舞台和戏

其实，我并不反对装饰。我反对的是在装饰舞台时把舞台装饰成一出戏。最近一段时间，我总是有这种想法。

如果我说住宅设计最重要的是符合居住者的生活行为，估计不会有人反对；如果我再说住宅社区室外环境是室内环境的一个延续，也是社区居住者的日常生活环境的一部分，估计也不会有人反对。但是，如果我说住宅社区景观设计最重要的是符合居住者的生活行为，不同意的人就会比较多了。这就是我所说的舞台和戏的区别：社区室外空间是日常生活的一个场所，和住宅室内空间一样，都只是一个舞台，生活在其中的人才是这个舞台上的演出者。我们在设计舞台时，需要知道这个舞台上将会演出什么样的戏，然后根据戏的需要来设计。我们不会把舞台设计的比戏还要精彩或者说不应该把舞台设计成一出戏。

我这样说可能太抽象了一些，不过，我觉得应该很好理解。我曾经买过一个花瓶，在商场货架上看上去很不错，比例匀称造型大方细部考究，总之非常漂亮，也很贵。回家之后发现一个问题：不管配什么花看上去都显得多余，因为花瓶本身已经设计的太完美了。后来只好将这个花瓶弃置不用，重新买了一个便宜看上去简单一般但很好配花的花瓶。从设计优劣的角度来说，第一个花瓶看似好一些，但由于没有考虑到花瓶设计的最根本重要的因素——如何衬托里面的花，其实并不是真正的好设计。

说了这些之后，再回来说居住社区（当然城市外部环境也一样）的景观设计。国内的许多所谓好的设计还只是停留在第一个花瓶的水平，在努力把花瓶本身设计的很漂亮。结果就是在没有人的时候看上去很不错，一旦有人的因素，就会显得非常拥挤和杂乱。

造成这样的情况，可能和甲方的决策体系有关。甲方的决策来自市场分析，来自消费者。目前的消费者对景观好坏的评价水平还处在我当时买第一个花瓶时的阶段，主要是从旁观者的角度去评价社区景观的好坏。最近上海一个明星楼盘就是这样：样板区植物郁郁葱葱，密植了许多大树，纯粹从视觉上看来效果不错。但是仔细想一想如果是生活在里面，我发现社区环境唯一提供的使用方式是散步和观赏。

从发展的眼光来看，如果我们把居住社区需求和旅游消费需求做个类比。现在消费者对社区景观的需求大致相当与观光旅游，将会逐渐发展成度假旅游的水平。

简单性和复杂性 (节译一)

我不能用中国传统园林作为讨论这个话题的例子：在当时，对我来说关于中国园林没有什么是简单和容易的。自从我学园林设计以来，我从来没有真正地思考过关于简单性和复杂性这个命题，总是相信简单意味着单调是不好的，复杂意味着丰富多彩是好的。事实上，我还为能折腾出剧复杂的东西感到自豪。（1）

在另外一个设计课，Cardasis教授总是不停地强调设计的“简单性”。我实在忍不住问他为什么不同时强调复杂性。他回道：“简单性是永远不可到达的一种境界；而复杂性是永远不可避免的。”（1）

Dia Beacon 是由旧造纸厂改建的一个相当不错的博物馆。巨大的室内空间充满了尺度巨大的超级简洁的现代艺术作品。在我看到一个占据一面墙的画（后来我知道是Agnes Martin的一个重要作品）之前，一切还在可以忍受的范围内。老实说，我大概花了一两分钟才敢确定画布上除了白色的颜料以外，的确什么也没有：没有任何颜色，没有任何图案——什么也没有。（2）

所有的作品和我以前所见过和学过的艺术品都非常不同。事实上，我觉这些东西对我当时来说是非常难于接受的、无聊的和无法给我任何启发的。我在整个参观过程都比较迷惑。不过，我不得不承认这些东西让我印象深刻。它们给我的视觉冲击力之强是以往见过的任何艺术作品都无法匹敌的。（2）

我的前老板 Martha Schwartz 有一次告诉我：艺术家总是在探索新的概念，建筑师会落后一些，而景观建筑师要落后不少。如果我没有花时间研究过20世纪艺术思潮在建筑和景观界的影响，我肯定不会同意她的说法。（3）

