GO PRODUCTIVE: THE RICE CAMPUS OF SHENYANG JIANZHU UNIVERSITY SHENYANG, LIAONING PROVINCE, CHINA, 2004
This project demonstrates how agricultural landscape can become part of the urbanized environment and how cultural identity can be created through an ordinary agricultural landscape. Kong jian Yu believes that his projects should be “productive” in as many ways as possible: yielding crops, promoting biodiversity, providing species habitat, and more. Much of this conviction stems from his boyhood experience of severe food shortages in his homeland and his adult awareness of food scarcities in many areas of the globe. In his essay “The Good Earth Recovered,” he wrote: “In the past twelve years, from 1996 to 2008, China has ceded 7 percent of her agricultural land to urban development. … Each year more than 10 million peasants across China leave their rural homes searching for a ‘better’ life in the city, leaving millions of hectares of fertile land uncultivated or eagerly selling it off for development and industrial use. Currently, China owns only 10 percent of the world’s arable land but must feed 20 percent of the world’s population. With China’s arable land per capita at approximately 40 percent of the world average, the entire country is on the brink of a land and food crisis.”1 As a farmer, he views preserving the landscape and making it productive as a moral imperative. Productivity creates new aesthetic values: Beauty without usefulness now seems ugly, and the most thoroughly useful seems beautiful. It is in the context of contemporary China’s endless creation of merely ornamental landscapes that Yu designed the rice campus of Shenyang Jianzhu University. This project asserts that landscape architects should
rebuild the connection between the earth and the people—especially the younger generation estranged from the land because of urbanization—and raise awareness of the food crisis. This working landscape is an example of Yu’s “big foot” aesthetics—beautiful by being productive. In March 2002, the city of Shenyang in northern China commissioned the landscape architect to create a suburban campus for Shenyang Jianzhu University. Originally located downtown, the university was established in 1948 and played an important role in educating architects and civil engineers. But after a dramatic national surge in interest in architecture, enrollment at the school ballooned, causing congestion and overcrowding. After much deliberation, the school decided that the best solution was to move the entire campus to the suburbs. This project is the crop-field portion of the campus at its southwest side. Only about one US dollar per square meter (0.09 US dollar per square foot) was allocated for landscaping. Most of the budget was set aside for the design and construction of new university buildings. The university required that the design be developed and implemented within just one year. The site for the proposed campus was originally a field that produced the famous “Northeast Rice,” rice known for its high quality stemming from the cool climate and long growing season (a single crop of rice in Liaoning Province is grown in 135 days, but in southern China in only 100 days.) The soil quality was good, but a new irrigation system was needed; for this Yu designed a storm water collecting system and a reflecting pond to store the rainwater. This pond is an
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attractive landscape feature with native wild grass growing in abundance and requiring little maintenance. The design uses rice, wheat, and other crops, as well as native plants, to keep the landscape productive while fulfilling its new roles of providing an environment for learning and usable outdoor space. The rice paddy spans the landscape, has small open sitting platforms, and is completely functional with its own irrigation system. Other native crops like buckwheat grow in rotation across the campus annually. Native plants line pathways. The productive aspect of the landscape draws students and faculty into dialogue about sustainable development and food production. By situating the architecture school within a rice paddy, the design makes agriculture become easily understandable to all on campus. Students participate in crop management, planting, and harvesting. Both farming and observing the plants’ natural processes offer educational opportunities. The rice produced on the campus is harvested and distributed as “Golden Rice,” serving as a keepsake for visitors to the school and a source of identity and pride for the young suburban campus. The wide distribution of Golden Rice has the potential to raise awareness of new hybrid landscape solutions combining agriculture with social space.
1 Kong jian Yu, “The Good Earth Recovered,” in Donata Valentien, ed., Wiederkehr der Landschaft/Return of Landscape (Berlin: Jovis Publishers, 2010), pp. 225–233.