The Aesthetics of the Rustic

文献来源：Kongjian Yu，The Aesthetics of the Rustic[M].Learning From Duisburg Nord，Harvard Design Magazine (Fall/Winter),48-59,2009

Duisburg-Nord Landscape Park is not the first one,but certainly the most influential project in terms of scale and public impact when de-monstrating how we shall find the right solution to an industrial heritage site to be valued in its whole.Duisburg-Nord Landscape Park has rede-fined the aesthetics of landscape and the concept of cultural heritage; It has made a significant contribution to the new understanding and rede-finition of the profession of Landscape Architecture and Landscape itself across time:from the industrial era to the post-industrial era.

We have been so addicted to the values established and defined in the industrial era in the 19th and 20th century;Duisburg-Nord Land-scape Park enhanced our concept about cultural heritage,bringing the meaning of heritage up to date,which once was associated with pre-historic remains and objects from the agricultural era.Today Duisburg-Nord exemplifies that the rustic and the "ugly"are equally valuable.

For a long time, we have been intensively attracted by the pastoral land-scapes and the pristine nature and we find a reference in the art of gar-dening where the principle of bealty is developed, deeply rooted in our literature and text books. Rustic industrial structures are taken as the source of an old sin, associated with negative connotations such as: pol-lution,destruction of nature,worker exploitation and wealth of a few in between others.Duisburg-Nord Landscape Park has totally overthrown these principles and“New Aesthetics”have evolved: the Aesthetics of the Rustic, based on the ethic ofcultural heritage, and the ethic of en-vironment.

From building gardens, parks, greenways and new towns to the preser-vation of the natural landscapes,the profession of Landscape Architecture has evolved from an agricultural baby to an industrial teenager that deals with the development of the land for industrial progress and urban growth. Duisburg-Nord is now guiding us to understand how to deal with a shrinking city and its ecological recovery; away from the polluted and ruined industrial era site.

Personally inspired by Peter's thinking and his Duisburg-Nord Lands-cape Park, my design of the Zhongshan Shipyard Park, built in 2000, is one the first large scale industriaI site reuse projects in China;I was influenced by him and I am thankful for that. It has now become a landscape landmark in China. The values rooted in common peop-le and common landscapes, as well as an environmental ethic, have made this park a new landscape with cultural identity integrated into an international and contemporary way of thinking which has de-monstrated that the meanings of“The New Aesthetics”and“The New Poetics" differ dramatically from those which are considered Classical Landscapes.