我曾经有两年时间住在新英格兰的大西洋边上，有幸经常看到最为壮观的景观和自然现象。当我面对无边无痕的大海和天空，我意识到真正的美来源于简单性和复杂性的完美结合。谁能告诉我海是简单还是复杂？她只是一个单一的景观，但又同时是最为复杂的景观：海浪和韵率、反光和倒影、颜色和情绪、潮汐和涛声。所有的元素都处在不停地变化中，使得这一景观简单和强烈，同时非常复杂和丰富。（3）

有点陈词滥调：相对立事物往往相互包含，就象阴和阳。成功的极少主义作品，比如林的越战老兵纪念碑和沃克的唐纳喷泉，在简单的外表下隐藏着某种复杂性。而某些看起来相当复杂的作品，比如北京奥运“鸟巢”和“水立方”，却遵循着简单的审美标准和规律。（3）

“五色令人目盲，五音令人耳聋”。中国古老的智慧揭示了人类感知的真理。如果你希望人们关注某样东西，就需要弱化其他不重要的东西。这样他们就不会被别的东西干扰。这其实就是极少主义的本质。（4）

麻省当代艺术博物馆的一个装置艺术让我对简单性和复杂性性的整合有了更深一些理解。在一个大跨度的由旧厂房改造的展厅，大概三十个特殊装置被安装在天花板上。每一个都装有一叠白色复印纸，每隔一两秒钟，一张一张地将这些纸释放出来。不对，事实上，我并不确定是否每一个装置都采用相同的时间间隔。从这个展厅走过，观看白纸在空中飘荡慢慢地落下，非常美妙。让我想起初春华盛顿湖滨的樱花和深秋麻省西部的枫树林。(4)

Simplicity & complexity (4)

I am approaching an idea of simple in my architectural works. I want to understand simplicity not as a rigid minimalism ideal, in which a formula toward spareness is almost religiously pursued, but to see it as a composition of forms, materials, and textures that is fundamentally “quite.” Maya Lin

“Too many color make one achromatopsia; too many tones make one asonia.” Chinese ancient wisdom reveals the truth of perception. If you want to show people something, you should eliminate all other unnecessary elements so they won’t get distracted. This is the essence of minimalism.

Nowadays, people live in a built environment, both the buildings and the landscapes, that always has been over designed. For instance, the street medium that I can see from my window is planted like a botanic garden even though there is no access to it. When designers want to make the landscape rich, they actually make them chaos; while they want to make something pure, they make it boring. Nothing is really meaningful and memorable.

What is the key of making landscape intricate yet pure, simple yet rich? Or how to integrate simplicity and complexity in the design?


Ann Hamilton's 'Corpus'

An art installation in Mass MOCA (Museum of Contemporary Art) helped me to understand more about the integration of simplicity and complexity. In a large span previously old factory gallery space, about thirty special devices were installed on the ceiling. Each one held a thick layer of white paper and released them sheet by sheet every couple second. No, wait a minute; I am not sure whether every device had the same interval. It was a fantastic experience walking through the extensive space and watching the slowly falling white paper dancing in the air. It reminded me some memorable landscape like the cherry bloom in Washington D.C. in the early spring, and a maple woods in west Massachusetts in the late fall.

I am not sure whether the artist was inspired by some landscape like that, but the work does give visitors a unique experience that only nature can offer: it is simple, pure, clear, touching, quite, meditative, yet rich, intricate, diverse, unpredictable, dynamic and powerful. Thirty identical simple devices were given life and spirit just because the artist added the most important composition, time, in this work. “Visual complexity in a designed outdoor space results when a particular order combines a variety of sensory impressions with some sort of coherence”, “the optimal degree of complexity for providing the most pleasant experience lies somewhere between two extremes.” Yes, the significance of this work is mostly due to the successful integration of two extreme, simplicity, which is because of the strict order of physical elements, and complexity, which is because of the randomness of individual movement schedule. Without the strict order, on the assumption that the paper color or size is various, visitor’s attention will be distracted from the timing element and dispersed into different aspects of the installation; while, without the randomness of individual movement schedule, the installation will be monotone and boring.

