Wide Open Ideas Competition for Tiananmen Square in Beijing, China

This is the first of several competitions run to identify a range of possible design solutions, against a broad conceptual brief, with no commitment to build. They will be for significant design sites around the world. The aim  of the Tiananmen Square Landscape Compeition is to generate debate and ideas for re-designing part of the most important urban space in the history of Chinese Civilization. We hope this will also set a new course for Eastern Landscape Architecture, helping in the development of an ecologically and culturally distinctive design tradition. This is a Web 2.0 landscape design competition running from March 2009 to June 2010. See blog post on first entries for Tiananmen Landscape Architecture Competition.

Prizes to be awarded by Gardenvisit.com

1. Gardenvisit.com eBooks  will be awarded as interim prizes soon after submissions are uploaded to to the Tiananman Square Landscape Flickr Group
2. Winning entries will be awarded a signed first edition, hot from the press, of Tom Turner's book Asian gardens 3000 BCE to 2000 AD. It will have a set of style diagrams for Asian gardens comparable to, but more extensive than, those described in the 24 Historic styles of garden design eBook and shown on the Garden History Style Guide. It is expected that 3 signed copies of the book will be given as prizes. Reviews of outstanding competition entries  will be published on the Gardenvisit website and elsewhere. Fame is a prize!

Other prizes by other sponsors

Additional sponsors are invited to announce, offer and award additional prizes for entries they admire. These could include money, books, tickets, internships - or just compliments (using the Flickr comment system). Programme leaders (landscape, architecture, gardens, urban design etc) are welcome to organize versions of the competition for their students.

Judging the Tiananmen Square landscape competition

1. The Gardenvisit.com prizes will be judged by Tom Turner. The winner will be the receipient of  the Gardenvisit.com First Prize.
2. Other prizes will be judged by their sponsors and may be so named (eg the Jones Partnership Prize).
3. All the decisions of all the judges will be final.

Dates for the Tiananmen Square competition

1. The competition was announced in  March 2009
2. The Gardenvisit.com prizes will be announced in June 2010
3. Competition Entries should be published to Flickr as soon as they are ready. It is an ideas competetion so if two people submit similar ideas, priority will be given to the design idea which was published and added to the Tiananman Square Landscape Flickr Group first.

Brief for the Tiananmen Square landscape competition

The brief is to put forward an idea for the re-design of Tiananmen Square in Beijing, China.

Submissions for the Tiananmen Square landscape competition

Submissions should be illustrated with 1-5 images. They can be montages, models or plans, 2d or 3d, hand-drawn or computer-drawn or photographs of physical models. When uploading an image to Flickr please use the description field to outline the design idea.

Eligibility for the Tiananmen Square landscape competition

The competition is open to everyone: amateurs, students, professionals, anyone. It is a 'wide open' ideas competition.

How to enter for the Tiananmen Square landscape competition

Download plans and upload images to this Flickr Group. Entries can be made under a Flickr name or your own name or both:
http://www.flickr.com/groups/tiananmen_square_landscape_architecture_competition_2010/

Further information on the Tiananmen Square landscape competition

1. Blog post on the Tiananmen Square Landscape Competition
2. Wikipedia on Tiananmen Square: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tiananmen_square
3. Wikimapia - Googlemap of Tiananman Square: http://wikimapia.org/#lat=39.902428&lon=116.391649&z=14&l=0&m=a&v=2&search=Tiananmen%20Square%20Beijing%20China
4. This Flickr search yields 33,000+ images:  http://www.flickr.com/search/?q=Tiananmen%20Square&w=all
5. Gardenvisit.com notes and articles on the history of Chinese gardens and excerpts from Ji Cheng Craft of Gardens (1631)

Reflections on the Tiananmen Square Landscape Competition

Tiananmen means 'Gate of Heavenly Peace'. The Gate was first built during the Ming Dynasty (1420) and the historic space was designed in 1651. Beijing, once known in Europe as Peking, is the best example of one of the world's foremost urban design traditions. Its dedication to Peace makes a wonderful contrast with the Triumphal Arches and Victory Avenues which litter Europe. China has a tradition of landscape and urban design which extends over 5,000 years - it began as cultivation was reaching the shores of  North Europe.
In 1958 the world's largest and bleakest 'urban square' was laid out on what was once an Altar of Agriculture. Tiananman Square now contains a Monument to the People's Heroes (1958) and the Mausoleum of Chairman Mao Zedong (1977). It is a vacant expanse of slabs with nowhere to sit and nothing to do. The landscape architecture profession in China has grown rapidly but now faces a supreme challenge: how to re-design  Tiananmen Square.  Though understandable, Tiananmen Square was a terrible blunder and this should be recognized. Only then can it become the brilliant centre of world peace and civilization which Beijing deserves. The current  lack of design is understandable for three reasons:

