harvard design magazine_ beautiful big feet

2982015 Harvard Design Magazine Beautiful Big Feet

httpwwwharvarddesignmagazineorgissues31beautiful-big-feet 110

No 31 (Sustainability) +Pleasure Vol II LandscapesUrbanism and ProductsESSAY

Beautiful Big FeetKongjian Yu

The little feet landscape rockery inChinese garden Liu Yuan SuzhouAll material courtesy of the author

Little FeetBig Feet Sustainability and Aesthetics in China

For almost 1000 years young Chinese girls were forced to bind their feet sothey could marry citified elites since their natural ldquobigrdquo feet were associatedwith provincial people and rustic life At first foot-binding was the soleprivilege of the high class The practice flourished until the collapse of the QingDynasty in 1911 Respected intellectuals had written poems and createdpaintings to praise artificial tiny feet that today would be considered grotesqueand abused Painters portrayed classic Chinese beauties with small feet flatbreasts tiny waists and white skin in complete contrast to strong and healthypeasant girls For a long time in other words the beautiful has been seen asnecessarily unproductive above the ldquocruderdquo survival-oriented processes ofnature

This definition of beauty and its connection with high-status urbanites is notunique to Chinese culture Pre-Hispanic Mayan priests and nobles deformedtheir childrenrsquos bodies in a quest for social status Their ldquobeautifulrdquo featuresmdashsloping foreheads almond-shaped eyes large noses and drooping lower lipsmdashtoday seem as grotesque as bound feet1

For thousands of years the urban elite worldwide has maintained the right todefine beauty and good taste as part of its assertion of superiority and powerBound feet and deformed heads are among the thousands of cultural practicesthat in trying to elevate city sophisticates above rural bumpkins have rejectednaturersquos inherent goals of health survival and productivity

Pearl S Buck vividly depicted this process of urbanizing and denaturalizingtaste in her novel about Chinese village life The Good Earth (1931) Early onwe meet Wang Lung a poor man who could marry only a slave from the localaristocratrsquos Great House The slave was very productive giving birth to threesons and two daughters She was not beautiful but she was hardworkingcooked and kept house well and begged in the streets to relieve her familyrsquospoverty Wang Lung eventually became so wealthy that he didnrsquot need to laborhimself but instead hired farmers He could even afford to leave his landunfruitful buy from others and build rooms to accommodate a slenderbeautiful woman as his concubine who was prevented from working or havingchildren As Wang Lungrsquos property increased he was able to rent the GreatHouse as his familyrsquos residence and live in town His unproductivity was themeasure of his social ldquosuccessrdquo

Mixed into in the evolution of the Chinese idea of beauty are peoplersquos changingideas of urbanity and good taste in landscape design For thousands of yearsfarmers had managed living landscapes using the survival skills passed on bytheir ancestors through endless trial and error Generations had adapted toboth the threat and the results of natural disastersmdashfloods droughtsearthquakes landslides and soil erosionmdashwhile honing their abilities in fieldgrading irrigation and food production A popular story arose Our ancestorscreated and maintained ldquoThe Land of Peach Blossomsrdquo a lost paradise aproductive and harmonious basin discovered by a fisherman2 Efforts to survive



productive and harmonious basin discovered by a fisherman Efforts to survivewere what engendered the skills and artistry of rendering the landscapeproductive and durable People found this land beautiful because it had theorder and integration with natural processes that resulted from working withthe given

But as China has become more urbanized and ldquocivilizedrdquo this vernacularlandscape has gradually been deprived of its productivity its support to and oflife and its natural beauty Like the peasant girls whose footbinding crippledthem it has gradually been adapted by the minority urban upper class andtransformed into artificial decorative gardens The aesthetic of uselessnessleisure and adornment has taken over as part of a larger overwhelming urge toappear ldquomodernrdquo and sophisticated

