Development of Landscape Architecture, Peking University
Over the past ten years, as an educator, researcher and practitioner of urban planning and landscape architecture in Graduate School of Landscape Architecture, Peking University, I was lucky enough to witness the drastic transformations that China has been undergoing, and to had the privilege to be involved in it, being a small part of it. Reviewing and rethinking the evolution of the landscape in China and the development of landscape architecture discipline as well as practice during the last decade from one’s own point of view is necessary and reasonable. Thus, we can form public wisdom in terms of the understanding by means of that. More precisely, this article is a journey of the heart, a process of thinking and seeking for a solution. I should note that even though this article is written from my own point of view, it was still a process in which all our team members explore jointly, especially shared with my companion Dihua Li, as well as doctoral and master students, Graduate School of Landscape Architecture, Peking University. The experience and lessons we gained belong to every member of the group.
Generally speaking from professional perspective, after our 13 year’s endeavor, we believe that the fundamental way out for the current serious contradiction of people and land in China lies in:
First, spatial planning approach: through wise, ecological theory-based spatial planning to construct ecological infrastructure, we can improve and make full use of its ability of eco-system services, and recreate a harmonious relationship between people and their lands. In contrast to traditional urban planning methodology, it can be defined as “negative planning” approach.
Second, advocate new aesthetic design: We should reevaluate and spread designed landscape with low energy consumption and low carbon emissions (including cities, buildings and their surroundings), change the existing definition of “urbanism”, and advocate new aesthetic values (the beauty of weeds) that are based on land and environmental ethics and break down old aesthetic tradition——we call it “bigfoot aesthetics”, or low-carbon aesthetics.
These two aspects compose my core values and methodology about the education, research and practice of urban planning and landscape architecture. However, in the face of unprecedented serious ecological and environmental crisis, as well as outdated traditional thought and methodology system, a revolution is needed to transform our thought and methodology, which I summarized as “bigfoot revolution” : an explanation from professional perspective concerning how we can achieve ecological civilization.
1.The macro background of 13 year’s landscape architecture development in PKU
Public statistical data show that in the past 13 years (1997~2010), China's GDP has increased to nearly 35 trillion in contrast to more than 7 trillion at the beginning, almost five times as much as in the year of 1997. Urbanization population has increased by nearly 15%, while urban construction lands have been increased by 3 million hectares, equivalent to nearly 5 times as big as Shanghai. Meanwhile, our farmlands have been reduced by 3 million hectares, equivalent to nearly 1.5 times as big as farmlands in Zhejiang Province. In this decade, we see highways are growing rapidly, and highways have totaled 10000 kilometers by 2009, ranking 2rd in the world. When Chinese people benefit from the efficiency and convenience it brings, we see large areas of landscape fragmentation,isolated local community, interrupted natural processes and hindered biological flow. On May 20, 2006, the main part of Three Gorges Dam Project, the biggest water-control project in the world, was finished. Besides, China has the most dams in the world, up to more than 25 thousands (while there are only 8700 or so in USA). Surface water in China was destructively changed. In 1998, the biggest flood (with the highest flood level) struck China seriously. So in the next ten years, we see higher and higher dams built to prevent hundred-year floods in the Yangtze River, the Yellow River, the Pearl River, as well as long coastlines. We also see outbreak of blue-green algae in Lake Taihu, but cannot see the white-flag dolphins dancing in the Yangtze River. What we see is mass mortality of fishes caused by pollution in the lakes, such as Lake Dongting……Much evidence show that despite human’s increasingly control on nature, natural disasters seem to appear more frequently, with considerable disruption and higher risk of life and property in recent years. The Wenchuan earthquake in 2008, and Zhouqu Debris flow in 2010 both gave us profound lessons: we need wiser strategies in the face of nature. During the last decade, global warming has brought adverse impacts all over the world, and is becoming more and more threatening. If you think sea-level rise and desertification are just imaginary fears, please look at our rivers that are slowly drying up, our wetlands that are vanishing from view, and our groundwater that are increasingly declining. Don’t you believe they are still nothing to worry about? As a solution to drought and water crisis, South-to-North water diversion project is carried on smoothly, and seemingly, and is convinced by all that another “bright scenery” will show up shortly, across the north and south. Actually, it is not an ideal solution at all, according to related science.From Kunming World Expo in 1999 to Beijing Olympic Games in 2008, as well as Shanghai Expo in 2010, the city beautification movements continues to grow. We can see super-scale public buildings and civic constructions, broad roads and big squares at all places. This phenomenon reveals a sort of contemporary “Chinese-style urban landscape”, which is characterized by showing off, at the cost of carbon emission and a huge waste of land resources.In early 2006, the communist party of china launched an document named “The CPC Central Committee and State Council on further construction of a new socialist countryside views”. From then on, wave of landscape changes spread from our urban cores to broad countryside and stretches of lands, through water systems and road networks, in the name of "urban-rural integration" and "new countryside construction". All that occurred in the past ten years, and the great changes on the lands of China have no precedent in the last 5000 years.