1. China had no tradition of creating public open space in towns  at the time Tiananmen Square was re-designed. Nor did it have a  landscape architecture profession and nor did it have much cash.
2. The design 'inspiration' for Tiananmen Square came from Stalinist Russia, which could just as well have taught lessons in running fair trials
3. As the capital of the world's most populous country, the Beijing authorities wanted to have the world's largest  urban square

Tiananmen Square was an unsuccessful design for three reasons:

1. The section of Beijing's Ming capital it replaced should most certainly have been conserved
2. The landscape design of the new square has scarcely any use, scarcely any beauty, and is totally unsuited to Beijing's climate. People just stand around with nothing to but take 'I was there' photographs of each other.
3. The tragic events of  1989 are, one assumes, as much regretted by the Beijing authorities as they are by the rest of the world

So what should be done? This Ideas Competition is an attempt to help answer the question. Finding an answer is a great challenge for the landscape architecture profession. Please help!

Note: Ma Yansong has suggested foresting Tiananmen Square. For many Chinese people it remains a 'a spiritual holy land'  which attracts crowds every day and only needs new paving. Others would like to have a great reflecting pool. Others would like to have new memorials. Others believe the present design should be faithfully conserved.

• 7 days ago Tom said

  I agree that Tiananmen Square is not, never has been and is never likely to be 'a green space or a scenic park, or a recreation park'. It is closer to being a space which is 'bounded but unbound'. See http://www.gardenvisit.com/history_theory/library_online_ebooks/architecture_city_as_landscape/parks_bounded_boundless_space
  In Europe and America, there have been many problems with this type of place and it has often been the case that northerners have admired their success in South Europe - and then failed to make equally good places in the north.
  

• 7 days ago xiaomin wu said

  Everything is changing during the life besides the Tiananmen Square. Chinese people can welcome National Grand Theater of China designed by paul Andren and we also absolutely welcome whoever comes from whatever country to design the landscape of Tiananmen Square basing on the respect for Chinese culture.
  
  The proposal is more challenge about easterners and westerners understanding each other than the methods of design itself. Moreover the abroad understanding of culture is as a whole instead of lots of fragments.
  
  The understanding of the place by Chinese should be:
  (1)Tiananmen Square is a historic culture place and thus culture consideration is top priority than other feature elements.
  (2)Tiananmen Square is a symbol of China like Chinese national flag and therefore it is should be respected by everyone.
  (3) The main function of Tiananmen Square nowadays is to hold momentous celebration, great assembly, foreign affairs greeting guests.
  (4) Tiananmen Square is a popular gathering place for tourists and kite flyers, but will not be used as a green space or a scenic park, or a recreation park.
  
  

• 16 days ago Tom said

  You are welcome to submit a group entry and there is no restriction on the group size. Should a group win, a full set of eBooks will be given to each member of the group.

• 17 days ago katarzyna said

  I have a question. "a team or a group is welcome to submit an entry", and how many people can be in this group? 3-5?

• 26 days ago M.Tusa said

  I'm an Italian architect and a graduate from the Faculty of Architecture in Florence in 1976. My final thesis was"citta' e anticitta':falsa coscienza o utopia nell'antiurbanesimo:la sua attualita' oggi" ( City 'and anti- city': false consciousness or utopia and anti-urbanism: its relevance 'today". A part of this study concerned the differences that we find between Chinese and French garden theory. I also spent time studing the aesthetic theory about"orrido e pittoresco",the English garden cities,the theory of Laugier abbot"la ville comme Foret"and other various subjects about- city and anti-city.I think that the above-mentioned subjects are related to the Tiananmen Square Competition. Anyone Who is interested is kindly requested to contact: dr.arch.M.Tusa -V.le Einaudi 8-58100,GROSSETO-Italy-Tel\Fax:0564 492485\E-Mail:dianagiannoccaro@alice.it

• about 1 month ago Tom said

  The brief from above is "The brief is to put forward an idea for the re-design of Tiananmen Square in Beijing, China." and there are more details and examples of entries on Flickr. Please see: http://www.flickr.com/groups/tiananmen_square_landscape_architecture_competition_2010/
  With regard to submission, five Flickr images is normal and the only requirement is to explain the design idea. Clearly, 3D images are useful.
  