But designed landscapes and gardens in different cultures have roots in theagricultural landscapes that were the first expressions of civilization Islamicgardens evolved from dry fields that needed irrigation Italian terraced gardensoriginated as vineyards adapting to steep slopes Picturesque Englishlandscapes began as pastures And Chinese gardens have roots in agriculturalfarms But the owners and designers of urban gardens didnrsquot appreciate thevernacular peasant landscapes which were associated with the disheveledworking class

Using ornamental plants and artificial rocks for 2000 years emperors andnobles created a fake Land of Peach Blossoms for the pursuit of indolentpleasures Irrigation ditches and ponds were turned into ornamental waterfeatures Fish farms were stocked with mutant ornamental goldfish Greenplants were replaced with golden- or yellow-leafed ones vegetables and herbswere ousted by ostentatious peonies and roses Healthy trees were prunedtwisted dwarfed and damaged to make bonsai Only ldquodelicaterdquo Small-Footrocks were arrayed Peach trees unable to bear fruit were planted Like tiny-footed women these urbane ornaments produced little and survived only withconstant human upkeep They were watered pruned weeded and artificiallyreproduced Most of the ldquogreat gardensrdquo in history decayed soon after theirowners passed on What survives or has been revived today requires endlessmaintenance

Please donrsquot misunderstand me In one sense all art music and dance isldquounproductiverdquomdashit is useless for sustaining biological life I am not arguing forthe end of all this or for any demeaning of the value of beauty and pleasure inour lives What I am arguing is that in our resource-depleted and ecologicallydamaged and threatened era the built environment must and will adapt a newaesthetic grounded in appreciation of the beauty of productive ecology-supporting things Our desire for beauty detached from utility is weakeningand it should be In our new world survival is at stake Wastefulness becomesviscerally unattractive if not immoral But there is plenty of opportunity forjoyful pleasure in useful things

Turenscape Yongning River Park(The Floating Gardens) Taizhou CityZhejiang Province China 2004

From Rusticitas to Urbanitas and the Challenge of Survival

The massive movement of people from rural to urban areas is a recentphenomenon Today more people are living in cities than in the countryside Inthe past century the proportion of urban population worldwide rose from 13in 1900 to 291 in 1950 to 486 in 2005 it is expected to rise to 60 (49billion) by 2030 By 2050 over 6 billion people two-thirds of humanity will beliving in towns and cities3

For 2000 years prior to 1950 Chinarsquos urbanization was enabled by agriculturesurpluses and its urbanization rate barely reached 10 (13 in 1950) By the

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surpluses and its urbanization rate barely reached 10 (13 in 1950) By theend of 2007 around 43 of the 13 billion Chinese were urbanites Each yearsome 18 million people migrate to Chinarsquos cities The UN has forecast an evennumber of urban and rural people in China by 20154

The aestheticized landscapes defined by the privileged urban minority prior tothe 20th century are now eagerly sought by the mass population whose peasantancestors had struggled for generations to become city dwellers Thesemigrants just like the peasant Big-Foot girls are eager to bind their feet togentrify themselves physically and mentally Contemporary Chinese landscapearchitecture and urban design simply reflect the aspirations of ordinary peopleto become sophisticates

Before the recent swarming to cities ornamental landscape and civic design inChina projected the aspirational identity of the privileged urban class typicallythrough European Baroque landscape designs and ornamental gardeningThese elite spaces have now turned into newly developed urban settlementsand public spaces Post-vernacular inherited values about urbanity changed notonly the city but also the whole landscape of China Rough and wild rivers arechannelized and lined with marble Rustic wetlands are replaced with fountainsand immaculate artificial ponds ldquoMessyrdquo native shrubs are uprooted andreplaced by exotic horti-cultural ornaments native grasses are replaced by tidyexotic lawns that consume more than one cubic meter of water per squaremeter each year in Beĳing and in most of China