Landscape is the reflection of social formation, the imprint on land that social value, aesthetics and ideology leave. From the radical change of landscape pattern and process, we can see that our society is learning, awakening, recognizing the meaning of human-nature harmony, and understanding the true meaning of survival. After the 1998 disastrous flood, on 20th Oct, 1998, the Central Committee of the Communist Party of China (CCCPC) and the State Council announced several opinions for post-disaster reconstruction, rivers and lakes recovery and water conservancy. Since 1999 the CCPC and the State Council have made a critical decision for improving the eco-environment – to return the cropland to forests and lakes, leading the positive change of national landscape. On 16th Feb, 2004, the Ministry of Construction (MOC), the National Development and Reform Commission (NDRC),Ministry of Land and Resources and Treasury Department jointly issued an announcement that the city wide roads and large plazas are suspended. Although it failed to stop the City Cosmetic Movement, it showed that urban landscape had become a concerned issue for the country’s leaders. In 2003, the Scientific Development Perspective was first proposed in the 3rd plenary session of the 16th CCCPC meeting, and was written into the Party Constitution in the 17th meeting. In the same year, President Jintao Hu pointed out in the 17th Report of the Party, that the government should promote eco-civilization, which was the first time that a ruling party put “eco-civilization” in its action program. As a result, Chinese landscape will turn into a new page.
Under the background of social and economic upheaval, landscape architecture discipline and professional in China is under construction and development. With limited length of the article, I will introduce how I and my team performed in this field according to my own experience, instead of introducing the complex development of the discipline.
2. Thirteen Years of Exploration
The land eco-security and the harmony of man-earth relationship are matters of primary importance in China. Unwise use of land and urban sprawl damage the structure and function of organic lives, cause the overall resection of earth eco-system service, including frequent disaster of flood and drought, declining self-purification capacity of earth life system, loss of species and loss of city characteristic.
Over more than one decade, focused on the severe man-earth relationship in China, land eco-security and urbanization, I and my team constantly explored these major issues theoretically and practically, trying to bridge the gap between ecological science and landscape, and between city and regional planning, expressing the scientific understanding of life and earth as physical and special structure language in landscape, and eventually making the use of land and planning of urban development more scientifically wise.
2.1 Landscape Security Pattern
I found out the solution to the intense man-earth relationship in China not only in quantity but also in special pattern. Therefore, when I was in PhD program in Havard University (1992-1995), I proposed the concept of Landscape Security Pattern in my doctoral dissertation, trying to maintain land eco-security through controlling the critical special pattern. Enlightened by the special strategy in Chinese chess, I suggested protecting natural and cultural process through controlling critical special pattern, namely, landscape security pattern, the result of which was published on the domestic and overseas journals. Its feature is regarding the horizontal landscape process as a series of controlling process, which has to overcome the special resistance in order to cover and control the landscape. And to achieve these in the most effective way, one needs to occupy the special strategic elements, zones, location and connection. With the limited land in China, landscape security pattern can be used for practical application – to effectively use the land and to balance the relationship between land conservation and development. After 1998, I successively took charge of three Natural Science Funds, continued to study landscape security pattern and put the theory into a lot of planning practice. This methodology laid the foundation of national, regional and urban landscape eco-planning and eco-infrastructure net work establishment.
