domus:Why did you name your company "Turenscape"?
Yu Kongjian: Because other firms call their companies with foreign names, so we decide to call ourselves "Turen" (earthy person). The most important reason was that we wanted to express an idea through this name. In my opinion landscapes should represent the relationship between land and people. They should be in harmony with "Man, nature and spirit". The name also reflects our country’s characteristics. China has been a large agricultural nation for thousand of years, so its most fundamental relationship is between the land and the people. Instead of copying Western design, the land design in China should be built on the foundation of this basic relationship, or else it would be separated from our own lives and Chinese condition.
domus:I know that you made the keynote speech at the 2006 ASLA Annual Meeting and the 43rd IFLA World Congress. Could you briefly talk about the main ideas you addressed?
Yu Kongjian: Landscape architecture is an art of survival, is an integration of design and stewardship. Unfortunately, our upperclass culture did not appreciate the real vernacular landscape of the Land of Peach Blossoms because it belongs to the lower culture, the common landscape of surviving and food production, and is associated with hard working and inferior people. Instead, for two thousands years, the elite class of nobles and emperors recreated the fake Land of Peach Blossoms for pleasure making, using ornaments, false rockery, and honored them as the high art of "gardening".
Ironically this art of gardening did nothing more than accelerating the decline of the feudalist Chinese empire. In this sense, the art of gardening is no more than the art of foot binding, which was so much appreciated by the emperors and nobles. This decaying art of gardening was recognized as our glorious tradition and our national identity, and highly regarded by current Western and Chinese scholars alike. It is also seen flourishing, and mixed the ruins of Roman art, in the national wide movement of establishing the beautiful city, and the "garden city" campaign. On the other hand, we try to build our city by taking old trees from the villages, diverting streams from farms. When we build new skylines, we are destroying the actual Land of Peach Blossoms.
The role of agriculture has declined in China’s urbancentered economy, along with the skills and the art of agricultural cultivation and stewardship. This process began with the classical scholar garden art from thousands of years ago, and has now spread to civic art and landscape architects compete for a tiny piece of land in the city. Simultaneously our mother rivers run dry and polluted, underground water continue to drop every day, and in the north, sand storms are affecting the area’s arable land. In facing environmental and ecological degradation, loss of cultural identity and the erosion of our spiritual connection to our land, the mission of contemporary landscape architecture is to bring nature, man and the spirit together again, to create a new Land of Peach Blossoms in an urbanized, globalized and industrialized area.
Landscape architecture is possibly the most legitimate profession among those dealing with our physical environment to work toward recovering our cultural identity and building the spiritual connection between people and their land.
The obvious overall principles are: land design should be in harmony with nature; landscape design should be executed with people in mind; landscape design should also be designed with spirit in mind.
One of the most important reasons for landscape architecture’s weakness in addressing major environmental issues is that landscape architecture, as a profession, is still associated with the ancient tradition of gardening. It is time to declare that landscape architecture is not a direct descendent of garden art, but a heritage of the survival skills of our ancestors who had to endure a changing environment, ensuring a safe place from floods and enemies, while surviving by leveling the land, planting and irrigating crops, and saving water and other resources for sustaining the family and the people. Landscape architecture works on a larger and more significant scale than the field of garden arts.
绿林中的红飘带——秦皇岛市汤河滨河公园设计
这个案例试图说明如何在城市化过程中保留自然河流的绿色与蓝色基底,最少量地改变原有地形和植被以及历史遗留的人文痕迹,同时满足城市人的休闲活动需要。方案在完全保留原有河流生态廊道的绿色基底上,引入一条以玻璃钢为材料的红色飘带。它整合了包括漫步、环境解说系统、乡土植物标本种植、灯光等功能和设施需要,用最少的干预,获得都市人对绿色环境的最大需求。
项目区位及背景
项目位于中国著名滨海旅游城市秦皇岛市区西部,坐落于汤河东岸.长约lkm,设计范围总面积约20ha。