From 2002 to 2010 China will have consumed about half of the worldrsquos totalproduction of cement and more than 30 of its total production of steel5 Isthis necessary to urbanize a rural country Not completely since some of thesenon-renewable resources are being wasted in the destruction and controlling ofldquomessyrdquo nature and the creation of ornamental landscapes and visually ldquoiconicrdquobuildings Examples include the new Olympic Park the steel-wasteful BirdrsquosNest Olympic stadium the exorbitant and ldquospectacularrdquo CCTV Tower and theenergy-gorging National Centre for the Performing Arts The beautiful BirdrsquosNest consumed 42000 metric tons of steel (roughly 500 kilograms per squaremeter) The CCTV Tower consumed nearly 300 kilograms per square meter andis the most expensive building in the world in terms of steel used6 Millions ofdollars were spent on decorative flowerbeds during the 2008 Olympic GamesBetween 40 to 100 million flowerpots were used7 Imagine how much betterBeĳingrsquos air pollution would be had those been forty million trees In Shanghaialmost all landmark buildings are crowned with ornamental hats One hatrepresents a lotus flower another a lily another a screwdriver a fourth a UFOThe city is trivialized by this frippery

In the current Chinese ldquoCity Beautiful Movementrdquo (or rather ldquoCity CosmeticMovementrdquo) the arts of urban design landscape and architecture guided bythe Small-Foot aesthetic have lost their way in a search of mind-numbingconventional styles or meaninglessly wild forms and exotic grandeur Work inthese modes accelerates the degradation of the environment China has 21 ofthe worldrsquos population but only 7 of its land and fresh water Two-thirds of its662 cities lack sufficient water 75 of its rivers and lakes are polluted In thenorth desertification has created a crisis In the past fifty years 50 of Chinarsquoswetlands have disappeared The ground water level drops one meter each yearin many sites8 These conditions and trends are desperately unsustainableWhat values do we hold as designers Both global and local conditions compelus to embrace an art enmeshed with fostering survival promoting land andspecies stewardship and making ornament subservient to those goals We needa new aesthetics of big feetmdashbeautiful big feet



The Big-Foot Aesthetic Recovering Landscape Architecture as the Art ofSurvival

As people worldwide have finally admitted anthropogenic climate change hasbrought and will bring additional floods storms droughts diseases extinctionof much animal and plant life and other threats to survival A new study showsthat CO2 emissions from fossil-fuel burning and industrial processes areincreasing three times faster than speeds in earlier predictions The Arctic icecap is melting three times faster the seas are rising twice as rapidly9 On everycontinent some rivers are drying out threatening severe water shortages10 Weare experiencing the greatest wave of extinctions since the disappearance of thedinosaurs Every hour three species disappear11 To quote Albert Einstein it isobvious that ldquowe shall require a substantially new manner of thinking ifmankind is to surviverdquo12 This will entail a shift in what seems pleasurable andbeautiful to us especially in landscape architecture a crucial profession in thestruggle for sustainable ecology

Turenscape Yongning River Park



Turenscape Shenyang ArchitecturalUniversity Rice Campus ShenyangCity Liaoning Province China 2003

Turenscape Tanghe River Park (TheRed Ribbon) Qinhuangdao CityHebei Province China 2008

Turenscape Tianjin WaterfrontCorridor Bridge Hedong DistrictTianjin China 2008

Make Friends with Floods The Floating Gardens of Yongning River ParkTaizhou

This project demonstrates how we can live and design with nature enacts anecological approach to flood control and storm-water management educatespeople about solutions to flood control other than engineering and reveals thebeauty of native vegetation and the ordinary landscape

The site occupies 21 hectares (52 acres) along the Yongning River the motherriver of the historical city of Huangyan on the east coast Most of the site wasalready embanked with concrete as the result of the local flood control policyand before a landscape architect was asked to ldquobeautifyrdquo it Our firmsuccessfully convinced the local decision-maker to stop the conventional floodcontrol engineering along the remaining part of the river and to create insteadan ecological flood control and stormwater management system

