"Landscape Urbanism" and "Negative Approach Planning" - Exclusive Interview with Prof. Kongjian Yu

Peking University, Beijing, Nov. 11, 2009: During the 2009 China Landscape Architecture Education Conference & Landscape Architects Conference, PKU English News journalists Xiang Yunke and Han Yafei interviewed the Conference Chairman Professor. Kongjian Yu.

Prof. Kongjian Yu received his Doctor Design Degree from Harvard Graduate School of Design in 1995. He joined the faculty of Urban and Regional Planning at Peking University and founded the Graduate School of Landscape Architecture at Peking University in 1997 and became its first Dean. He is also the founder and president of Turenscape, an internationally awarded landscape architecture and architecture firm, which is also among the first and largest private firms of its kind in China.

Yu——Kongjian Yu
PKU English News——PKU English News journalists


PKU English News: What is Landscape Urbanism?

Yu: Landscape Urbanism (LU) is arguably a new theory on urbanism and design, which has been discussed, promoted and popularized during the past ten years. The term LU was originally coined by Charles Waldheim, an architect and scholar of landscape design. And it was Mohsen Mostafavi, professor of architecture and his Association School of Architectural that spread the wave of landscape urbanism all over the world. Both of them are now professors at Harvard Graduate School of Design. The core argument of the Landscape Urbanism is that landscape, rather than architecture better defines urban forms and experiences pushing landscape architecture to the forefront of urban design.


PKU English News: Do you think Landscape Urbanism is a “new” theory or simply tricks of terminology?

Yu: yes and no.

For a long time, buildings defined urban forms and cities were designed as amplified buildings. Pipelines, road networks and paving materials composed a lifeless infrastructure, connecting to each lifeless building and defining people’s activities and the so-called urban and urbanism. The theory used for these cities and urban designs could be called Architecture Urbanism which was dominant in design institutes’ curricula and in built projects. The chaos and randomness of urban forms resulted from the ignorance of natural ecology, the illiberality of urban space system, and the contradictions and conflicts between cities and the natural environment. The cities were dominated by each single object, illustrated by Shanghai’s Pudong, and in recent years, Beijing and Dubai’s skylines have been crowded by a stack of landmarks. Architecture Urbanism was leading cities into a dead end.

At this background, landscape urbanism is inspiring. However, was the discovery of landscape as a generator of urban form by the architecture field really new? The answer is “not really.” The works of Frederick Law Olmsted, father of American landscape architecture, Charles Eliot, and In McHarg clearly exemplified this strategy many years ago. In Boston, Boston’s “Emerald Necklace” was used as the infrastructure for the urban form; Charles Eliot championed the metropolitan open space network of the Greater Boston area, organizing city planning around natural systems; and McHarg’s began a new phase of urban ecological planning when he coined “design with nature”. Each pioneer treated landscape as an infrastructure to define urban forms, and to meet people’s demands for recreation and living. This is the fundamental difference between landscape architecture and traditional gardening and garden designs. Those acquainted with the planning history of Chinese and other ancient cities will recall from the location to layout; these cities were developed based on natural terrain and landscape patterns. Classic examples of Chinese landscape cities are Hangzhou and the water system of Suzhou City. The famous Incan Empire and Machu Picchu Ruins in ancient South America were also based on natural landscape and human engineering was ingeniously combined with nature.

However, after McHarg, landscape architecture practitioners were infatuated with making a piece of work or a garden, indulging in the work of artists. The professors at the universities of North America are often interested in leading designers and their work, yet the true mission of landscape architecture and the territory defined by the pioneers of landscape architecture had been lost. Landscape Urbanism, like thunder, suddenly awakened landscape architecture: landscape is not a park, not a garden nor a street art; it is an urban infrastructure and more accurately it is urban ecological infrastructure, landscapes are processes rather than fixed forms. This is reactionary to the inveterate Architecture Urbanism, a sort of “negative planning” and “negative design” - it is where urban design should return.

Although its theory is far from mature and its argument needs more testing and practical evaluation, the unprecedented urbanization and urban construction in China will create the greatest opportunity and potentially make the greatest contribution to the development of Landscape Urbanism.


PKU English News: You are the very person who brought up “negative approach” to planning in China. How does this concept distinguish itself from the previous theory?

