Asian Wave : The Synergy Design Concept of Earth & Man
The Man
Kongjian Yu is an international figure of urban landscape and architecture. He received his PhD from the Harvard Graduate School of Design in 1995, founded and became the Dean of the Graduate School of Landscape Architecture at Beijing University. Kongjian has also established his own firm called Turenscape which is the first private Landscape Architecture firm in Chinese History. Kongjian himself is a five-time winner of American Society of Landscape Architects Honor Awards, won China’s National Gold Medal of Fine Arts and received the Oversea Chinese Pioneer Achievement Medal for his ecologically and culturally sensitive projects.
Many of Turenscape’s projects have been internationally and nationally recognized. They have earned a great reputation for innovative and environmentally sound design. The 2008 International Architecture Award is one of the most significant awards that Turenscape received.
Dr. Yu’s research focuses on the theory and methodology of landscape architecture, urban planning for sustainable cities, cultural heritage and ecological planning. He has published 200 papers and 15 books. The most recent book is titled The Art of Survival: Positioning Landscape Architecture in The New Era.
The Earth
Nature is an element which people are obsessed with all the time. It is because nature is what people are longing for and cannot survive without. The reason Dr. Yu teaches and lectures throughout the world is because he believe in order for the future of man to be sustainable, it is important to educate the present generation to learn how to design for the future.
A new methodology of survival skills must be developed in order to connect people back to the vernacular landscape infrastructure. This new process could form a new type of land sustainment and preserve humanity, identity, culture and ecology.
The Art
Nowadays, the essence of landscape architectural design has been distorted from the original, when it was just for cosmetic and ornamental purposes. Indeed, architectural landscape design could be poetic and picturesque but also valuable and productive at the same time. Within a very short timeframe, China has become the country where land development is unfettered and architecture finds few limitations. Therefore Kongjian thinks it is important for architects to understand how to start off correctly. In addition, he has stated that people should not only appreciate landscape architecture from only an aesthetic gardening point of view but also integrate it in our living routine and embrace it in our minds. The art of survival is to retrieve and recover the role of landscape architecture and use design as the approach to find the balance between nature, man and spirit. Through this mitigation and collaboration, a synergy is achieved and able to extrapolate forward, towards a sustainable future – this is the message of The Art of Survival.
Comments