2.2 Ecological Infrastructure
The problem of China land eco-security is rooted from its disconnected management among different departments, and single-function “small decisions”, which all shows in fragmentation of eco-process and landscape pattern. Therefore, combining the landscape security pattern theoretical study with the planning practice of urban and regional landscape, the landscape architecture research team in Pecking University and I systematically proposed and developed the concept of Ecological Infrastructure (EI), to organize all kinds of eco-system service, and to connect each fragmented landscape security pattern into a complete network. Also, we proposed a special strategy to establish urban, regional and national EI.
EI is a basic structure to ensure citizens constantly enjoy the ecosystem’s service, including production, regulation, sustaining and education. Not only does it include the urban green space system, but also the forestry and agriculture system and natural conservation that can provide the ecosystem’s service. Moreover, its concept can be extended to the historical heritage and cultural landscape network, which are under the background of natural system. Just as the urban sustainable development is rely on the forward-looking municipal infrastructure (road system, water supply and drainage system, etc.); the urban ecological sustainability can depend on the proactive EI. I am not the first one who use the professional term EI since some international experts used it before, but just as a descriptive word in biological conservation area. We give EI a systematic and clear definition (that is what we contribute), use it to organize various kinds of landscape patterns with the functions of ecosystem’s service and heritage conservation, and thus develop it into a basic structure that guide and define city space. The examples are as follows. (a) We connect EI with comprehensive ecosystem’s service, stressing the comprehensive service of basic landscape structure, such as production, stormwater and flood management, climate regulation, biological conservation, heritage conservation, recreation, aesthetic appreciation, etc. We give EI scientific measurable indicator, improving the scientificity of national, regional and urban planning, land eco-security pattern in particular. (b) We use landscape security pattern as basic technology to distinguish and establish ecological infrastructure, combining geographic information system (GIS) and spatial analysis technology. (c) We regard EI as a basic structure of national eco-security, regional and urban development. And we link three levels (macro level, middle level and micro level) with the current land and construction planning, making EI as the basic special structure of eco-civilization construction.
Under the above frame and theoretical system, the Graduate School of Landscape Architecture, PKU accomplished “the study of land eco-security pattern”and “the study of Beijing city eco-security pattern”, which are respectively delegated by Ministry of Environmental Protection and Beijing Bureau of Land and Resources. In addition, we finished the landscape security pattern and ecological infrastructure planning in many cities and regions. These planning practices examined the systematic methodology of ecological infrastructure establishment from national, regional to municipal levels. Thanks to the effective implementation of various departments, including the Ministry of Land and Resources, they are playing a role in different levels, ranging from national planning, regional planning and municipal planning.
2.3 “The Negative Approach”
The urban ecological and environmental crisis in China is mainly derived from the current planning methodology and system, which is population-scale-character oriented and formed during the planned economy period. We should rethink about it, which cannot ensure the implementation of the multi-functional ecological infrastructure. It is hard to achieve the dream of ecology and harmony under the old development model. Hence, I proposed the “negative approach”, and put it into practice. I used the “opposite”planning method and “negative”planning result, through establishing ecological infrastructure, to guide and define the urban special development under the background of rapid urbanization.
The negative approach emphasizes: (a) an “opposite”planning process –in the name of the health of earth and life, and lasting public interests, instead of the developers’short-term interests, I do the urban and regional land planning. (b) an “negative”planning result –overturn the figure-ground relationship between urban construction and non-construction area. In the planning outcome, I illustrate the urban construction intensity and leading pattern, showing the construction-prohibited zone and its types and intensity. Then I leave the construction zone as a changeable “figure”to the market to develop. This prohibited pattern in the same time defines the construction land, as a frame to support the urban special morphology. It is not a simple “blank”or just a non-construction zone, but a key structure to protect the completeness and health of life and land. (c) A comprehensive solution –the “negative”approach, through establishing the ecological infrastructure, tries to protect the comprehensive landscape pattern that links to the security and health of natural and cultural process. In other words, through the ecological infrastructure, it comprehensively solve the problem of land eco-security, that of urban environment, transportation, characteristic and morphology. Over years of study, we have got a set of feasible methods and plenty of cases.
