1. It is expected that you have troubles to treat landscape in China with a broad continent. When you are designing projects of broad area, how do you overcome differences in any ways, for example development gaps between an urban and its suburbs?
Kongjian Yu:Sure, suburban areas are vary different from urban areas in many aspects such as: form, structure and function。But they are the place inhabited by human beings, which share one ecological system and also one cultural system。These areas are the base for regional economical development as well as social development。So, when we face a project with the characteristics you mentioned, we look at the site in a holistic way to analyze ecological processes in the site and their influence on it, like the ones related to flood and storm, immigration of animals, relevant historical sites or related to cultural heritage sites and so on 。As a result we have polygons that define the need to protect strategic environmental resources and restrict construction to improve and achieve sus-tainability in the region.
2. Korea makes exertions public design and urban landscape currently. That is city’s business not only to design landscape but also to design the appearance of seoul and unity the city entirely, What is a city problem China has now, and which efforts is being made by China to settle these? Also please tell us how do you think about the city problem and some methods you have in regarding to landscape for settling.
Kongjian Yu:In China the first problem of cities is about the physical and environmental sustainability。
Because of the swift urbanization, a large number of people swarm into cities, changing not just the city itself, but the whole landscape of China. The rough and wild rivers are channelized and lined with marble; the rustic wetlands are replaced by shining furnished ponds and fountains; the messy native shrubs are uprooted and replaced by ornamentals while the harsh native grasses are replaced by ever-green exotic lawns which consume a huge amount of water, There are economic costs to this environmental destruction. in the past twenty years, the annual loss caused by the environmental and ecological degrada-tion is now between seven and twenty percent of the G D P. This equal to, or even higher than, annual G DP growth。These make our life unsustainable.
The second challenge is the loss of our cultural identity。You know, in the past decades, many ambitious modern buildings were built in China, like CCTV tower, the National Grand Opera House. These buildings are not Chinese but Western。They express the outmoded values of the urban elite. They are not in harmony with Chinese culture identity today, In the circumstances we don’t know ’who am I?" and "where am I?"
So, in order to solve the two main problems, we need to develop a new system, a new vernacular to express the relationship between people and land through landscape architecture correctly. This new solution, which we call the vernacular, is a new technology, which should be native in terms of material and plant use and must be for the common people of China. It should address the issue of survival, not pleasure making, or ornament。This is the most essential difference from landscape design or garden design.
3. Recently China has been an stage of citizen of the world as China has hosted national events including Olympic. In the Landscape Architecture field, Landscape Architect’s activities are beyond the border. What is the value which Turenscape intends to as a ringleader who makes a first impression of China?
Kongjian Yu:In Chinese character, ’Tu" means earth, the land and Ren means people. So what our meaning wants to stand for is that landscape architecture must be with nature or land in mind must be with common people in mind。Turenscape vision is to forge man, nature and the spirits as one。
4. Our reporters attended the l0th Ramsar General Meeting hosted in the Korean City of Changwon, from 28th of October to 4th of November 2008. In this Ramsar, we have shown "Upo Wetland" registered at Ramsar agreement, Because it was our turn to host Ramsar. In case of China, are there any wetlands to be registered at Ramsar agreement? If China have, please assume that you should design Public Space for many people, at the same time you should preserve the wetland. Would you roughly suggest a draft to make a public space for people to rest with simple sketches? Or If you just have any project related to wetland, introduce the project with some materials of the project.
Kongjian Yu:Yes, there are 30 wetlands with an area of 2,937,481 hectares to be registered to this agreement in China until 1992, but we haven’t had any project related with them。So we would like share briefly some other projects we have done related to wetlands which encourage preservation。Among of them, it is typical of Qiaoyuan Park in Tianjin city and Qinhuangdao Beach in Hebei province。