Kongjian Yu's presentation for the Penn IUR conference "Re-Imagining Cities: Urban Design After the Age of Oil"

1. Kongjian Yu, ASLA The Graduate School of Landscape Architecture, Peking University Turenscape, WWW.turenscape.com Urban Design as an Art of Survival: Redefinition of Urbanity in Contemporary China

2. Content 1. The poetic vernacular of the past China: as a product of the the art of survival 2. The Pass to Urbanity: The art of survival is getting lost along with the process of urbanization 3. The New Vernacular: Redefine urbanity in Contemporary China 4. Projects: The new vernacular

3. 1. Art of survival of the Past had created vernacular and poetic China

4. 5000 years ago In the Yellow River Valley of China, one of the thousands of natural disasters of floods and land slides took place, and buried a whole village and took all of its inhabitants’ lives

5. At the very moment when she was being buried in the mud, a young mother protected her baby child, and raised her head, stretching her arms, and was calling the God for help!

6. This god was no one else but Da Yu, who was able to make friends with floods, began to use rules and measures, and made wise use of the land to select a safe place for his people to build a city. Da Yu became China’s first King. This, I will say, was the origin and essence of urban planning and landscape architecture, combining the art of survival and the leadership of the king.

7. It was this king’s art of survival and land stewardship, which evolved through thousands of year of trials and errors, that helped the disaster-torched Chinese people, select the safe places for their settlements, making fields that keep soil without being eroded, divert water for irrigation, and select right plants for food production, and make the land spiritually sacred and meaningful.

8. (1)The art of survival : taking place in the mother land

9. (2)The art of survival: water management, Lin Qu in China. The weir was built more than 2,000 years ago and is still in use. It makes friends with natural forces and makes it possible to harness the powerful force of nature.

10. (2)The art of survival :Water system as infrastructure: Dujiang Yan Dyke, solve multiple problems of flood, drought and navigation

11. The water adaptive city: Chinese cities built along with water system

12. (4)The art of survival: Strategies of Making friends with floods: Retaining water

14. Land of Peach Blossoms: The Paradise, the Chinese vernacular The products of the art of survival were the Land of Peach Blossoms, described by the Westerners as poetic and picturesque, where people and spirits are in harmony. The old vernacular: (1) A sacred landscape of ecological infrastructure (2) A series of Land of peach blossoms

16. Cement steel coal The consumption of building material in China as compared to the whole world, But where do they go? Urbanization: Consume so much, but for what?

17. (1) The destruction of ecological infrastructure 500 year flood controlling dike surrounding Hainan Island, the last undeveloped paradise Channellzed Yangtzi River: The biggest river in China Monument of flood control victory: Dragon been arrested

18. Destroy the ecological infrastructure for a single minded purpose

19. (2) The Cosmetic Art or urbanity: The art of survival is declined into the cosmetic art of gardening and civic design, which by mistake we called landscape architecture and urban design Landscape, Architecture and city as ornaments

20. They did not appreciate the real vernacular landscapes of Land of Peach Blossoms, because it belongs to the lower culture, the common landscape of surviving, and is associated with hard work and low class. Instead, for two thousands years, nobles recreated the fake Land of Peach Blossoms for pleasure-making, using ornaments and false rockery, which had been honored as a civic art of urban design and “gardening.” In China, The cosmetic art of urbanity began more than 2000 years ago, when emperors started to build the fake Land of Peach Blossoms The fake Land of Peach Blossoms: The Grandview garden, what is missing here is the productivity and authentic natural processes, even the peach flowers are in capable of bearing fruits The real Land of Peach Blossoms

21. The art of urbanity For more than a thousand years, young Chinese girls were forced to bind their feet in order to be able to marry citified elites, and the natural “big” feet were considered rustic and rural. Unhealthy, and deprived of productivity

22. I have seen two kinds of people: One is the common, humble, but healthy, productive, and still alive today; The other is special, citified noble, but deformed, and dead. The art of Urbanity: in Maya culture

23. Urbanity ( citified small foot ) vs. Rustic ( rural big foot )

24. The art of urbanity

26. Urbanity (Ornamentals) vs. Rustic ( Wild grasses)

27. Rape plantation along country road Ornamentals along new country road Rustic Urban

28. Waste more than necessary Destroy the native vegetation, replaced with energy and resource costly ornaments Irrigation cost 1 cubic meter of water/year Landscape to be “urbanized”

