Designed Ecologies: The Landscape Architecture of Kongjian Yu

256 Pages·2012·105.496 MB·English

by  Saunders, William(Editor)

DesigneD ecologies
The landscape Architecture
of Kongjian Yu
For Candace—high-spirited, funny, lovely, generous….
GraphiC desiGn: the German national library lists this publication © 2012 Birkhäuser, Basel Editor’s note
proxi Barcelona, www.proxi.me in the deutsche nationalbibliografie; detailed p.o. Box, Ch-4002 Basel, switzerland Throughout the book, Chinese
bibliographic data are available on the internet at part of de Gruyter proper names are given in
editorial supervision: http://dnb.d-nb.de. the traditional order, with the
ria stein, Berlin printed on acid-free paper produced surname first. In the cases of
this work is subject to copyright. all rights are from chlorine-free pulp. tCF ¥ Chinese designers, scholars,
a Cip catalogue record for this book is reserved, whether the whole or part of the material printed in China or authors known outside of
available from the library of Congress, is concerned, specifically the rights of translation, China with surname second,
Washington d.C., usa. reprinting, re-use of illustrations, recitation, isBn 978-3-0346-0738-4 this order is used in the book
broadcasting, reproduction on microfilms or in other as well. This refers to Yung Ho
Bibliographic information published by ways, and storage in databases. For any kind of use, 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1 Chang, Dihua Li, Hailong Li,
the German national library. permission of the copyright owner must be obtained. www.birkhauser.com Qingyun Ma, and Kongjian Yu.
DesigneD ecologies
The landscape Architecture
of Kongjian Yu
WilliAm s. sAunDers (eD.)
birKhäuser
bAsel
7 10 78
Foreword PoPular aesthetics, rEshaPE an urBan
Kongjian Yu’s ChallEngE Public history WatErFront: YinZhou
Peter Walker john Beardsley CEntral riVEr
transFormation, ningBo
8 20
introduction ValuE thE ordinarY:
84
ECologY, With PlEasurE Zhongshan shiPYard ParK, trEad lightlY: rEd riBBon
William s. saunders Zhongshan ParK,
Qinhuangdao
34
Fiascoes oF chinese
94
urban DeveloPment
rEgEnEratE surgiCallY:
anD turenscaPe’s
BEaCh rEstoration,
alternatives
Qinhuangdao
antje stokman
100
42
transForming a
the big Foot revolution
WorKing landsCaPE:
Kongjian Yu
Qinhuangdao ForEst
50 ParK, Qinhuangdao
go ProduCtiVE: thE riCE
CamPus oF shEnYang 106
jianZhu uniVErsitY, the activist eDucator
Frederick r. steiner
shEnYang
116
56
lEt naturE do hEr WorK:
thE art FiEld: north
thE adaPtation PalEttEs
grant ParK, ChiCago
oF QiaoYuan WEtland ParK,
tianjin
60
the boy Who reaD books
riDing a Water buFFalo 124
William s. saunders gathEr PEoPlE: BridgEd
gardEns, tianjin
66
maKE FriEnds With Floods:
132
thE Floating gardEns gathEr PEoPlE:
oF Yongning riVEr ParK, long slEEVE sKYWalK,
taiZhou XuZhou
136 212 250
gathEr PEoPlE: lEt landsCaPE lEad afterword
dujiangYan sQuarE, urBanism: groWth Plan- thE PErsistEnt PromisE oF
ChEngdu ning For BEijing, BEijing ECologiCal Planning
Charles Waldheim
140 222
gathEr PEoPlE: BEgin With ECologiCal 254
authors
ChinatoWn ParK, Boston inFrastruCturE: WulijiE
ECo-CitY, WulijiE
254
144
Project Credits
myths anD strategies oF
226
ecological Planning rECoVEr thE mothEr riVEr:
256
Kristina hill sanlihE grEEnWaY, Qian’an
illustration Credits
152
234
a grEEn sPongE For
aCtiVatE a rEsiliEnt riVEr:
a WatEr-rEsiliEnt CitY:
minnEaPolis WatErFront
Qunli storm WatEr
dEsign ConCEPt,
ParK, harBin
minnEaPolis
164
242
landsCaPE
maKE arChitECturE into
as a liVing sYstEm:
landsCaPE: loW-CarBon
houtan ParK, shanghai
aPartmEnt, BEijing
184
246
china’s Water resources
maKE landsCaPE into
anD houtan Park
arChitECturE: hallElujah
Peter g. rowe
ConCErt hall, ZhangjiajiE
192
rEinVEnt thE good Earth:
national ECologiCal
sECuritY PattErn Plan,
China
200
(r)evolutionary
ecological
inFrastructures
Kelly shannon

ForeWorD
KongjiAn Yu’s
chAllenge
PeTer WAlKer
Among the many remarkable qualities of Kongjian Yu’s professional have rarely achieved. It is as if the schism that divided the Olmste-
practice, three may be of particular interest to landscape architects dian vision has been washed away, freeing the spread of landscape
around the world. First is the tremendous range of projects that his architecture into the widest range of scales.