Yu: The conventional approach for economic centered urban development planning, failed to meet the challenges of swift urbanization and sustainability issues in China. The “negative approach” defines an urban growth pattern and urban form, through the identification and planning of Ecological Infrastructure, instead of reviewing through the projection of population and planning of civil infrastructure in the conventional approach. In this sense, the negative approach is exactly what landscape urbanism is about. I will say, the Negative Approach to urban planning is the Chinese version of Landscape Urbanism, and they were published almost at the same time but in very different situations. The Negative Approach has evolved from the pre-scientific model of Feng-shui as the backbone of human settlement, the 19th century notion of greenways as recreational infrastructure, the early 20th century idea of green belts as urban form makers, and the late 20th century notion of ecological networks and Ecological Infrastructure (EI) as a biological preservation framework.

EI is composed of critical landscape structure that are strategically identified and planned to safeguard the various natural, biological, cultural and recreational processes across the landscape, securing natural assets and ecosystems services, essential for sustaining human society. EI functions as an effective tool for smart growth in the context of rapid urbanization, and is planned ahead of time, anticipating the scale, context and configuration of future urban development patterns. EI is strategically planned and developed using less land but more efficiently preserving the ecosystems services.


PKU English News: Which can better identify your role, an educator or a landscape architect?

Yu: I will say, I am more at the education side. I start as a professor and will continue to be a professor. All my projects are educational, while at the same time, I run Turenscape as a school - Turenscape has been organized as a school and operated as a school, which creates an ideal platform of knowledge and educates young generation. We consider design as a research to solve multiple unban and environmental problems in China. Turenscape’s driving planning and design philosophy is based on sustainability. I have been fortunate that five of these projects that cover a wide range in scales have received awards by the ASLA.
The Red Ribbon - Minimum Intervention To Urban Greenway (2007 ASLA Design Honor Award) demonstrated to create a sustainable and enjoyable urban space with minimum impact on the natural processes. It was considered as “a celebration integrating artistic elements into a natural landscape in an ingenious way, very dramatic, yet highly functional. It's transformative and curative.”(Jury Comments).

The Floating Gardens - Yongning River Park (2006 ASLA Design Honor Award) demonstrated the alternative ecological approach to flood control, and to make friends with floods in steady of making enemy with the natural forces, “arresting architectural forms playing off natural vegetation create a sensory experience. Nice work!” (Jury comments).

The project “Urban Development Pattern of Taizhou Based On Ecological Infrastructure” (2005 ASLA Honor Award, Analysis and Planning) formulates an urban development planning strategy that is based on landscape ecological security patterns. “Analysis is very comprehensive… creates framework from which various architectural and landscape architecture forms can emerge… starts with ecological and environmental issues. (Jury Comments)

The Shenyang Architectural School Campus (2005 ASLA Design Honor Award) utilizes rice paddies to define the structure for the landscape design, as well as introducing a productive landscape in the urban environment. It is a demonstration of a method to deal with the tension between urban development and food production in today’s developing world. It is a “productive landscape and a beautiful landscape… this will put the students directly in touch with agriculture…. biggest stroke is to put test plots in the middle of campus.” (Jury comments)

The Zhongshan Shipyard Park (2002, ASLA Design Honor Award) is about re-using and recycling a brown field industrial site, a shipyard built during socialist China. “It reflects the remarkable 50-year history of socialist China, including the Cultural Revolution. The challenging setting included fluctuating water levels, remnant rust docks and machinery, and tree preservation, and concerns of flood control versus old trees protection.” (Jury Comments)


PKU English News: What do you think is the most valuable quality needed for landscape architecture students , and urban planning students?

Yu: Love the land and his people, and to be passionate are the most important qualities for the landscape and urban design students.


PKU English News: China is experiencing an unprecedented process of urbanization. What can landscape architects do to face the challenges as well as opportunities?

Yu: 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 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, globalized and inter-connected people. In order to position itself for this sacred role, landscape architecture must define itself in terms of the art of survival, not as a descendent of gardening. The profession must re-value the vernacular of the land and the people, and lead the way in urban development by planning and designing an infrastructure of landscape and ecology, through which landscape can be created and preserved as a medium, and as the connecting link between the land, people and our spirits.