A water process analysis dictated a regional drainage approach concreteembankments were removed and replaced with wetlands that provided floodmitigation biodiversity conservation outdoor recreation environmentaleducation and local historical and cultural demonstrations Native grassesmdashldquougly weedsrdquo most thoughtmdashwere used to stabilize the riverbanks On therecovered natural landscape is a network of straight paths and informationalmounted texts to help people enjoy the natural processes and learn about localhistory The results have been remarkable Flood problems were successfullyaddressed frogs fish and birds have returned local television celebrated theldquoweedrdquo grass in blossom on prime time and hundreds of thousands of peoplevisit to appreciate what would have been considered a messy and uncouthlandscape13

Revalue Common Culture and the Beauty of Weeds Zhongshan Shipyard Park

This park covers eleven hectares (twenty-seven acres) in Zhongshan inGuangdong Province It is built on the site of an abandoned shipyard that wasoriginally constructed in the 1950s and went bankrupt in 1999 seeminglyinsignificant in Chinese history and therefore likely to be razed to give spacefor urban development and a grand ldquoBaroquerdquo garden But the shipyardreflected the remarkable fifty-year history of socialist China including theCultural Revolution of the 1960s and rsquo70s and recorded the experiences ofcommon people

The principle of reducing reusing and recycling natural and man-madematerials is followed Original vegetation and natural habitats were preservedjust as only native plants were used throughout Machines docks and otherindustrial structures were recycled for educational aesthetic and functionalpurposes The design addresses several challenges of the site includingaccommodating variable water levels and balancing river-width regulations forflood control with protecting old riverbank banyan trees

Completely different from the classical Chinese scholarrsquos gardens this parksince its inauguration in 2002 has become an attraction to tourists and localresidents It has been used all day and yearlong has become a favored site forwedding photographs and has even been used for a fashion show Itdemonstrates how landscape architects can create environmentally friendlypublic places full of cultural and historical meaning but not on sites previouslysingled out for attention and preservation It supports the common people andthe environmental ethic ldquoWeeds are beautifulrdquo

The Productive Landscape The Rice Campus of Shengyang Architectural



Turenscape Tianjin WaterfrontCorridor Bridge

Turenscape The Qiaoyuan ParkTianjin China 2008

University

This project demonstrates how agricultural landscape can become part of theurbanized environment and how cultural identity can be created through anordinary productive landscape The overwhelming urbanization of China isencroaching upon much arable land With a population of over 13 billionpeople and limited tillable land food production and sustainable land use is asurvival issue that landscape architects must address14

The site of about 80 hectares (198 acres) forms the new campus of ShengyangArchitectural University The design and construction had to contend with asmall budget and a short construction timeline (six months) but the universitystill wanted the landscape to provide a strong identity My firm proposedcreating productive rice fields (along with other native crops) while fulfillingthe need for new functions Storm water is collected in ponds to irrigate thefields Frogs are raised to control insects and fish are cultivated to double theproductivity of the field Sheep ldquocutrdquo the grass eliminating the pollution ofmowing machines

Student involvement is part of the landscapersquos productivity Each year aplanting festival and a harvesting festival are held on campus which bringChinese culture alive Farming processes become an attraction to the studentsof the university and the nearby middle school The crop is packaged asldquoGolden Ricerdquo which is sold in the university canteen and presented assouvenirs to visitors Now Golden Rice has become the universityrsquos identitymarker well-known across universities nationwide

The Rice Campus increases sensitivity about the environment and farmingamong the mostly urban students It demonstrates that inexpensive andproductive agricultural landscapes can also become through careful design andmanagement pleasurable social spaces And finally this working landscape is aclear example of the new Big-Foot aestheticmdashunbound but beautiful

Minimum Intervention The Red Ribbon Tanghe River Park Qinhuangdao

In natural terrain and vegetation the landscape architect placed a 500-meterldquored ribbonrdquo integrating lighting seating environmental interpretation andway-finding While preserving as much of the natural river corridor as possiblethis project demonstrates how a minimal design solution can achieve dramaticimprovements15