firm, Turenscape, has undertaken since Yu earned his Doctorate of
Design degree from Harvard in 1995. Second is the range of intellec- Yu’s physical design style incorporates agriculture as both a major
tual influence the practice exercises within the context of the hyper- scaling device and a metaphor. He also frequently integrates sculp-
growth experienced in China over the past two decades. Third, and tural references in ways reminiscent of André Le Nôtre’s huge
most important, this pragmatic practice has been able to test many Baroque seventeenth-century gardens, which were also based on
ideas that are still largely theories in the Western world. agricultural images. The juxtaposition of sculpture within crop-
inspired fields allows the design control of spaces from small to
In the United States in the late 1920s, the profession’s impatience gigantic, a neat trick that brings the current nostalgia for “nature”
produced a separation of planning from landscape architecture. into a controllable visible composition. One can hardly wait for these
This split divided the original Olmstedian concept in two, robbing bold and brilliant steps to be realized spatially in the major city and
landscape designers of political power and scope and eventually regional plans that Yu has proposed.
allowing planning to become largely non-spatial. A further separa-
tion of civil engineering from landscape design occurred just after Yu’s work has shown that the most broad and general concepts can
World War II. There have been indications of similar tendencies in be brought down to real physical levels and that these excellent
China; for example, design and physical planning degrees are dis- built examples can then spatially inform future planning directions.
tinct in the major Chinese universities. Still, they remain closely These demonstrations are having a distinct effect on the profession
allied and located within the same school, where students and fac- worldwide, but particularly in China, where they can be seen, experi-
ulty are in daily contact. We can only hope that China will resist these enced, and taught. China today may be the only economic and social
potential schisms. Certainly, by word and by example, Yu is defining climate where this is possible. Furthermore, Yu has demonstrated
a wider and more comprehensive profession. how mutually supportive the ends of the spectrum—the site and the
region—can be.
The relationship between landscape design and regional planning
is undergoing major reconsideration in both Europe and the United As a tireless and brave advocate for this interconnected approach,
States, where land planning is for the most part professionally sep- Yu has succeeded partly by directing his efforts at mayors, who
arated from landscape design and taught from a perceived sepa- make up the pool of China’s future national leaders. Whether or not
rate basis. The exceptions are the ecologically based planning of Ian the fragmented professional can be reassembled as a whole, the
McHarg at the University of Pennsylvania and the methodologically interrelationship of planning and design can be made clear to stu-
based teaching of Carl Steinitz at Harvard. In the last generation fol- dents, future public and private clients, and allied professionals.
lowers of these approaches have attempted to reconcile them with The fact that Turenscape is associated with Peking University allows
design. Real progress is being made. Yu to speak directly to both the public and academia. His efforts will
almost certainly affect planning and design for years to come.
