Kongjian Yu, man of the earth

I have had the opportunity to meet Kongjian Yu on three occasions. The first two, after a short period, on his arrival in Florence, in 2016, invited by Prof. Enrico Falqui to participate as a speaker at one of the appointments of the Open Session on Landscape cycle of conferences, and therefore, at the IFLA Congress held in Turin. The luck of having been able to listen to it, led me to concentrate as much information and teachings as possible. His arguments, disarming though simple, were nevertheless endowed with an impacting force, a real push towards a different approach to the project of “urban nature islands”, declined according to an all-Chinese sensitivity and an ecological vision beyond the future.

The third time I had the opportunity to meet him was on the occasion of a trip to China in 2018, to discover his projects, as part of a research undertaken by Prof. Caterina Padoa Schioppa. This journey would then lead to the drafting of a fundamental monograph on the figure of this landscape architect, Kongjian Yu. Turenscape 1998-2018, a bilingual volume (Italian and English) published by Libria. In the company of the author and the artist Yijie Yang, we faced many kilometers of road to deepen the revolutionary thinking of one of the leading exponents of a current of contemporary landscape architecture.

The trip took place between June and July, a period of inclement weather for the cities of Beijing and Shanghai and the corresponding geographic areas, given the high temperatures and high humidity. Kongjian Yu’s hospitality wasn’t the only “refreshing” aspect of that trip. The places visited, its projects, parks or large gardens, offer a real contrast with the extremely lively (not to say chaotic) urban environment of the cities in which they are located. The transition from a popular neighborhood of typical 1980s tower blocks, corresponding to the building boom and the exaggerated expansion of urban centers, to a green core, rich in water and vegetation, fresh and restful, demonstrates that the ecological drive of China is not just a promise on paper, but beyond ideologies or preconceptions, it’s an indisputable fact and a challenge towards a future of sustainability, which the heirs of the Celestial Empire carry out with great initiative and ambition.

Our tour led us to experience several projects by Konjian Yu, including the Red Ribbon Park and the Qinhuangdao coastal restoration project, the Mei Garden and the famous Yanweizhou Park in Jinhua, the Luming Park in Quzhou, the green river corridor of Pujiang and Qiaoyuan Park in Tianjin, among others, covering several hundred kilometers and crossing China to the north and east, touching among other destinations the place where the Great Wall meets the sea (called “head of the old dragon ”), in the Gulf of Bohai.

Beyond the wonder of these landscapes so far from those known, meeting both the projects and the creative mind behind them, leads to consider Kongjian Yu’s thought as an ecological revolution, a new way of understanding the city but with ancient roots, anchored to the earth, Indeed the name he wanted to give to his design studio (one of the largest in the world), is Turenscape (Turen, from Tu (土), Earth e Ren (人) that is Man) plus scape, declinable with landscape, panorama, but also escape (in the perspective sense of loss towards the horizon). A man of the earth, therefore, a man whith deep roots, in a wisdom that many have forgotten, the knowledge of his ancestors, but not the elitist knowledge of philosophers or writers, but the authentic and precious knowledge of peasants, of those who, like his ancestors, cultivated the land, stealing the secrets of soil and water, the laws of vegetation and wind.

The author of the monograph defines this approach as deriving from the “cult of origins, or the feeling of nostalgia, which represents one of the fundamental connections between personal identity and collective identification processes, or between the psychological and the political level in intellectual work”. What we perceives at first glance when visiting one of his projects is a profound interaction between the sphere of the anthropized environment and that of natural systems.

Water is the pivotal element that binds these two areas, it connects them according to many forms that this can take, such as current of a river, quiet pond, rain garden, alluvial bank, drops dripping from the leaves of the trees. Water is omnipresent, “as if besides the concrete need to create a friendship with the element that generates and preserves life more than any other, there were the secret aspiration to reveal its initiatory, mystical, yet playful and purifying character”.

The river parks of Kongjian Yu become real “resilient landscape machines”, operating through natural technologies to safeguard cities, protecting them from frequent floods, acting as “sponges” (hence the concept of sponge city, rooted in its design); water generated by the flood is retained, thus allowing a controlled flow within the park site, leaving the city intact. We find in these projects a precious and very fundamental resource to counter the harmful effects of the increasingly known frequency of extreme climatic events.

But there is another very interesting aspect that unites the projects of this one that Caterina Padoa Schioppa defines as “a master of organic forms”. His approach to landscape is delicate, the intervention minimal and essential, to underline the already innate perfection of nature. Walking in one of its parks means closely observing an environment built with skill and constantly linked to the reality and dimension of natural processes, the opposite of the traditional approach to the Chinese garden, where the elements of a vast landscape are transfigured and reduced to be arranged according to very precise rules within a limited context, a “place of evidence, a perfect site, ordered in accordance with the laws of the Cosmos” (P. Grimal, L’arte dei giardini. Una breve storia, 1974), a landscape in miniature, an “infinity in a bottle gourd” (K. Yu, Infinity in a Bottle Gourd: Understanding the Chinese Garden, 1993).

The quality of the place also defines the quality of social life within it. The inhabitants of the congested Chinese metropolises love to spend their free time in these parks, which are suitable for any type of activity. Children and elderly mutually involved in the cycle of nature set up small concerts, karaoke sessions, dances and physical activity, play cards and sometimes, traditionally, practice the art of ephemeral calligraphy with huge brushes. Harmony, this is the feeling that governs this sociality, these spaces, and the thought that generated them.

The monograph in question provides detailed descriptions of many of these projects, with an extensive photographic apparatus. Unpublished and of particular interest is the interview that concludes the volume, recorded directly in Kongjian Yu’s office in Beijing, which in addition to his personal room and administrative area includes offices and workstations in a four-storey building, all immersed in a green and refreshing environment.

The atmosphere is that of a creative forge always at work, full of professionals in various knowledge fields who collaborate in the conception of innovative projects. In the interview, entitled Twenty years of theories and projects, Caterina Padoa Schioppa explores various aspects of Kongjian’s life and path, focusing on the key concepts of his thought, and we can see each as a small landscape lesson.

The journey through the landscapes of Kongjian Yu has granted moments of beauty, reflection and communion with nature and its strength, with resilience, the maximum expression of cyclical rebirth. Our guest, in addition to the generosity in welcoming us and in doing his utmost to show us his work and a new point of view different from the western one, expresses with his work a generosity not towards the individual but towards humanity, a generosity that starts from the earth and from the love for it.

With his projects he gives an impetus to face the global challenges regarding climate change and sustainability, letting us understand that the choice is only of mankind, and every decision influences progress or slows it down. I bring an indelible memory of that trip, not only as a first experience in such a different and fascinating nation, but above all for the indomitable spirit that I have known, able to see beyond present, but rooted in the simple truth that surrounds us. The spirit of the earth by Kongjian Yu, landscape revolutionary.