The site was in good ecological condition Lush and diverse native vegetationprovided habitats for many species Located at the edge of the Tanghe Riverwhich runs through the Qinhuangdao it was however unkempt and emptyused for garbage dumping and spotted with deserted shanties as well asirrigation ditches and water towers built years ago Filled with scruffy shrubsand ldquomessyrdquo grasses the site was inaccessible and unsafe The governmentwanted to use it not only for urban sprawl but also for fishing swimming andjogging

The lower reaches of the river had already been channeled with marble andldquobeautifiedrdquo with ornamental plants and channeling was likely to be carriedout at the site To prevent this our firm proposed the red ribbon design Afterthe rehabilitation of the littered and polluted areas the insertion of the ribbonwas a light intervention The ribbon brightens this densely vegetated site linksdiverse natural vegetation types and provides a structural means ofreorganizing the formerly unkempt and inaccessible site The park is urban andmodernizedmdashattributes highly sought by the local residentsmdashwhile enhancingthe ecological processes and natural services of the site



the ecological processes and natural services of the site

Let Nature Work The Adaptation Palettes of The Qiaoyuan Park Tianjin

This is a park of 22 hectares (54 acres) in the northern coastal city of TianjinRapid urbanization had changed a peripheral shooting range into a garbagedump and drainage sink for urban storm water The site was heavily pollutedlittered deserted and surrounded by slums and rickety temporary structuresthat were torn down before the design was commissioned The soil here is quitesaline and alkaline

The regional landscape is flat and was once rich in wetlands and salt marshesthat have been mostly destroyed by decades of urban development Though it isdifficult to grow trees in the saline-alkali soil the ground cover and wetlandvegetation are rich and vary in response to subtle changes in the water tableand PH values

The overall design goal was to create a park that can provide a diversity ofnaturersquos services for the city and the surrounding residents includingcontaining and purifying urban storm water improving the saline-alkali soilthrough natural processes recovering the regional landscapersquos lowmaintenance vegetation providing opportunities for environmental educationabout native landscapes and natural systems storm-water management soilimprovement and landscape sustainability and creating a cherished aestheticexperience

The solution was called ldquothe adaptation palettesrdquo a name inspired by theadaptive vegetation communities that dot the landscape A simple landscapearchitecture strategy was devised one that included digging twentyone pondcavities 10 to 40 meters in diameter and 11 to 5 meters in depth Some cavitiesare below ground level others above on mounds some are water ponds someare wetlands and some are dry cavities Diverse habitats were created andnatural processes of evolution and adaptation were initiated Seeds of mixedplant species were sowed to start the vegetation and other native species wereallowed to grow wherever suitable Through the seasonsrsquo evolution patches ofunique vegetation established a correspondence to the individual wet or drycavities A few cavities vary their spatial relationship to the top of the highwater table with one variation in depth of only 10 centimeters The patchinessof the landscape reflects the regional water- and alkaline-sensitive vegetationWithin each cavity is a wood platform that allows visitors to sit in the middle ofthe vegetation patches Along the paths is an environmental interpretationsystem that gives descriptions of natural patterns processes and native species

The park realizes its core goals Storm water is retained in the water cavitiesallowing diverse water-sensitive communities to evolve Seasonal changes inplant species occur and integrate with the beauty of the native landscapeattracting thousands of visitors every day In the first two months of its openingOctober to November 2008 about 200000 people visited the ecology-drivenBig-Foot aesthetic produces objects of desire16

Utopian Proposal Beĳing as New Garden City

Todayrsquos Chinese cities and architectures are unsustainable Our monumentalarchitecture wide roads endless parking lots huge city squares floweredlandscapes and engineering-oriented municipal networks will eventually beseen as ghastly mistakes