China has produced a number of combined landscape and plan-
ning offices, often university-based, that work at scales ranging Of course, not all practitioners will be able to offer the range of ser-
from the regional to the individual site. As one would expect, many vices that Yu provides, although the proponents of landscape urban-
of the products at both scales tend to be derivative and of only aver- ism suggest they should. Still, sympathetic collaborations between
age quality. But Yu’s work, even while extending across this same professionals and consultants can certainly cover this ground, and
wide range of activities, has attained an extremely high and elegant the work of Turenscape demonstrates the great value in keeping
level in both conception and execution. In China, he has been able to interrelated activities together. One would hope that these superb
lead the profession away from planning primarily determined by eco- demonstrations at this range of scales will strengthen and encour-
nomic and engineering considerations to ecologically based plans age our more theoretical, comprehensive efforts in the West. Yu has,
that proceed through scales of development to built landscapes of through his brilliant work, presented both an example and a chal-
the highest conceptual and built beauty—a dream we in the West lenge to us all.
– 7 –
inTroDucTion
ecologY,
WiTh PleAsure
WilliAm s. sAunDers
I have no doubt that Kongjian Yu is a major (if not complication is that a sense of successful incompatibility? Are his parks a set of discrete
the major) progressive force in contemporary cooperation between people and nature is elements that do not add up to more than the
landscape architecture. He addresses the great- inseparable from a sense of the beauty, pleas- sum of their parts? How can a corn field feel
est need of our time: transforming human inter- ure, and inspiration inherent in that harmony. and be connected to a contiguous avant-garde
action with the Earth from something suicidally It was never simply a matter of a well-func- sculptural metal arbor? What place does the
indifferent to natural forces into something that tioning machine. Neither is any restoration a painted steel structure of an abandoned indus-
responds to those forces with respect and coop- retreat to innocence: Yu was trained as a scien- trial building have in a landscape of native
eration. Deliberately or through simple disre- tist, a botanist, a geneticist. His understanding grasses and man-made wetlands? Is there an
gard, we have tried to impose human needs and of what grasses will thrive in what conditions awkward incongruity between the beauty of
wishes on nature, and she is having her revenge is founded as much in the newest research as a field of delicately colored rippling grasses
in storms, floods, drought, and sterility. At the in his boyhood memories. Nor is he a radical and the dry pedagogy of a sign in its midst that
very moment when we have achieved domi- environmentalist trying to treat humans as no explains how that grass absorbs toxins?
nance over all species save the microbial, when more valuable than other living things. For him
we have conquered the planet’s distances and the memory of sitting in the evening under the We are not used to this diversity of focus and
obstacles with our communication and trans- great canopy of an ancient tree is insepara- ambition: We know that Peter Walker will pro-
portation technologies, when more than half ble from the human fellowship that tree sup- vide us with refined artistry and exquisite sen-
of us live in cities that minimize our experience ported, as his village gathered there to hear sto- sations, and that suffices. Richard Haag at
of land, animals, weather, and geography—at ries about ancestors and mythological beasts. Gasworks Park in Seattle and Latz + Partner at
this very moment we have learned that we must And despite the fact that his parents (having Landschaftspark Duisburg-Nord in Germany
turn back, forgo, yield, and cooperate. We have had landlord ancestors and themselves own- represent abandoned industrial structures with
the opportunity to shift civilization away from ing land until the Communist takeover in 1949) undiluted focus. Laurie Olin’s Bryant Park in
two centuries of ignorant self-destruction in the were ostracized for being “above” the peasants New York has more to do with gathering peo-
hope that our children’s children will see some during the Cultural Revolution, Yu, also later ple than with calling attention to its beautiful
