The Art of Survival: Positioning Landscape Architecture in The New Era

(Keynote Speech delivered at the 2006 ASLA Annual Meeting and 43rd IFLA World Congress, Minneapolis, USA, October 7, 2006. Reprinted ( with extensive editing), from Conference Speaker Summaries.)

Kongjian Yu, ASLA
Dean and Professor, The Graduate School of Landscape Architecture, Peking University and President,Turenscape, Beijing, China

Abstract
In a new era of multiple unprecedented challenges imposed by the processes of industrialization and urbanization, landscape architecture is now on the verge of change in the world, and especially in China. It is time for this profession to take the great opportunity to position itself to play the key role in rebuilding a new Land of Peach Blossoms for a new society of urbanized, global, and interconnected people. In order to position itself for this sacred role, landscape architecture must define itself in terms of the art of survival, not just as a descendent of gardening. The profession must re-evaluate the vernacular of the land and the people, and lead the way in urban development by planning and designing an infrastructure of both landscape and ecology, through which landscape can be created and preserved as a medium, and as the connecting link between the land, the people, and the spirits.

Introduction
China is now at the stage of reshaping its rural and urban landscape. Urbanization, globalization and the spread of materialism have provided an opportunity for landscape architecture as a profession to address the following three major challenges and opportunities in the coming decades. First, a solution must be found to address the energy and environmental crises. Second, cultural identity must be regained, and third, the sense of spiritual connection to the earth must be enhanced. The significance of landscape architecture as a profession in dealing with these worldwide challenges is comprehensive in its scope, examining the complexity of natural and biological processes, cultural and historical influences, and spiritual components.

IFLA president Martha Fajardo says that "Landscape architect is the profession of the future". The future of the profession is positive and it is in a unique position to deal with the landscape as an agent for positive change. This future will only be ours if we are prepared.

To address this challenge, this paper will focus on several issues regarding the direction in which landscape architecture is headed. These questions include an analysis of the current era, the challenges and opportunities that landscape architecture currently face, a study of the mission of contemporary landscape architecture and its goal, and finally a look at how landscape architecture can take the lead role in addressing the major challenges of the time. It will also examine the strategies and adjustments landscape architecture should take to meet these challenges and compare the strategies that landscape architects can utilize to fulfill this mission.

1 The Land of Peach Blossoms and the Origin of Landscape Architecture as an Art of Survival

In an ancient Chinese story about a land of peach blossoms, told by poet Tao Yuanming (365-427AD). A fisherman traveling along a stream in a boat chances upon a place framed at both sides by blossoming peach trees. In the legend, the place, the source of the stream, was hidden behind a hill. The land had well-cultivated basins, paths, ditches, was surround by lush forest-covered hills, and was connected by a single narrow cave. In this isolated utopian landscape, a community lived happily as a family, where the elderly were healthy and the young were lively. The fisherman was welcomed into the peoples' homes and treated with generous hospitality, and was entertained with wine and bountiful food. After the fisherman left the land of peach blossoms and returned to the city, he could never again find this land. This is, in essence, the original story of Shangri-La, a mystical, harmonious valley described in 1933 by British novelist James Hilton in Lost Horizon.

Since we have experienced such harmonious landscapes, we believe that there were and still are numerous Chinese rural villages that can be described today as lands of peach blossoms. They are the product of thousands of years of the trials and errors of our agricultural ancestors. Natural disasters, including floods, droughts, earthquakes, landslides, soil erosion, as well as the experience of field making, irrigation, and food production, taught our ancestors to create and maintain such lands as the land of peach blossoms. It was the skill and art of survival that rendered our landscape productive, safe, beautiful, and meaningful(Figure 01).

For thousand years ago in China's Yellow River Valley, during one of several thousand natural disasters, a village was completely buried by a flood and subsequent landslide, killing all of its inhabitants. When a mother was being buried in the mud, she protected her baby child, raised her head, stretched her arms, and called the gods for help (Figure 02). The responding god, Da Yu, was considered a deity who was able to make friends with the floods, and who began to use rules and measures, and made wise use of the land to select a safe place for the people to build a city. Da Yu was China's first emperor (Figure03).

Thus, landscape architecture had its origins in combination with the art of survival and the emperor's leadership.

It was this emperor's art of survival and land stewardship, which evolved over thousands of years of trial and error, that helped the disasterstricken Chinese people select safe places for their settlements. They tilled fields yet kept the soil safe from erosion, diverted water for irrigation, and selected the right plants for food production (Figure 04).

Unfortunately, they did not appreciate the real traditional landscape of the Chinese vernacular of the land of peach blossoms, because they belonged to the lower culture that survived because of subsistence - a culture which was long associated with labouring and inferiority.