Word: yu
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...Despite his success as a designer, Yu sees himself primarily as an educator. In 2003 he founded?and personally funded?China's first graduate program in landscape architecture (at Peking University) and he serves as its dean. He writes prolifically and, again at his own expense, has mailed copies of his book, The Road to Urban Landscape: A Discussion with Mayors, to some 3,000 city officials. The book is a direct but gently mocking assault on monumentalism: its illustrations show absurdly massive plazas and people squatting on low fences designed to keep them off mosaics of hedges that...
...Yu showed some slides of his work. "Wild grass," he said, pausing for emphasis. "It can be beautiful. It's very modern." Before long someone brought him a box of children's markers and a map, and he went to work sketching in islands of existing rice paddies within the planned lake's neat, rectangular perimeter. The official in charge of the project (who asked not to be named) winced. "I have plenty of paddies in this town," he told Yu. "If people want to look at them, they can go somewhere else. I don't need paddies...
...power of Yu's designs is the succinctness with which they communicate his ideas. His parks pair bushy tufts of native plants (which don't need to be watered or trimmed) with angular paths and minimalist sculptures in brightly-colored metal. The contrast between these rustic and futuristic elements is intended to attract people to the natural landscape, while changing it as little a possible. Yu studies the sites of his projects intensively before he starts planning and tries to work with what's already there?an approach he calls "anti-planning...
...Shenyang, when an architecture school moved to the suburbs, Yu designed its campus to incorporate the rice paddies of the farms it had displaced. The rice became both a decorative element and a kind of literal food for thought?a reminder that landscaping needn't be expensive and that even agriculture can look modern. In Taizhou, Yu un-channeled a local river, removing cement barriers and letting it flood into a wetland through which he snaked bicycle paths, docks and terraces. In Zhongshan, Yu's shipyard park, which like the campus was honored by the American Society of Landscape Architects...
...smaller victories that seem to excite him the most. The day after his visit, Changgou's leaders called to say they'd accept his plan. "I'm putting in islands and bike paths," says Yu. "The rice paddies are staying. They'll be beautiful...