29. Landscape as ornament: out-of–scale squares: view from the major’s office window

31. Architecture as ornament: Land mark buildings in Shanghai

32. Architecture as ornament: Where does the steel go? build grandeur monumental buildings just for show The National Stadium: uses 50,000 tons of steel (originally 136,000 tons), 500 kg/square meter The CCTV Tower: 250 kg/square meter, 10 times as much as a normal office building The National Opera House The art of urbanity of the high tech

33. City as ornament: the “urban”, turn out to be the dentist’s tool box or Disneyland: Shanghai,

34. The cost of environmental degradation is 7-20% of the GDP, higher than the annual GDP growth. The cost: Brown field of China

36. (1) the destruction of ecological infrastructure (2) The loss of vernacular to the cosmetic art of ornaments

37. 3. Recovering the art of survival Therefore, we need to secure our land for survival, We need recover the landscape and urban design art of survival 3.1 The building of ecological infrastructure across scales, landscape leads the way and landscape urbanism 3.2 The Creation of New Vernacular: Redefine urbanity in Contemporary China

38. 3.1 XL, L, M, S The spatial solution: The building of ecological infrastructures across scales, landscape leads the way (landscape urbanism) “The spatial solution is a pattern of ecosystems or land uses that will conserve the bulk of, and the most important attributes of, biodiversity and natural processes in any region” (Forman and Collinge, 1997).

40. XL: National ecological infrastructure Base on ecological security patterns

41. : L: The regional EI of Beijing

42. Scenario-3 Scenario-4 Scenario-5 Scenario-1 Scenario-2 L Urban development based on EI

43. L L M S

45. 1. Address the big issues of survival 2. For the people, the common and ordinary 3. Use new technology and new material 4. An integration of contemporary art and ecology 3.2 The New Vernacular: Redefine urbanity in Contemporary China

48. The existing site: the riverbank was lined with concrete and the process of channelization of the whole river was underway.

50. The park under development: Concrete was removed, diverse terrain on the river bed and along the riparian plane were laid to create various habitats for native plants, and the river bank was graded, allowing people to access the water.

51. The ecologically recovered riparian wetland conducive to the natural processes of flooding and native species is also accessible to people

55. The design had to contend with the following existing site conditions and budgetary limitations: (1) Former agricultural use (2) Small budget (3) Short timeline (4) Identity The solution is to grow rice Native crops (rice and buckwheat) are used for the new campus landscape. The paths across the fields are connections between different functional buildings (between student dormitories to classrooms and laboratories).

56. Sheep are raised to consume the left over of the native crops

57. Rice fields are made penetrable using concrete narrow paths, that allow students and faculty to touch and feel the rice.

59. The Rice Planting Day: the first Saturday after mid May was designated as the rice planting day for the university. Students and faculty members will celebrate the planting of rice seedlings. It is an unforgettable and unique experience to the students, and is becoming an integral part of the university culture.

60. The Rice Harvesting Day: The last Saturday of October each year was designated as the Rice Harvesting Day, when all the students and faculty members participate in harvesting the their own rice. This way the long lost tradition of rice culture in China becomes a campus culture.

61. Some rice patches were deliberately left on the fields to last until the winter that give a bright and warm color to the cold atmosphere

62. Winter: birds’ paradise

63. Golden Rice becomes an icon: the rice produced on the campus is harvested and distributed as “Golden Rice,” serving both as a keepsake for visitors of the school, and also as a source of identity for the newly established, suburban campus.

68. lower water level middle water level higher water

71. A stage for fashion show

76. Ph Ph The nature spectrum

83. The site: 1. At the periphery of the city, development is underway, want to be urbanized and “modernized” 2. excellent vegetation, good ecological condition 3. dirty, garbage dump, and security problem 4. inaccessible

85. The red ribbon

87. Google earth

98. Old China had elegant concubines with bound feet strolling in long corridors. New China can have fleet-of-foot girls bursting with energy as they race through the urban landscape. (Tom Turner , Blog article: Context-sensitive landscape architecture in China, 2008)