Yu Kong-jian returned to China with a Doctorate in Design from Harvard University in 1997 and the belief that “beauty is the by-product” of good architecture. After founding Turenscape, China’s first private landscape-design firm, Professor Yu became Dean of the Graduate School of Landscape Architecture, Peking University.
“In China, there are two landscaping cultures,” Yu explains. “There is the elite, high-class culture of gardening and then there is the vernacular culture of farmers and fishermen. This ornamental culture of landscape design needs a lot of resources – it’s not sustainable.”
Yu takes inspiration from the practices of Chinese farmers and the “beautiful, productive paradises” they can make from a working landscape. He believes this is the key to keeping China’s cities liveable despite the country’s breakneck pace of development. Yu puts this paradigm into practice at Turenscape. The studio’s latest major project was at Expo 2010 Shanghai China, where its revival of an old industrial landscape, Houtan Park, championed an ecological agenda, winning the highest honour at the American Society of Landscape Architects Awards this year. Among other aspects, the park used wild grasses and crops to filter river water for use at the expo.
Yu takes the wider responsibilities of his job very seriously, particularly his role as an educator. He built the landscape architecture programme at Peking University before being appointed head of its Graduate School of Landscape Architecture – China’s first – in 2003. “I hope there will be a higher level of understanding about how landscaping can help,” he says. “The changes need to be top-down. Landscaping needs to become a law; we need to see what needs to be protected across the board. We need a more democratic system of education; we need to encourage innovative young people to take part. China has wonderful traditions. Contemporary landscape now needs to break through all the existing knowledge and criteria. We need more openness for everybody so that we can have more creativity.”
Comments