Future cities will be ldquonew garden citiesrdquo emitting low or no net carbonproductive and conservation-minded Rainwater will no longer be discharged



productive and conservation-minded Rainwater will no longer be dischargedfrom municipal pipes but will be retained in local ponds and supplementgroundwater Green spaces will be full of crops and fruit trees instead ofornamental flowers and fruitless trees Rice and broomcorn will ripen in thefields of communities and schools In the harvest season animals and humanswill take pleasure together Architectural surfaces will support photosynthesisThe roofs will be fish-raising ponds with the functions of heat preservationenergy saving and food production Cellars will be great mushroom factories

The CCTV Tower will become a complex system combined with agricultureanimal husbandry and fishery In the hole of the ldquounderpantsrdquo several windturbines will generate electricity The National Centre for the Performing Artseasily transformable into a greenhouse will grow various fruits its basementwill grow mushrooms The Birdrsquos Nest can become a national vegetable marketIts great steel framework can be used to hang vessels holding a kale yard in theair Tiananmen Square can be converted into a sunflower field Whileproducing oil it will offer citizens the chance to enjoy the daily movement ofthe bright flower heads tracking the sun Transportation tools will be high-speed railway trains connecting compact pedestrian communities wherepeople can pick up public bicycles Outmoded parking lots can be used to growwheat and vegetables or become fishponds that collect rainwater

The new garden city is a mark not of utopia but of ecological civilization It isan art of survival



1 Vera Tiesler ldquoHead Shaping and Dental Decoration among the Maya Archeological andCultural Aspectsrdquo (paper presented at the ldquo64th meeting of the Society for AmericanArchaeology Chicago 1999)httpwwwmesowebcomfeaturestieslermediaheadshapingpdf

2 This is in essence the original story of Shangri-la a mystical harmonious valley described inthe 1933 novel Lost Horizon by British writer James Hilton

3 United Nations Department of Economic and Social AffairsPopulation Division WorldUrbanization Prospects The 2007 Revision (New York UN 2008) 1-4

4 UN World Urbanization Prospects The 5998 Revision Population Databasehttpesaunorgunup

5 ldquoChina to Dominate Cement Use in 2007rdquo Concrete Monthly January 2007httpwwwconcretemonthlycommonthlyartphp2596 see also Freedonia Group IncCement in China January 1 2009 httpwwwmarketresearchcomproductdisplayaspproductid=1331744g=1 and RNCOS ldquoChina Steel Industry Forecast till 2012rdquo February2008httpwwwresearchandmarketscomreports590881china_steel_industry_forecast_till_2012

6 Huang Hong Cheng Chao and Li Li Cu Tian Du Shi Bao December 272007

7 Xing Yunfei Hua Xia Shi Bao July 19 2008

8 Chen Kelin Luuml Yong and Zhang Xiaohong ldquoNo Water without Wetlandrdquo China Environmentand Development Review 2004 296ndash309 See also John McAlister ldquoChinarsquos Water CrisisrdquoDeutsche Bank China Expert Series March 22 2005

9 Michael R Raupach et al ldquoGlobal and Regional Drivers of Accelerating CO2 EmissionsrdquoPNAS June 12 2007 10288-93

10 CM Wong et al Worldrsquos Top 10 Rivers at Risk WWF International March 2007httpassetspandaorgdownloadsworldstop10riversatriskfinalmarch13_1 pdf

11 Ahmed Djoghlaf ldquoStatement to the Second Meeting of the Advisory Group on Article 8(j)and Related Provisions of the Convention on Biological Diversityrdquo Montreal April 30 2007httpwwwcbdintdocspeech2007sp-2007-04-8j-enpdf

12 httpwwwspaceandmotioncomAlbert-Einstein-Quoteshtm

13 For a detailed review of this park see Graham Johnstone and Xiangfeng Kong ldquoMakingFriends with Floods An Ecological Park Reclaims a Degraded Stretch of a Chinese RiverrdquoLandscape Architecture April 2007 106-15

14 For a detailed review of this project see Mary G Padua ldquoTouching the Good Earth AnInnovative Campus Design Reconnects Students to Chinarsquos Agricultural LandscapesrdquoLandscape Architecture December 2006 100-7

