other, tradition and modernity can absolutely exist beside each other in the same city, only you make sure the functions make sense and they can coexist happily. The thing that really shouldn’t happen is a waste of energy and materials, a scale that’s not human. It’s not about whether a particular building is “harmonious’ or not, it’s about how they interact.
Yu Kongjian’s career highlights
Head of the Beijing University Landscape Design Research Institute. Awarded a doctorate in design by Harvard in 1995. Worked as a landscape designer and project manager for the SWA Group in the U.S. between 1995 and 1997. In 1997 he established the Beijing University Center for Landscape Design and the Beijing Native Landscape Planning and Design Research Institute. He has run or participated in more than one hundred major planning and design projects in China and abroad and has received major awards in the U.S. for group planning projects in 2002, 2005, 2006 and 2007. He is now involved in numerous projects including Shanghai World Expo, a whole series of projects around the Grand Canal.