restoration of dynamic equilibrium. Both con- humiliated in Beijing for being a “country bump- groves of trees. Perhaps Michael Van Valken-
cretely and metaphorically, we must sustain civ- kin,” feels a caring communistic loyalty to “the burgh most shares Yu’s multiplicity of goals,
ilization by stewarding what we receive—living common people.” at least the aesthetic, social, and ecological,
things, water, the energies of the sun and the and one might have the same concern about
wind—not just by imposing what we create. How does all this add up? Although Yu’s driving his Teardrop and Brooklyn Bridge parks in New
motivation is to reestablish a healthy relation- York: Do things come together gracefully or
No reader of this book has likely experienced ship between nature and civilization, he has is there too much fragmentation? Of course
those realities as vividly and directly as Kongjian several others operating simultaneously and in looming in the background is Olmsted, espe-
Yu. He was a farming boy among peasant farm- parallel: to create beauty and art, to enrich the cially at Central Park, which achieves the same
ers in rural China, practicing millennia-old ways quality of everyday local lives, to design spaces diverse aims invisibly and seamlessly. Perhaps
of tuning nature to agriculture and agriculture that attract and promote social interactions, to our era’s need to reclaim post-industrial sites
to nature—adapting to excesses and shortages preserve cultural history, to make the land “pro- and address ecological messes would make
of water, to severities of climate, and to the sur- ductive” (of crops, wildlife habitat, clean water, suppressing those elements into some new
vival needs of flora and fauna. Then, during his etc.), and to educate people about what makes continuous whole disingenuous; we cannot be
college years, when his life as a thinker was landscapes supportive of life. This is a big that innocent.
blossoming, a blitzkrieg of modernization hit agenda—some might say too big. Yu is a hugely
his village. The land was stripped of trees and ambitious man with seemingly endless energy. Let me be clear: The variously motivated ele-
native plants; the rivers and streams were chan- He works in many directions at the same time. ments of Yu’s parks often do come together
nelized; the fish died off; and water became very well. Red Ribbon Park in Qinhuangdao,
something to import and export through pipes, One can and should celebrate him for hav- China, is the best example: Its core is the red
not something to finesse in whatever local con- ing so many ambitions—for having an omniv- fiberglass bench that winds through woods
ditions one faced. orous appetite—and yet it is for this that his along a kilometer of riverside. The bench
work needs to be critically scrutinized. Is it pos- is delightful to the eyes and the mind: bold,
For us and for Yu, restoring successful ancient sible to achieve so many goals without creat- vibrant, playful, unexpected, and beautiful (its
practices cannot be the end of the story. One ing a sense of fragmentation or confusion or sinuous curves deriving more from Chinese
– 8 –
calligraphy than from Frank Gehry). It is espe- more beautiful while being productive and low- flowering annuals and elaborately trimmed
cially engaging because it leads to areas that maintenance. Birds can nest among the crops; bushes, and you have done all that is needed;
are hard to see. Thus it forms a path one feels students can learn how the sustenance they never mind the high costs and endless mainte-
urged to follow, an enchanting road a bit like take for granted comes to be. All true. And the nance. He rightly condemns the use of decora-
that in The Wizard of Oz. And on this magic rib- agricultural fields are beautiful, especially tive “beauty” as a means of establishing social
bon lots of people sit, forming little groups in swaying in the wind. Yet here the result is a bit worth (as in Chinese foot binding) in post-rural/
the nooks of its curves. When I was there, some socially inert—the long, straight gridded walk- agricultural civilization. And seen with farmers’
were lying asleep; many played card games; ways among the fields are uniform and uninvit- eyes, the Versailles gardens are disgustingly
several played wind instruments; children ran ing for human gathering, despite Yu’s creation decadent, a royal rooster’s preening. Yu has
on the path or the ribbon. As Yu says, the design of little sitting squares here and there. There is told me: “Beauty comes from the satisfaction of
