Cultural Differences in Design

ing the high surface temperature that highly reflective surfaces tend to create.19

Safety includes creating designs that neither cause harm nor create dangerous conditions or structures, and is one of the primary bases for licensing professions such as landscape architecture. Protecting the safety, health, and welfare of the public is a requirement of professional practice. A landscape architect must consider the regulatory and administrative design standards when developing design solutions. Walkways and paved surfaces must meet an array of design standards, including maximum slope, non-skid surfaces, and the absence of potential design flaws that could cause tripping or other unintended mishaps, resulting in bodily harm to the public.

There are several ways of thinking about the idea of quality in landscape architecture design and practice. The first has to do with providing quality design services. This first consideration has business and marketing implications. The landscape architect who provides a high degree of service and product (such as design and construction drawings and construction administration) and follows business practices that attend to customers’ and users’ needs and satisfaction will achieve in the long run greater market share, healthy profits, and thus stay in business. The second way to consider quality in design is creating designs that are safe, comfortable to be in, and facilitate the requirements of the activities and uses. Quality design also suggests the selection of quality materials and developing construction details that result in fewer mistakes, lower long-term maintenance costs and problems, and enhance and retain the economic value of the project and built work.

Globalization has had an effect on the landscape architecture profession as it has on architecture and engineering. Landscape architects are crossing borders to provide design services in greater numbers to work in countries other than their own. Firms are opening up satellite offices or establishing partnerships with local firms as new markets for design services open up globally. It would be an unfortunate oversight if the notion of the cultural dimensions in landscape design were not mentioned here. While it is convenient to think that there are universal design concepts that can be applied from one country to another, there exist cultural differences that must be recognized in order to practice successfully in other countries and cultures. Basically, the idea is that what one culture may think is a good design may not be so in another culture. Having taught and lectured in China on several occasions, I have found the statement to be all too true. Teaching design to Chinese landscape architecture students, I have learned to be more careful about how to communicate with the students. The quizzical looks I would get during a desk critique were not a matter of language differences but different ideas about design. For instance, I might suggest to a student to consider organizing their site design,

considering certain ideas about creating harmony and cohesion. They might have a different notion of what constituted a cohesive layout from the one I was suggesting. Further, I might suggest developing a more naturalistic arrangement of plant materials and spatial organization and they in turn would give me another puzzled look. Puzzled not because they did not understand the words I used but the concepts. This does not mean that the Chinese would not agree to the use of a naturalistic approach in developing the design of spaces and arranging plants materials. Rather, we would need to better understand what would be a naturalistic approach based on their experience as opposed to my experience. In Figure 2.13 are two images: one is a traditional landscape design of a residence in Shanghai and the second a contemporary street landscape in Hangzhou. Most Westerners think of the garden in Figure 2.13A when considering Chinese garden design. This and similar garden designs in China are a blend of naturalistic forms and arrangements of materials and heavily pruned or modified natural materials (plants and stones, for example), showing the hand of human intervention: man and nature. Quite a different approach to landscape design in China is currently in vogue as shown in the street landscape in Figure 2.13B. Current landscape design in China typically incorporates human intervention and arrangement of plants and other materials. Heavily pruned and clipped trees and shrubs characterize the sensibility of contemporary Chinese landscape design preferences. While stylization is evident in both traditional (Figure 2.13A) and contemporary (Figure 2.13B) designs, asymmetry and use of natural forms and symbolism best describe traditional landscape design. The heavy use of symmetry with the employment of layering is the desired approach today, as I found from working with Chinese landscape architecture students. The students and practitioners expressed their preference for an approach shown in Figure 2.13B. This landscape design along the street presents China to the world as a modern advanced nation similar to their Western contemporaries. To continue, we should understand what we mean when discussing culture and cross-cultural differences in design. Culture is a set of shared characteristics such as thoughts, values and behaviors and, in the case of design, design sensibilities that are unique to any one culture (country). Design theories and concepts are understood and talked about differently within each culture. There are defined sharp lines along which cultures differ, in terms of what is desirable and which characteristics describe good design or design relevant Figure 2.13 A: Yu Garden, Shanghai, traditional garden; to any one culture. The first layer to understand B: Hangzhou typical street landscape currently in vogue cross-cultural differences would be in communicathroughout China in cities and along highways. tion: language. Assuming that language translation

is not an issue, there are elements in language in the realm of concepts—design concepts—that might make communication difficult for a visiting landscape architect to present his or her design ideas in the host country. For instance, Western cultures often use metaphors to describe design concepts. It is quite possible that metaphors do not translate from one language and culture to another and may simply not be understood. Wise advice would be not to assume your words and their meaning are easily understood and that extra effort may need to be taken to ensure your ideas are understood correctly. There are of course psychological and social differences from one culture to another. Dimensions of personal space, for example, vary by culture. How close you are to another person can cause discomfort. Seating arrangements can cause discomfort in one culture if the space is too close, while that same spatial dimension may seem comfortable in other cultures.

While the Chinese are very interested in learning about Western landscape design, it does not necessarily mean that they think Western design is good in their eyes. One intern from my university in America who was doing her internship at a Beijing office was told by her project manager that her designs were not Chinese enough and she was asked to redo a design assignment several times. It was not a matter that she was a bad designer. It is just that she interpreted the design directions given by her supervisor in a very different way than her supervisor had in mind. I gave a lecture on contemporary American landscape design at the same office. Afterwards, there were lots of questions and some excellent and lively discussion. It came out that, while they appreciated the presentation, they had trouble seeing the projects I used in my lecture as something they would do in China. It was a matter of cultural differences. The design sensibilities from the American experience would not transfer well to the Chinese one. Basically it boiled down to this: they like to see plant materials clipped and pruned into nice layers and shapes. They do not like the unruly look of plants allowed to grow without being re-shaped, as we generally prefer in America. The thousands of miles of new roads and streets in China have been heavily planted. These plants are routinely pruned and clipped. The Chinese would find the landscaped freeways in California planted with native, droughttolerant plant materials an approach they would not favor or find attractive. They might say the landscape looked unruly and not very beautiful. They would have the same criticism of the planting design, for instance, of the High Line in New York.

There is always the opportunity to learn from others and, in cases involving cultural differences, the learning curve can be rich as well as perplexing. Keeping an open mind would be good advice when practicing one’s profession in another country. Keeping an open mind while working in another region of one’s own country which has different climatic and other environmental attributes would be advisable as well. Think of the differences between the tropical conditions of southern United States and the arctic conditions in Alaska and Canada. An approach that would lead to a good design in Florida may lead to a disaster in Alaska. The differences can be as much environmental as well as cultural.