A welcome speech by Danish Cultural Center’s Director Eric Messerschmidt kicked off the symposium, introducing the Cultural Center in 798 Arts District as not only a house for dialogue between Denmark and China, but an open platform for dialogue between people.

The City Nature seminar is the first of a series of seminars on interdisciplinary academic activities organized by Danish Cultural Center.

The first speaker was Design Director Stig L. Andersson. In his speech about the work and dna of SLA, Andersson talked about how the 20th century vision of ”the city as a machine” (or ”as a machine to live in”) has proved fatal for our well-being.

The aesthetics of modern western cities have increasingly made city and nature to become separate entities, because urban planners have simply been more occupied with the built environment than the grown environment. Our behaviour has also contributed to nature changing gradually, for instance through climate change that continues to place increasing demands on the design our cities.

He was trying to find inspiration in nature for solutions on community buildings, climate adaptation, bio-diversity, rainwater management and other environmental issues from Chinese painting and the ancient philosophy on nature.

In response to the question from the audience on SLA’s work, Andersson explained, that when SLA were working on the details of a landscape project, they were actually defining how people will move, how they will observe and experience the nature, as well as their attitude towards environment and life.

Andersson’s speech was an open and friendly invitation to his Chinese colleagues to jointly enrich the meaning of “nature-based design solution”, thereby creating a new vision on the healthy and happy life in the future.

The first Chinese contributor was Mr. Luan Bo, Director of Green Infrastructure Institute of Peking University Shenzhen Institute. He presented with substantial statistics and case studies to articulate various current urban diseases, that are frequently happening in different cities in China and seriously affected people’s life, such as flooding and waterlogging, water shortage, air pollution, tropical island effect, decrease of spices, etc. He pointed out that the future urban landscape design would shift its function from purely decoration toward green infrastructure, but the current development of green infrastructure in China is still in the primary stage: more conceptual ideas and less practice, while more copying and less innovations. He suggested both to learn from Chinese local experience and traditional farming technique, and to comprehensively consider the issues of biological conservation, citizen participation and marketing management, etc.

The next contributor was Mr. Wang Yonggang, the director of Public Art Center at China National Academy of Painting. The title of his lecture was “The Moment”. Starting from the inside and outside of the material, and the unity of oppositeness between natural force and artificial cutting, moving on to Taihu Stones, he was trying to dig into the relationship between contemporary human and nature through the perceptual angle from the microscope to the macroscopic view.

After the lunch break the first contributor was Ms. Shi Lixiu, Director of Environmental Art and Design Department of China Architecture Design and Research Group. In her lecture, she introduced the historical transformation of Beijing city planning, and summarized the practices and thinking behind landscape designs, that contain expressions of Chinese culture, rhythmic layout of ceremonial space, situation building, scale weighing, and material selection, etc.

Then, a vivid lecture given by Prof. Song Yehao from Architecture Department of Tsinghua University about his thoughts on green architecture and sustainable design, that he started to study on since 1990s. He proposed the possibility of “blanking” in the contemporary and future architecture design. He also mentioned the application of natural reproducible energy and temperature-controllable architecture materials, as well as the relevant problems in the current practice.

The last to talk was Prof. Wang Xiangrong from Beijing Forestry University. His lecture started with mentioning of the essential foundation of China as an agricultural society, following by formulating the natural systems in the city and the cities in natural system through the constructive efforts in the past thousands of years. By introducing the design cases in various cities in China, and analyzing the solution based on the respects of nature, he also proposed four strategies and approaches: “Protecting, Restoring, Transforming and Integrating” to balance the function of city and nature.

With sincere respect to the history and natural order, the speaker, the contributors and the audience of the symposium had a truly active and free debate on the future of the globalized urban cities. Many young audiences also asked questions concerning contemporary social problems such as the absence of collective memory among the younger generation, and the crisis of their spiritual belief, etc.

During the whole process of the symposium, the natural light coming from the large window of the conference space on the second floor of the 1950s old building kept changing and floating along time. Outside the window, the trees were joggling, as if also talking with the 15 pines in the indoor exhibition on the ground floor of Danish Cultural Center.

With the help of the simultaneous interpretation, the symposium has been going for 5 hours from morning to the afternoon. There were numerous valuable knowledge exchanges, while there were also awareness of the unavoidable conflicts between the sense of social responsibility of design individuals and the developers’ immediate demands on economic returns.

The Danish architect Morten Holm, who has worked in China for more than ten years, said that “how to change the mindset of the decision makers and slow down the pace of both the construction and the urban life might be the issues, that we should think about first”.

Concurrently to the professional discussions going on at the second floor of the Centre, there were also nearly 2400 audiences in one day walking through the pines downstairs, conceiving their various individual narratives regarding “City Nature”.