gesture is minimal: The ribbon sits lightly on the a reason people don’t congregate in corn fields. need. Culture is adaptation to nature. The sus-
land, and the rest of the park is fairly wild. So at tainable solution becomes culture.” The trouble
once we have the social, the artistic, and the So here again, as with Yu’s pursuing many is that our needs are for more than survival. Cul-
sustainable. The artistry may help draw peo- ambitious goals at once, is a limitation born of ture can be a life-sustaining temporary release
ple to the park. Its delightful curves do form a a virtue. For Yu, and for traditional Chinese cul- from nature. Yu may be disappointed in me for
bench. Its attempt to protect natural processes ture, it is a sin to waste land. Every arable space having found the Humble Administrator’s Gar-
is at one with the simplicity of its formal ges- should help feed people and more broadly den at Suzhou the most precious place I saw in
ture. So, for me, this project is Yu’s most inte- ensure survival, as it was in Yu’s boyhood vil- China. Yes, its “rockery” seems a gaudy extrav-
grated and successful. lage. What shocked Yu’s father about Beijing agance. But its “useless” and totally artificial
was not its tall buildings but its fruitless land. plantings, paths, ponds, and pavilions are over-
Compare and contrast it with one of his largest Now thinkers preoccupied with sustainabil- whelmingly beautiful precisely because they
and most ambitious parks, Houtan in Shang- ity are vigorously promoting the ideas of local put us in a state of harmony, rest, and peaceful-
hai. Again paths along waters create an allur- food and urban agriculture. As a real farmer, Yu ness that the natural struggle for survival offers
ing journey. But here much larger ambitions knows that the productivity of this agriculture, rarely and in morsels. Yes, there is nobility in
complicate the experience. A sign explains however, is secondary to its aesthetic and rec- the farmer’s struggle for survival. But to label
how the park cleanses the polluted river water. reational services. other kinds of culture merely ornamental is to
Many diverse plant groups are organized into lapse into puritanical moralism.
often beautiful colorful bands: grasses, sun- Early in my study of Yu’s work, I thought that it
flowers, corn, cattails, and much more. It is suffered, along with much contemporary land- In truth, Yu doesn’t really buy that kind of think-
almost encyclopedic in its range. Its long bam- scape architecture, from delusions about how ing. Why would he bother to have sculptural
boo boardwalks are elegant, well-made, and much it could achieve ecologically. For example, structures and brightly painted industrial arti-
finely detailed; its large sculptural rhomboid Michael Van Valkenburgh Associates places facts in his parks? Why else would the “messi-
rusting steel “arbors” feel boldly contemporary a cattail marsh where the land collects water ness” of his grasses come across as not only vir-
(in the manner of Zaha Hadid). Yet all these ele- before releasing it into a lake on the Wellesley tuously low-maintenance but also exuberantly
ments create a series of somewhat unrelated College campus in Massachusetts. Thus, run- profuse, carefully ensured to be abundant?
moments, each engaging and attractive but off water that has gathered salt, fertilizers, and
discrete. And the very largeness of the park gasoline-motor byproducts from a portion of Learning about Gilles Clément’s ideas of “le
makes one’s attention start to wane. It is not as the campus enters the lake with fewer of those jardin en mouvement” (garden in movement),
intimate and friendly as Red Ribbon Park. The impurities. Does Van Valkenburgh therefore planned to run wild and about recent German
walk along the whole length of the park feels a become the lake’s savior and the transformer landscape architects who believe that the only
bit too protracted under hot summer sun. There of Wellesley into a sustainable landscape? Far human intervention needed to create a park is
is nowhere to sit under the steel arbors. Yu rec- from it. There is way too much else to be done to cut a path, I asked Yu why he did not make
ognizes that the core of the project is its demon- to achieve that goal. And of course this applies his work simply the preservation of wilderness,
stration of how polluted water can be cleansed to the cleansing of a tiny fraction of the river the ultimate natural ecology, leaving no carbon
by plants and by gravity-enabled filtration and water at Houtan Park. Now it may be that cli- footprint, and by definition maintenance-free.