Simplicity & complexity (3)

“五色令人目盲，五音令人耳聋”，越来越多的人工建成的居住和生活场所或者缺乏设计，或者太多的设计，隔离了人对阳光、空气、水以及自然生命的直接感知。张唐景观理念 www.ztsla.com

When Richard Serra did his minimalism sculpture “Shift” in 1972 (the year I was born), china was in the middle of the great revolution. When Maya Lin won “Vietnam Veterans Memorial” competition in 1982, China just started to open its door to west culture and the schools were still in Soviet Russian system. 10 years later when I was in an architecture school in southwest China, we were mainly taught early modernism. We heard about Lin’s memorial design only because she is a Chinese and we people felt proud of her success in such an event. Almost another 10 years later, when I was working in Beijing, I started to hear “minimalism garden” and “Peter Walker”. But design profession was in such a fast pace that no designer had time to really think and explore something beyond real projects. I knew nothing about minimalism other than those names.

Those experiences explain why I was shocked when I was in Dia Beacon Museum facing those minimalism art works. Since then, I always kept mind on the topic of simplicity and the work of artists such as Richard Serra, Walter de Maria, Michael Heizer, Carl Andre, Robert Smithson and Richard Long. To know something is easy but to truly understand something is much harder. I have read a lot about minimalism and its influence on modern and contemporary design. My previous boss, Martha Schwartz, once told me that, artists were always exploring new ideas; Architects falled a little bit behind of the artists while the landscape architects were very behind. I would never agree with her if I did not spend time to learn the influence of art in the field of architecture and landscape architecture in later 20th century.

Richard Serra's Shift

Robert Smithson's Spiral Jetty

Here I want to skip the section of (my understanding of) the roots and the influence of minimalism movement. Maybe in the future I will write more about this. But right now, I want to focus on what I am really interested, the relationship between simplicity and complexity.

Yes, like professor Cardasis said, simplicity is unachievable and complexity is unavoidable. But I felt there is something more about it. For couple years, I lived in New England by the Atlantic Ocean and had chance to see the most significant landscape and natural phenomena. Facing the endless ocean and the seamless sky, I knew that the real beauty lies on the integration of simplicity and complexity. Who can tell me is ocean simple or complex? It is just one simple landscape, but also is the single most complex landscape: the wave and the rhythm, the light and reflection, the color and the mood, the tide and the sound, everything is changing. Together they make this single landscape simple and strong, yet super complex and rich.

It is a cliché: opposite always contains each other, like Ying and Yang. Successful minimalism works, such as Lin’s Memorial and Walker’s Tanner Fountain, concealed certain complexity under their simple appearances; while significantly complex looking works, such as Beijing Olympic “bird-nest” and “water cube”, follow very simple aesthetic principles and rules. The stronger the contrasting of integrated two characters is, the higher level a work can finally achieve.

I know, what I want to pursue in my work is neither simplicity nor complexity, but both.

所谓地产冬天

朋友说估计地产到今年四、五月份会触底然后开始回暖。我很怀疑，觉得许多人严重低估了未来两三年可能面临的严峻局面。

走在街上，看到五十米不到的一段沿街商铺，居然有六家售房中介公司，可见目前国内的房地产泡沫有多大。在美国的时候，关注过一下地产的泡沫问题，经历了七八年的红火之后，05年开始逐渐降价，当时就有不少人预言在过半年一年开始回暖，事实上，就算没有这次的经济危机，三年过去，房地产还没有回暖的迹象。而就算当时最红火的时候，也没有听说微软或沃尔玛在投资房地产，也没有出现沿街一溜售房中介公司的火爆局面。我不是地产经济的专业人士，无法知道目前的问题到底有多严重。不过作为一个靠常识去判断事物的人，我知道如果连联想和海尔都在投资房地产，问题只怕不小，不会是几个月或半年时间就能改善的。

当然，作为相关行业从业人员的我们，在以后的几年必然会受到很大影响。那么我们的策略是什么呢？

首先要做的是端正态度改变观念：地产业面临的不是冬天和随后的回暖，而是行业高利润时代的永远结束。作为和地产相关的设计师在过去是社会高收入阶层，随着整个行业的正常化，收入会减少和趋于正常化。