“The negative approach”is a specific methodology to achieve Landscape Urbanism and Ecological Urbanism as well as a operable approach for current ecological urban planning in China. As soon as it was published, it caused fierce argument in the fields of urban and national planning, historic preservation and environmental protection. There were two opposite comments. On one hand, it received strong objection from prestigious planning experts. On the other, it was welcomed by many cities and departments. For example, the Beijing Overall plan was rooted from “the negative approach”, and Shenzhen was passionate in implementing it. In addition, leaders of Taizhou, Dongying, Chengdu, Heze, etc. have found the way of development in “the negative approach”, no longer trapped in the blind alleyof traditional planning. Furthermore, in the planning of main functional regions in China (hosted by the NDRC), we could also see the effect of it. Moreover, in recent years, the MOC modified the Revision of City Planning Compiling Method and Urban Planning Law under the influence of it. And recently, the department of land management was seriously studying the ideas and methods in “the negative approach”in making land use planning. “the negative approach”announces what eventually determines urban development form and characteristic is landscape ecosystem, not architecture; what eventually determines urban special development and layout is ecological process and pattern, not the population prediction and social, economic hypothesis.
2.4 Regard the landscape architecture as the ‘art of survival’
Through the past thousands of years, our ancestors, in order to gain the rights of survival, continually fight against and reconcile with the nature. These experiences of survival eventually accumulated into the wisdom about the harmonious relationship between human and land, which is the origin of landscape architecture—a kind of art of survival. However, in China and the whole world, this ‘art of survival’ has been concealed and cut by the so-called gardening for a long time. Gardening sometimes reflects the relationship between human and land, but it is one sided and even fake. Therefore, in order to establish landscape architecture as an art of survival, we should recognize the fake things and look straight towards the importance, that is we should begin with criticize and expose feudal and obsolete traditional gardening. As a result, since returned China in 1997, I have written a serial of critical articles about the so-called gardening ‘quintessence’, and at the same time exposing misunderstanding of urban landscaping in China over the past few decades. This exposure is reflected in the criticism including Old Summer Palace’s anti-seepage engineering. The aesthetic and value of traditional landscape gardening is an important source of the misunderstandings of present Chinese urban landscape construction and urban make-up movement. It is also the remnants of feudalism, which has not been swept as it should. In my opinion, traditional landscape gardening is a precious heritage. However, this heritage should not be given a duty to solve the necessary environment problems, in the name of inheriting and carrying forward our motherland’s excellent tradition. A new subject is needed to deal with the increasing crisis of the human-land relationship. The landscape architecture is the one indeed. It is originated in another tradition in China, which is about the technology and art of survival of the relationship between human and land, instead of feudal traditional landscape gardening for recreation. The tradition of the art of survival is the real basis of the reason why the colorful land of China is poetic, and the real basis of the beautiful and healthy Shangri-La. At present, with the pace of the destruction of the balance between human and nature, the Shangri-La of the agriculture age is disappearing, and our nation’s survival is facing challenge again, including environment and ecological crisis, the lost of cultural identity, and the lost of spiritual home. This is exactly also an opportunity our subject never met before. The landscape architecture should regain the real face as ‘the art of survival’, and carry important duty during the construction of new ‘Shangri-La’. As a result, the landscape architecture should completely abandon the fake and inanity of gardening, and return to the real face to coordinate the relationship between human and land. It should be located in daily life and develop through real relationship between human and land, not losing itself in unrealistic ‘garden’. In space, it should build ecological infrastructure through the ‘negative planning’ in order to lead the urban development, protect ecological and cultural heritage, and reconstruct the harmony relationship amongst environment, human and the god. Just as the ancient ‘Feng Shui’ pattern maintains the health and safety of land and nature, contemporary Chinese nation should rely on the establishment of an ecological infrastructure to maintain the health and safety of ecological progress, which is the key content of present landscape architecture.
