{"id":4056,"date":"2010-03-18T16:51:38","date_gmt":"2010-03-18T16:51:38","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.gardenvisit.com\/blog\/?p=4056"},"modified":"2010-03-18T16:51:38","modified_gmt":"2010-03-18T16:51:38","slug":"wither-chinese-landscape-and-garden-design-in-the-twenty-first-century","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.gardenvisit.com\/blog\/wither-chinese-landscape-and-garden-design-in-the-twenty-first-century\/","title":{"rendered":"Wither Chinese landscape and garden design in the twenty-first century?"},"content":{"rendered":"
\"Where<\/a>

Where are garden design and landscape architecture in China heading?<\/p><\/div>\n

With over 3 months till the closing date for the Tiananmen Square landscape architecture competition<\/a>, and many Chinese competition entries to admire<\/a>, it is worth asking some questions about the direction of garden design and landscape architecture in 21st century China. The classically dressed beauty with the coy smile, above, seems puzzled as she looks out from a towering block in Shenzen. She knows that her country has a brilliant garden tradition and she knows that her country has to modernize. But, she wonders, ‘does our future really <\/em>lie with the evocation of dreary Holywood sets from the 1920s? – is Hearst Castle<\/a> really <\/em>the best source of inspiration for modern China? – is there nothing <\/em>of value in the past 5000 years of Chinese art, architecture and gardens? – or is the problem that too much Chinese landscape design is inspired by American models and implemented by thoughtless automatons working in sweatshop conditions outside China?’. Still, she reflects, ‘at least the garden doesn’t have a Spanish <\/em>Theme – and at least it is my <\/em>Dad who owns the penthouse with the roof garden’. Then, I hope, she will decide to study garden design and landscape architecture so that she become an expert in context-sensitive design. As a small encouragement, I will be happy to give her a copy of my book on Asian gardens: beliefs, history and design<\/em> <\/a> – and will be content if she reads its last sentence \u2018The farther back you look, the farther forward you are likely to see.’ It is said to be a quotation from Winston Churchill – but it may only be the sort of thing he might have said when half-way through a case of claret – so she may prefer Confucius’ observation that ‘When it is obvious that the goals cannot be reached, don’t adjust the goals, adjust the action steps.’<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

With over 3 months till the closing date for the Tiananmen Square landscape architecture competition, and many Chinese competition entries to admire, it is worth asking some questions about the direction of garden design and landscape architecture in 21st century China. The classically dressed beauty with the coy smile, above, seems puzzled as she looks […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[2,5,14,28],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.gardenvisit.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4056"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.gardenvisit.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.gardenvisit.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.gardenvisit.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.gardenvisit.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=4056"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.gardenvisit.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4056\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.gardenvisit.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=4056"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.gardenvisit.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=4056"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.gardenvisit.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=4056"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}