场地特征与挑战
场地有以下几大特征,为设计提出了挑战,同时提供了机会;良好的自然禀赋:地段内植被茂密,水生和湿生植物丰富,为多种鱼类和鸟类生物的栖息地;“脏乱差”的人为环境和残破的设施:场地具有城郊结合部的典型特征,多处地段已成为垃圾场,有残破的建筑和构筑物,包括一些堆料场地和厂房。水塔、提灌泵房、防洪堤坝、提灌渠等;安全隐患和可达性差:场地可达性差,空间无序,存在安全隐患,环境治理迫在眉睫;
使用需求压力:目前这一地带由于位于城乡结合部的特点和缺乏管理;同时,越来越多的城市居民把它当作游憩地,包括游泳、垂钓、体育锻炼等;
开发压力:城市扩张正在胁迫汤河,渠化和硬化危险迫近。就在场地的下游河段,两岸已经建成住宅,随之,河道被花岗岩和水泥硬化.自然植被完全被“园林观赏植物”替代,大量的广场和硬地铺装、人工的雕塑和喷泉等彻底改变了汤河生态绿廊。
设计目标
如何避免对原有自然河流廊道的破坏。同时又能满足城市化和城市扩张对本地段河流廊道的功能要求,成为本设计要解决的关键问题,也是本设计的主要目标。河流廊道的自然过程和城市居民对它的功能需求两者合起来,就是汤河滨河公园的生态服务功能,包括水源保护、乡土生物多样性的保护、休憩、审美启智和科普教育。
设计对策:绿林中的红飘带
为健全上述生态服务功能,本方察提出“红飘带”设计。保护场地原有的乡土植被的绿色基地,在其上设计一条绵延500多米的红色飘带,这是一个绵延于东岸林中的线性景观元素,具有多种城市功能:它与木栈道结合,可以作为座椅;与灯光结合,而成为照明设施;与种植台结合,而成为植物标本展示廊;与解说系统结合,而成为科普展示廊;与标识系统相结合,而成为一条指示线。它由玻璃钢构成,曲折蜿蜒,因地形和树木的存在而发生宽度和线型的变化;中国红的色彩,点亮幽暗的河谷林地。沿红飘带,分布五个节点,分别以五种草为主题。每个节点都有一个如“云”的天棚。网架上局部遮挡,有虚实变化,具有遮荫、挡雨的功能。夜间整个棚架发出点点星光,创造出一种温譬的童话氛圈;斜柱如林木;地上铺装呼应天棚的投影;在这天与地之间是人的活动和休息空间和专类植物的展示空间。
项目名称:汤河滨河公园景观设计
业主:秦皇岛市园林局
设计:北京土人景观规划设计研究院,北京大学景观设计学研究院
首席设计师:俞孔坚
设计总监:凌世红 刘向军 陈晨
主要设计人员:牛静 何俊伟 宁维晶
参与设计:孟羽佳 王铮 李何亮 廖安生 罗翠翠 李瑶
设计时间:2005年10月
竣工时间:2006年7月
The Red Ribbon —— The Tanghe RiVer Park
Against a background of natural terrain and vegetation, a 500-meter-long “red ribbon” was designed, which integrates multiple functions of lighting, seating, environmental interpretation, and orientation. While maximally preserving the natural river corridor during the process of urbanization, this project demonstrates how a minimum design solution can achieve a dramatic improvement to the landscape.
Location
The project is located on the east bank of the Tanghe River, at the weast urban fringe of Qinghuangdao City, Hebei Province, China. The site is a linear river corridor, with a total area of about 20 hectares.
Site Conditions and Challenges
The following conditions of the site imply great opportunities and challenges for the design: Good ecological condition: the site is covered with lush and diverse local vegetation that provides diverse habitats for various species.
Unkempt and deserted: located at the peripheral area of a beach city, the site was a garbage dumping site, with deserted slums and irrigation facilities such as ditches and water towers that were built for farming years ago.
Potential safety and accessibility problems: distributed with lush shrubs and “messy” grasses, the site was virtually inaccessible and insecure for people to use.
Use demands: along with the urban sprawl process, the site was sought after for recreational uses such as fishing, swimming and jogging by the people who come to reside in the newly developed communities nearby.
Development pressure:The speedy process of urbanization was seen as threatening the river corridor. Channellization was likely to occur along the river banks, as had happened to the lower reach of the same river, and the natural river corridor was likely to be replaced with hard pavement and ornamental flower beds.
Design objectives
The major design challenge was how to preserve the natural habitats along the river while creating the new urban uses of recreation and education.
Design solution
A “red ribbon” was designed against the background of green vegetation and blue water. The “red ribbon” extends for about 500 meters along the river bank, integrating a boardwalk, lighting, seating, environmental interpretation, and environmental orientation. The“red ribbon” is made of fiber steel, and lit from inside out at night. It is 60 cm high, and 30150 cm wide. Plants samples are grown from strategically placed holes on “red ribbon.” Five pavilions, in the shape of clouds, are distributed along the “red ribbon,” which provide protection from the weather, meeting opportunities and vertical visual focal points.
The Chinese red color lights up this densely vegetated site, and the simple linear element provides a structural instrument that reorganizes the former “messy” and inaccessible site. The natural site has been dramatically “urbanized” and modernized, two attributes that are highly sought after by the local residents, many of whom are former farmers and newly urbanized, while keeping intact the ecological processes and natural services of the site.
Project Name: Landscape of the Tanghe River Park
Client: The Landscape Bureau, Qinghuangdao City, Hebei Province, China
Design firm: Turenscape
Design Principal: Kongjian Yu
Design team: Ling Shihong, Liu Xiangjun, Chen Chen, He Junwei, Niu Jin, Ning Weijin, Men Yujia, Wang Zheng, Li Heliang, Liao Ansheng, Luo Shuishui, Li Yao
Design Period: 2005.10
Completion: 2006.7