Who

Kongjian Yu Bill Saunders

When

Wednesday, March 13
12:00pm - 02:00pm
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Where

Piper Auditorium, Gund Hall, 48 Quincy Street, Cambridge, MA

Audience

Free and open to the public

Event Description

Kongjian Yu of Turenscape (and Design Critic in Landscape Architecture) will present a slide lecture on his four recent large parks in China, covering his design and ecological ideas and goals, the history of the sites, the client’s wishes, the planning and design processes, and the effort to establish ultra-low-maintenance urban landscapes. Bill Saunders will respond with comments and questions meant to clarify the nature, strengths, and limitations of the projects: Will these projects need more maintenance than Yu acknowledges? What are the future prospects for their plant monocultures? Will natural succession produce acceptable results? When does a landscape become more a creation of nature than of humans? How are human needs satisfied in these parks? Do these parks represent breakthroughs in sustainability? Yu responds to the Saunders and offers more project detail and conceptual reflections. A discussion will follow; questions from the audience are welcome.

William S. Saunders, Book Review Editor of Landscape Architecture Magazine and consultant to design firms, is the recently retired editor of Harvard Design Magazine, author of books on architecture and poetry, and editor of books including ones on landscape architects Kongjian Yu, Richard Haag, and Dan Kiley.

Contact

events@gsd.harvard.edu