aeration. But this project leaves unanswered ents and landscape architects are willing to He gave two answers: That would leave the work
the question of how well such remediating inflate their achievements in smaller-than- of landscape architecture even more invisible
measures (which ideally would exist at much regional landscapes. But I was wrong about Yu: than it is now (bad for getting work); and wil-
larger scales) can be well integrated with a goal He knows that he is not doing more than produc- derness fails to address human needs. So, in
of fostering social pleasure. ing instructive models for the massive change fact, Yu is no ecological purist, no simple nature
that must come in the future and that is far from worshiper. Sustainable farming, which is in
The Rice Campus at Shenyang also raises obtainable now. “The message is more impor- essence working out a feasible balance of using
questions about the difficulty of simultane- tant than the results,” he told me. “The point is and yielding to nature’s supra-human ways, is
ously addressing human and ecological needs. to establish the right direction.” the core of his path as a landscape architect.
There the effort is to support the idea that agri- He should just admit that he is as captivated by
cultural land use can and should be integral Yu’s anti-ornamental, anti-aesthete rhetoric is “useless” beauty as the rest of us.
with our urbanized lives. Why should we waste extreme, and in some ways he does not really
such large areas of land and water and chemi- believe it. He rightly rails against the dominant
cals to produce giant campus and park lawns? practices of contemporary Chinese city beauti-
Rice paddies and wheat fields can be as or fiers: Fill places like highway median strips with
– 9 –
John bearDsley
PoPular aesthetics,
Public history
When Kongjian Yu pitches a project to party officials win some converts among public administrators to his
or municipal administrators, his presentation is self- positions, which he advances through lectures, books,
consciously freighted with revolutionary rhetoric.1 articles, television programs, and teaching. He lectures
Dismissing both traditional Chinese gardens and orna- regularly to the Mayors’ Forum of the national Ministry
mental urban horticulture as expressions of “little foot” of Housing and Urban-Rural Development; he esti-
aesthetics, akin to the ancient practice of binding and mates he has spoken to this executive training group
making smaller the feet of upper-class girls to secure two or three times a year since 1997, with about fifty
them high-ranking husbands, he trumpets instead the mayors in attendance each time. He developed his ideas
virtues of “big foot” aesthetics, rooted in the productive into a book, A Path to Urban Landscape: Talks to May-
landscapes and cultural practices of ordinary people. ors in 2003.2 The book has been widely distributed in
Pictures of the young Mao and healthy peasant women China, in part by Yu himself; it is now in its thirteenth
appear in his PowerPoint presentations, against a back- printing, with over 16,000 copies in circulation. Yu has
drop of Chinese flags and cheering workers. With humor presented his ideas on television—he estimates he has
and even a bit of irony—to an American observer at been on the air thirty times in the past decade, ten of
least—he claims rather broadly that “little foot” aes- those on Chinese Central Television. He has written
thetics are responsible not only for banal urban plan- numerous other books, articles, and conference papers;
ning schemes but also for widespread environmental he is also the chief editor of the periodical Landscape
degradation: They have privileged the ornamental over Architecture China. He and his firm, Turenscape,
the functional, the urban over the rural, with the con- count an increasing number of cities among their
sequences that people no longer know how to live in an clients, including Beijing, Shanghai, Tianjin, Shenyang,
environmentally secure and sustainable way. Drought, Zhongshan, and Chengdu; Yu has also served on urban
flood, habitat loss, and pollution are the outcomes. planning committees for Beijing, Hangzhou, Suzhou,
and Zhongshan, and on provincial planning commit-
His argument is loaded, and much more complicated tees for Qinghai and Shandong.3
than he allows; environmental devastation in China
has been caused as much by decades of reckless indus- On a visual level, there is a great deal of evidence in con-
trialization and metastatic urbanization as by effete temporary Chinese cities to support Yu’s claims, espe-
aesthetics. Nevertheless, and although criticism of cially about the failures of urban design. The typical
current urban design and environmental management urban landscape in contemporary China, as he points
policies is explicit in his presentations, he has begun to out, is expensive, ornamental, and high-maintenance.
– 10 –