其次是利用这两三年机会提高自己：行业飞速发展的阶段往往意味着产品的粗制滥造。下来的几年我们会有时间仔细推敲和思考，是一个弥补自己知识结构缺陷的机会。做惯了大而空，快而粗的大项目，要仔细安下心来做小项目并不是每个人都能做到的。

最后，景观设计行业将会更多元化，不再是占据目前主导的大型市政绿地广场项目和大型房地产项目两个市场。市场会进一步细分，行业也会变得更宽。因此我们要做的是去挖掘新的市场和努力拓展行业。

这篇文章写于鼠年岁末最后一天，算是对本命年的一个告别。

Simplicity & complexity (2)

Every student from architecture school knows ‘less is more’, but only few know what it really means. I wasn’t one of them. Although I could appreciate Mies van der Rohe’s German Pavilion, I had hard time to appreciate something that seems to be an empty canvas.

The Dia Beacon museum is an impressive renovation of an old paper factory. Landscape was designed by Robert Irwin, a minimalism artist who also designed landscape for Getty center. Inside is massive space filled with huge super simple art pieces. Everything was fine before I saw a huge painting that occupied the whole wall (later on I learned it was a work of Agnes Martin). To be honest, it took me couple minutes to convince myself that there was REALLY NOTHING on the canvas except white paint. No other colors and no forms. NOTHING! Other pieces did not give me less surprise than this one: huge holes of different forms on the ground by Michael Heizer, Walter De Maria's Equal Series, Richard Serrra’s cor-ten steel wall. All of these works were so different with what I had been taught and saw before. Actually, I felt those works very disturb, boring and non-inspiring. I was kind of confused during the visiting, but I had to admit that those works are really impressive and gave me much stronger visual impact than any of the art pieces I had ever seen before.

Agnes Martin

Michael Heizer's North East South West

Richard Serra's Ellipses

Walter De Maria's Equal Series


To be frankly, I did not like those pieces at that point, but I strongly realized the power of simplicity.

公共和私有

刚去美国的时候，不太分的清公共(Public)和私有(Private)的区别，主要是因为别人的公共和私有概念和我们不太一样。美国城市里真正公共的东西不多，并不是对公众开放的地方就是公共的。政府有一些政策鼓励私有空间公共化，同时也鼓励私人机构对公共项目的捐款投资。以纽约为例，曾经有一个时期，著名的中央公园由于缺乏维护资金，破坏的很厉害，成了吸毒犯罪者聚集的地方。后来有一个私人机构来出资维护，改善了整个区域的环境，政府或纳税人不用花钱，所有的人都可以享受。当然受益的还有出资的私人机构，因为他们大都是住在中央公园周边的有钱人。整体环境的改善大大地提升了周边房产的品质。比较近期的例子是曼哈顿沿哈德逊河的一个改造项目。通过改造，开发商获得了沿河岸高品质公寓群，城市获得了一个开放式滨河带状公园。社区内部私有庭院在一天的大多时间也是对公众开放的。公共和私有的共生对于双方是互利互惠的。

按理说在社会主义的中国发展公共设施和公共环境是理所当然和很受重视的，但就我在上海这几个月的观察，发现事实并非如此。过去十多年，如此大规模的城市改造本来应该是一个很好的改善城市整体环境的机会。房子修了不少，高档社区修了不少，但城市整体环境并没有得到响应提升，或者说城市公共环境并没有乘机得到相应提升。政府所规定的绿地率改善的只是社区内部的私有环境，对于整个城市来说，一个片区的改造只意味着更多的建筑和沿街围墙。对于住在所谓高档社区里的人来说，也就围墙内巴掌大的一个室外环境，围墙之外照样还是改造之前乱七八糟的公共环境。

如果每一个新建社区都把私有庭院贡献出来由城市共享，一个改造项目就可以带动一个片区的公共环境改造。每一个社区居民在公共环境改造中贡献一份力量的结果是：失去的是围墙内巴掌大的私有庭院，得到的是围墙外成体系的高品质公共环境。