Contributors

Luan Bo

PhD Candidate at Peking University, director of Green Infrastructure of Shenzhen Institute, Peking University, and co-founder and Managing Director of Yifang-VISTA International Design.

Insisting on the attitude of ”caring about every pjece of Earth”. Luan Bo has initiated various research and design practices on green infrastructure and sustainable landscape. He and his team have devoted themselves to promoting the comprehensive development of scientific studies, design consultant, monitoring and evaluation, as well as the execution and management of green infrastructure in China. Some of these projects have been awarded with ASLA Honor Award (2014), The Humanitarian Water and Food Award (2015), as well as the Gold Award of the 4th China Environment Art Award.

Shi Lixiu

Director and Chief Architect at Department of Environmental Art and Design of China Architecture Design and Research Group, where she has been working in since 1985. Shi is also the standing committee member of Female Landscape Architect Branch, and the Deputy Director of Beijing Branch at Chinese Society of Landscape Architecture. In addition to managing design projects, Shi concentrates on theoretical and scientific studies, such as The 12^th Five-Year Plan Urbanization and National Science and Technology Supporting Program and Demonstration and Evaluation of Outdoor Environment Improvement Technology which she has received awards for engineering design and theoretical research. She is also devoted to education and has taught at China Central Academy of Fine Arts and The Academy of Arts & Design at Tsinghua University.

Song Yehao

Bachelor in Architecture and Doctoral Degree in Engineering from Tsinghua University, Song is currently professor and tutor for PHD students, the director of Institute for Architecture and Technology Studies, the deputy director of Department of Building Science and Technology at School of Architecture at Tsinghua University. He is also the Deputy Chief Editor of Ecocity and Green Architecture, and holds positions as director of Architecture Material Division of The Architects’ Society of China, secretary general of the Division of Green Architecture Theory and Practice Division at China Green Building Council, and has been a visiting scholar at the Technical University of Munich, Germany. His studies concentrate on sustainable design and theory, which includes the theory and practice on sustainable architectural design and sustainable city design.

Wang Xiangrong

Principal of Atelier DYJG. Vice President of Chinese Society of Landscape Architecture (CHSLA). Wang is a leading professor and Vice Dean of the School of Landscape Architecture at Beijing Forestry University, Chief Editor of Landscape Architecture Journal and Deputy Chief Editor of Chinese Landscape Architecture. He received his bachelor from Tongji University and his master from Beijing Forestry University, Germany, and in 1995 Dr. Ing. from the School of Urban and Landscape Planning at Kassel University, Germany. Wang is a recipient of numerous awards including Honor Award of ASLA Professional Analysis and Planning Category (2007 and 2010). Award of IFLA Asia-Pacific Region (2010, 2011, 2012 and 2013). National Landscape Award of The British Association of Landscape Industries (2011, 2012, 2014 and 2015), and The Award of Excellence of CHSLA (2013 and 2015).

Wang Yonggang

Graduated from Lu Xun Academy of Fine Arts in Shenyang. Wang is an architect, artist with extensive experience on latitude urban planning and free form design in pursuit of the ideal incorporation of art into the public realm. The director of Public Art Center at China National Academy of Painting, chairman of the board of Idea Latitude Urban Planning Institute, as well as the founder and chief architect of Idea Studio, his works include the comprehensive design strategies for various urban districts in Dayingpan and Guanting, Sanxia Daxi, Anji, Huangshan, Wuzhen as well as the gentrification of industrial heritage at Yangzhou Aviation Plant and 751 D• Park in Beijing. Wang is also responsible for the extension and reconstruction design for China National Academy of Painting.

Moderator Tang Keyang

Independent Curator, art critic and architectural designer, with a Doctor degree of Design at Harvard University. Tang has involved himself in a variety of curatorial, research and design projects, his studio is committed to making a blend of art and architectural designs, that is multidisciplinary by its methodology and visionary by its goal. He has been the curator of China Pavilion at the 12^th Venice Architectural Biennale (2010) and of many other shows, including Glories of Chinese Writing at the Palace Museum (2010) in Beijing, and Chinese Gardens for Living at Saxony’s Pillnitz Castle in collaboration with Dresden State Art Collection (2008). As an expert in museum architecture, Tang directed the interdisciplinary research program at the National Art Museum of China (NAMOC), and has also served as jury member and professional consultant for many key museum projects such as the recent international competition aiming for a new NAMOC building. Tang has published several publications on art and architecture, including From Ruined Gardens to Yan Yuan (the Garden campus of Peking University), L’arbre and La Nuit (in French and Italian), etc.

Author: Ling Meng, Program Manager, Danish Cultural Center.

Photos: Danish Cultural Center.