2.5 The criticism of urban make-up movement and advocating the neglected common culture and the beauty of weeds
The cities in China often greed for bigger and foreign style, and lots of vulgar landscape appear. The reason is rooted in the accumulation of the farmerist outlook, the upstart consciousness and the feudal centralization. This disturbs the formation of scientific, realistic and high-grade urban landscape and the managing-model city, the protection of suburban landscape, and the solution to the crisis of the human-land relationship. Our city, architecture and landscape, as the classical Chinese once criticized by Hu Shi, is full of ‘unusual landscape’, or we can call it the classical landscape.
They conclude and represent nothing, far away from daily life, human beings and the basic functional needs of city. They not only imitate the ancient ones, but more willingly to imitate foreign ancient and modern empire ones. Those fake and empty so-called ‘poetic’ antique landscapes, which are far away from land and life, combined with western Baroque style and attached Ancient Rome ruins and Old Summer Palace ruins, made up by vulgar and colorful things, turn into strange examples of present Chinese landscape. In order to sweep the remnants of the feudalism to create Chinese city and landscape, we should completely carry on the new culture movement and criticize the feudal ideology over the past 2000 years. In professional field, we should criticize the feudal traditional sense of gardening, initiating the neglected common culture and the beauty of weeds, returning to the land, the common, and the real relationship between human and land, creating the new vernacular land of our new China. This land is derived from the new landscape which can meet the needs of Chinese people and use modern technology and materials to solve the ecological and environment problems to make our country develop continuously.
2.6 The vernacular culture landscape and industrial heritage
Based on the understanding of vernacular landscape and colloquial landscape, we carried out a research about local vernacular landscape and learn from it. We found the charm of the vernacular landscape when studying the research about ’Feng Shui’ 20 years ago. ‘Feng shui’ is a kind of vernacular culture landscape on a large scale. It is different from traditional feudal and royal landscape architecture and landscape, and its meaning is the art of survival. As a result, we revealed the deep meaning of ‘Feng Shui’ model through the experience of survival during human evolution and the cultural ecological experience of nation development, carrying out that the ideal ‘Feng Shui’ model is the pattern of Chinese organism and culture gene. After 1998, we extended our vernacular landscape research to the rural and settlement, and made more effort to coordinate with the practice of planning design.I have completed the research of the vernacular landscape in Honghe, Yunnan, the research and practice of design of vernacular landscape in Chuanxi Plain, the research and practice of design of vernacular landscape in Tibet, the research about the possible destruction of vernacular landscape resulted from new countryside construction, the research and practice of design of vernacular landscape in Magang village, Shunde, Guangdong, and all the research could reveal my fascination with the vernacular landscape . The core of the culture landscape is rural, which is an art of survival and the harmony unify of truth, kind and beauty. It is also the crystallization of wisdom that human adapt to the natural progress and pattern during thousands of years. It bears the history of people’s survival and living in a specific place, and brings new hope for the crisis of ecological environment and energy. Facing the new countryside construction, I predict that a large scale of destruction of land is coming. So when the NO.1 document of 2006 by the central government was provided, I submitted two proposals concerning about protecting foundation of a harmonious society to the leaders of the State Council, they’rethe proposal of the establishment of ‘national ecological security pattern andthe network of vernacular heritage landscape and the proposal of the establishment of the great canal heritage and ecological corridor, and received great attention from the leaders the State Council, adopting by some national departments. I have actively promoted the third archaeological survey and attached great importance of the protection of vernacular cultural heritage, actively promoted the systematic study of the great canal heritage corridor, completed the first systematic study project about the great canal entrusted by the State Administration of Cultural Heritage, and then actively participated in the application of the great canal for world culture heritage, mainly completing the planning of Jinan, Shandong area of the whole great canal.