• about 1 month ago Anonymous said

  Where's the Brief?

• about 1 month ago Tom said

  Note to our Chinese friend: re your comment (below) please see the first two complete entries to the competition. I am not agreeing that this is necessarily the 'correct' solution, but both of them (from Peat Free and Henrcy Cheung) respect the spatial character of Tiananmen Square as a place which is holy for the children of the People's Republic of China. See http://www.flickr.com/groups/tiananmen_square_landscape_architecture_competition_2010/discuss/72157622541323376/
  By the way 'holy' is a Germanic word and is related to the Latin word 'sacred' which means 'set apart'. Princeton Wordnet gives the following definitions:
  Sacred = "devoted exclusively to a single use or purpose or person; "a fund sacred to charity"; "a morning hour sacred to study"; "a private office sacred to the President"
  Holy = "belonging to or derived from or associated with a divine power"

• about 1 month ago Eurasian Citizen said

  Chinese civilization is 5000 years old? Great. But where are the ancient Chinese cities and gardens? European civilization is 10000 years old. So what? Chinese history has fewer wars than European history? Tell me another one. Tiananmen Square is a holy place, like a church? This is news to me. Churches are useless? I call that cross-cultural insensitivity!

• about 1 month ago Tom said

  It will be very good to have entries from Chinese landscape designers. Just as product designers from around the world work together to discuss ideas and create new products, so should landscape designers. The 20th century saw a great many ugly cities being made around the world. It is time for landscape architects to co-operate, to work with the other built environment professions, and to discover ways of making better cities for the twenty-first century.

• about 1 month ago CHINESE said

  The corresponding three reasons debate for the competition:
  (1)China has more than 5 thousand years history which has never been stopped by other cultures, so Chinese People has the wisdom to create brilliant and peaceful civilization. Though the modern landscape architecture discipline is young, whereas no one could deny the Great Wall, the ancient Jinghong canal, the Dujiangyan hydraulic engineering，the wonderful Chinese Gardens and so on are the greatest landscape architecture. Otherwise, he/she must be ignorant of China.
  (2)The project is successful if the users like otherwise it is failure. The foreigners could not share the holly spiritual space surely, just like Chinese take it granted that the space of church is useless.
  (3)The largest square in the world is not a bad thing! Because everyone knows that the size of space is decided by the quantity of users.
  

• about 1 month ago Tom said

  Re budget and costs: there is no budget and no cost limits. It is an ideas competition. You could, for example, suggest paving the square in gold and platinum.

• about 1 month ago Tom said

  Sorry, we do not have a scale plan. Because it is an ideas competition it will be sufficiently accurate to base it on the air photo.

• about 1 month ago Anonymous said

  hi Where can i find a scale plan?
  thanks

• about 1 month ago Knight said

  What would the expected budget for the redesign be?
  and do we need to consider cost in the designs?

• 2 months ago Tom said

  Sorry, we do not have a CAD file, but since it is an ideas competition we do not think accuracy is significant.

• 2 months ago Anonymous said

  Does it exist a file CAD of this area ? Because I can see only jpeg plan...
  Thanks for your attention

• 2 months ago Tom said

  Yes, a team or a group is welcome to submit an entry.

• 2 months ago Anonymous said

  The participants can form a group of members to enter the competition?

• 2 months ago Anonymous said

  The interested participant can be form a group of members or only for individuals only. and Deadline?
  
  Thanks

• 2 months ago James said

  So we can submit our work just before June 2010? I am quite confuse with the submission deadline since it only stated "Competition Entries should be published to Flickr as soon as they are ready."
  
  

• 3 months ago Tom said

  Interim prizes for good entries may be awarded when they are published. The final deadline, for the main prizes, is Wednesday 30th June 2010 (Midnight Greenwich Mean Time).

• 3 months ago Anonymous said

  When is the deadline for the competition?