15 For a detailed review of this project see Stefanie Ruff and Antje Stokman ldquoThe Red RibbonTanghe River Park Reconciling Water Managementrdquo Topos 63 (2008) 29-35 Also see Mary GPadua ldquoThe Red Ribbon The Tanghe River Parkrdquo Landscape Architecture January 2008 92-99

16 Zhang Kailin and Huang Weiming Tianjin Daily November 27 2008

China

Urbanism

Landscape Architecture

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Sex and the CityLandscape Desire andSustainabilityMartha Schwartz

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productive and harmonious basin discovered by a fisherman Efforts to survivewere what engendered the skills and artistry of rendering the landscapeproductive and durable People found this land beautiful because it had theorder and integration with natural processes that resulted from working withthe given

But as China has become more urbanized and ldquocivilizedrdquo this vernacularlandscape has gradually been deprived of its productivity its support to and oflife and its natural beauty Like the peasant girls whose footbinding crippledthem it has gradually been adapted by the minority urban upper class andtransformed into artificial decorative gardens The aesthetic of uselessnessleisure and adornment has taken over as part of a larger overwhelming urge toappear ldquomodernrdquo and sophisticated

But designed landscapes and gardens in different cultures have roots in theagricultural landscapes that were the first expressions of civilization Islamicgardens evolved from dry fields that needed irrigation Italian terraced gardensoriginated as vineyards adapting to steep slopes Picturesque Englishlandscapes began as pastures And Chinese gardens have roots in agriculturalfarms But the owners and designers of urban gardens didnrsquot appreciate thevernacular peasant landscapes which were associated with the disheveledworking class

Using ornamental plants and artificial rocks for 2000 years emperors andnobles created a fake Land of Peach Blossoms for the pursuit of indolentpleasures Irrigation ditches and ponds were turned into ornamental waterfeatures Fish farms were stocked with mutant ornamental goldfish Greenplants were replaced with golden- or yellow-leafed ones vegetables and herbswere ousted by ostentatious peonies and roses Healthy trees were prunedtwisted dwarfed and damaged to make bonsai Only ldquodelicaterdquo Small-Footrocks were arrayed Peach trees unable to bear fruit were planted Like tiny-footed women these urbane ornaments produced little and survived only withconstant human upkeep They were watered pruned weeded and artificiallyreproduced Most of the ldquogreat gardensrdquo in history decayed soon after theirowners passed on What survives or has been revived today requires endlessmaintenance

Please donrsquot misunderstand me In one sense all art music and dance isldquounproductiverdquomdashit is useless for sustaining biological life I am not arguing forthe end of all this or for any demeaning of the value of beauty and pleasure inour lives What I am arguing is that in our resource-depleted and ecologicallydamaged and threatened era the built environment must and will adapt a newaesthetic grounded in appreciation of the beauty of productive ecology-supporting things Our desire for beauty detached from utility is weakeningand it should be In our new world survival is at stake Wastefulness becomesviscerally unattractive if not immoral But there is plenty of opportunity forjoyful pleasure in useful things

Turenscape Yongning River Park(The Floating Gardens) Taizhou CityZhejiang Province China 2004

From Rusticitas to Urbanitas and the Challenge of Survival

The massive movement of people from rural to urban areas is a recentphenomenon Today more people are living in cities than in the countryside Inthe past century the proportion of urban population worldwide rose from 13in 1900 to 291 in 1950 to 486 in 2005 it is expected to rise to 60 (49billion) by 2030 By 2050 over 6 billion people two-thirds of humanity will beliving in towns and cities3

For 2000 years prior to 1950 Chinarsquos urbanization was enabled by agriculturesurpluses and its urbanization rate barely reached 10 (13 in 1950) By the

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Buy































University












































China

Urbanism







Your Email




Get Updates































University












































China

Urbanism







Your Email




Get Updates




































China

Urbanism







Your Email




Get Updates





Your Email




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harvard design magazine_ beautiful big feet

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