Also based on the recognition of vernacular landscape and colloquial landscape, we carried out the study and the practice of renewal and utilization of Chinese industrial heritage. Chinese industrial heritage has not been included in the system of State Protected Historic for a long time, and a large number of seemingly ordinary rusted and ‘ugly’ industrial heritages were thoroughly scrapping in the high pace of urbanization. Just as we have rudely treated ancient city and ancient streets in the past, we are rapidly scrapping the heritage in China left by industrial age. Therefore, the Graduate School of Landscape Architecture, Peking University and Turenscape have collaborated in the study and the practice of conservation of industrial heritage since 1999. They have completed the project of Qijiang Park, design of the former site of Shenyang Smeltery, design and renewal of Suzhou Taihe Flourmill, design of the former site of Beijing Yanshan Gas Appliance Factory, the prophase research of the center green space design of Shanghai World Expo 2010 Garden, the prophase research of evacuation of Capital Iron and Steel Company, and the study of the design of reuse of Datong Smeltery.Accumulated experience from lots of success and failure, used the research achievement and cases in practice of international industrial heritage as reference at the same time, especially the international industrial heritage protection charter, I submittedthe proposal about the protection of Chinese industrial heritage to the State Administration of Cultural Heritage in Apr. 2006, and chiefly drafted Wuxi Proposals which aimed at protecting industrial heritage. Wuxi Proposals was passed in the 1st Chinese Industrial Heritage Conference held in Wuxi and hosted by State Administration of Cultural Heritage in 18th April 2006, which marks the conservation of Chinese industrial heritage officially on the agenda.
With the pace of the further research of vernacular culture landscape, the research about the rich linear cultural heritage and corridor in China, including the Grand Canal, is also entering our vision. In fact, many of our graduate and doctoral research topics are related to this field. We complete the research of national ecological security pattern commissioned by the National Ministry of Environmental Protection. Meanwhile, we study about linear heritage network on the national scale and identify 17 of them have important historical and cultural value. We also protect the cultural heritage routes which have strategic significance to our whole country's cultural heritage. At the same time, we extend the concept of cultural heritage and cultural landscape to the water adaptive landscape research of the Yellow River basin cities, and the agricultural landscape research of different regions and different periods, which expand our horizons to the whole territory and a full range of heritage landscape study.
2.7 The demonstration of new vernacular landscape
Recognizing the significance of the demonstration project, I presided many demonstration projects about rural and urban ecological environment construction and urban development in our country, which have all been widely introduced, referenced, and commented in international authoritative professional journals. These demonstration projects won several awards in the international arena with its ecological and geographical cultural characteristics, and eight of them received the Award of Excellence and Honor Award granted by the American Society of Landscape Architects (ASLA), leading Chinese contemporary landscape design to the world. These projects are demonstration projects for the major environmental, energy and resource problems in China, which is the new vernacular landscape I have been advocating.
Amongst these award-winning projects, widely published and cited in the international academic and design community, the Qijiang park in Zhongshan, Guangdong, embodies the neglected common culture and the beauty of weeds, advocating a kind of new ethic and new aesthetics which respects vernacular culture and vernacular environment, miraculously making a common shipyard former site become new urban landscape and recreational space widely accepted by the public and tourists, and arouse people’s awareness of the great importance of industrial heritage; the paddy fields on campus in Shenyang Architectural University, advocating the concept of land conservation and colloquial landscape, making the Chinese agricultural production process to be alive again in the campus of the contemporary city and regard the landscape as the production process and experience, through which young Chinese can feel the meaning of ‘plowing read’ and rebuild the spirit contact between people and land; Yongning Park in Zhejiang, through the establishment of the urban ecological flood control system and the integration of urban ecological infrastructure, advocates the survival of art of the friendship to the flood, rather than a simple project or make-up art; the Red Ribbon under trees - Tanghe Park advocates how to use a minimum of ar
