A Bigfoot Revolution
For Professor Yu Kongjian, everything started with Mao Zedong. A Harvard alumnus and professor at Peking University, Yu - now China's most celebrated landscape architect and principal designer at Turenscape - still draws inspiration from the Great Helmsman's desire for change. Mao saw the failings of the old imperial system and looked to redistribute wealth among the workers. For Professor Yu, the next revolution will come in the way China perceives its landscape.
The 'Tu' 'Ren' in Turenscape literally translates as 'Earth' 'Man', but something is missing in the leap between languages. There is something rugged and provincial and defiantly unfashionable implied in the Chinese. And Yu wouldn't have it any other way. “The problem today is what I call Littlefoot Urbanism,” says Yu. “For more than 1,000 years Chinese girls were forced to bind their feet in the name of beauty. The process was unhealthy, unproductive, ruined the foot's natural function and it smelled bad. But it was considered beautiful. The sacrifice was one of form over function.” Yu equates this process with what has happened to post-Industrial China. The healthy, natural state of the land has come to be considered ugly, unrefined. In the rush for progress, man has battled nature, layering concrete over green spaces and creating poisonous boxes for people to live and work. “It's wrong and it's unsustainable,” says Yu.
Littlefoot Urbanism, for Yu, involves the process of gentrification undergone by Chinese cities. The unsustainability of consumer culture. Cosmetic makeovers at the expense of practicality. Uselessness. Anything that distances living spaces from the messy, productive functionality of nature. “Today the 2000 year old Lingqu, the water control dyke in Guangxigxi is a wonder which is beautiful as well as functional.” “The landscape in Jiangxi's Wuyuan is one of the few last unspoiled paradises, productive yet beautiful” , says Yu，
The trouble is that man has meddled. What once were beautiful winding country lanes fringed with arable pasture now are multilane highways partitioned by non indigenous flowers - boxed in and expensive to maintain. Urbanizing landscapes, says Yu, is simply wasteful. The land sacrifices utility (ability to sustain crops or wildlife) for regimented uniformity, sapping valuable water and minerals from the earth.
Yu believes modern cities such as Shanghai have succumbed to the 'bigger is better' culture of the US – what Yu calls “jumbo culture”. The unsustainable Littlefoot model ends up supporting massive, unwieldy ornamental buildings – showy but environmentally rapacious. “Beijing's CCTV tower alone consumed 10 times as much steel as a standard skyscraper,” he says. “The problem is the Chinese people have been sold the idea that the dream life is to live as an urbanized noble, to become elite. But if you actually visit these cities they are often smoggy and unpleasant.”
Yu thinks the solution is another revolution, as he puts it “The Bigfoot Revolution”. “We need a new aesthetic based on ecological and environmental ethics. A new design language that sees the messy, the healthy, the rustic as beautiful.”
Case study: Yongning Floating Gardens, Huangyan
The new aesthetic wants to make friends with floods. Usually in flood threatened areas in China, the solutions offered have been rooted in engineering. At Yongning Park, Turenscape replaced the concrete dam and partially finished channelization with a floating tree matrix. A diverse riverbed terrain was laid to create a variety of habitats for native plants and the riverbanks were graded so that once again people had access to the water.
Case study: Shenyang Agricultural University, Liaoning Province
The Bigfoot revolution requires self sustaining spaces. Shenyang Agricultural University wanted to revamp their campus, but they had a small budget and a short timeline. They also wanted some way of branding the university so it would stand out among the slough of specialized provincial Chinese universities. Turenscape grew native rice and buckwheat across the campus, interwoven with paths so students could move freely between lecture buildings and dormitories. The students harvested the crops and ate them in their cafeteria. The rice was also sold at the university shop providing an extra source of revenue. Leftover crops became meal allowing students to raise their own sheep on the campus. This productive and beautiful campus is an internationally known example of “Bigfoot revolution.”
Case study: Zhongshan Shipyard Park
The Bigfoot aesthetic values the ordinary and recycles the existing. Zhongshan Shipyard Park is an 11 hectare former industrial park built in 1950 as China strove to modernize, duly going bankrupt in 1999 at a cost of 1,500 jobs. Although small, it is a typical example of socialist industrial construction and as such an important historical site in its own right. Turenscape's design approach was 'anti-design': the idea was to preserve the natural habitat, the self- sustaining wetlands and cultural elements. They also wanted to reuse and recycle the existing industrial structures and forms to fit new functions and to strengthen the visual impact of the site. For example, old water towers became platforms for exterior lighting and the inspiration for environmental art. Structures were thus reclaimed by nature and helped tell the story of the site, the passage of time and the links between the water and energy and technology. The recycling and repainting of the red worker's box became a memory of the past for the older generation, and a link with the younger generation; namely, the children who now frequent the park. The park will be finished in time to be a showpiece of the 2010 Shanghai Expo.
Case study: Red Ribbon Park, Qinghuangdoa City, Hebei Province
The Bigfoot aesthetic will minimize intervention and maximize returns. On the outskirts of Qinghuangdao City, Turenscape were hired to urbanize and modernize a wasteland area. The vegetation was abundant and the site in good ecological condition, but it was also a dumping ground. The area was dirty, unsafe and inaccessible. Turenscape cleaned the site up, but essentially left the ecological character of the space as intact as possible. They introduced a 500 metre steel fibre 'ribbon' curving through the park. The ribbon provides outdoor seating as well as lighting after dark. In April 2008 Conde Nast Traveller magazine named the park one of the seven modern architectural wonders of the world.
