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。

吃亏和占便宜

有一句老话“吃亏是福”，是告劝大家不要怕吃亏。的确，国内的情况总是这样，大家都想方设法地想占点便宜：甲方不给设计费还不停地要这要那，乙方为了能拿到项目只好忍气吞声。甲方自以为占了便宜，其实，乙方一旦拿到项目就会偷工减料，把失去的找回来——如果不是加倍找回来的话。许多垃圾项目就是这样被造出来的。

每个设计公司在除了把设计做好之外都是需要赢利的。如果在项目前期投入成本过高，就只好在设计阶段少花点心思了，设计的品质自然会降低一些。就算个别项目前期投入较小，也需要少花点心思补贴别的项目。如果整个市场的情况都是这样，即便是有个别按市场规律办事不好占便宜的甲方，也会受到一定影响。

说实话，我实在不明白为什么大家不合情合理地做事。

再回头看以上几段时，总觉得哪里不对劲儿：这些都是一些常识啊，别人肯定不会想不到的。一定是这其中还有什么我没想到的地方。

不过，为了事务所的健康发展，保证对委托项目有足够的时间和精力上的投入，确保设计质量，我对于前期投入过大的项目，或者说风险太大的项目只好忍痛割爱。

Economy Downturn

朋友来信说2009年“things may have started not that promising, times are definitely not easy, but at the end we will all be stronger, better focused and truly honest with our wills, dreams and desires”。的确，经济放慢在短期看来是不利的，但从长远地来看，并不是一件坏事——至少，中国景观界是需要放慢节奏的。这样大家才会有时间做一点有利于个人和行业长远发展的思考。

过去的几年，景观行业随着地产业飞速发展。景观设计师作为楼盘美容师，在如火如荼的地产开发和销售中起了重要的作用。现在随着楼市的降温，大家必然会受到不小的冲击。我猜想，其中最大的一个大概会是人才的相对过剩。什么是相对过剩呢？举例来说，5年前，一个15人的景观设计事务所，一两个高级设计师大概有20年以上设计经验，三四个中级设计师大概10年工作经验，五六个有三四年经验的设计师和一些见习设计师。如果行业正常发展，这种配置比例会一直保持下去。随着前几年对景观设计人才需求的急速增长，每个设计师所面临的机会都是空前的。在一个15个人的设计事务所在三五年内发展到150人的规模后，市面上并没有一二十个有20年以上经验的高级设计师，结果一个不到10年经验的设计师就成为高级设计师。这样拔苗助长的结果就是许多设计师没有应有的积累和锻炼，知识结构不健全。在行业相对萎缩后，市场不需要这么多的高级设计师，人才就会相对过剩。事实上，景观的人才应该还是比较缺乏的。

从我自己的经验来说，出国前，我在土人景观和EDSA作室主任。说句老实话，当时我并没有足够的经验积累，之所以能当室主任是因为比起别人来说还是要更有经验能力更强一些——也就是俗话所说‘矮子里选将军’。当然，并没有看轻自己当年这一机会的意思。但是，自己心里很清楚自己的知识结构有缺陷。很幸运，出国这几年这一缺陷得到了弥补。对于别的继续在国内发展的设计师，我想，这一次行业降温应该是一个很好的弥补自己知识结构缺陷的机会。经过这一次洗礼，相信大家会‘stronger, better focused and truly honest with our wills, dreams and desires’。

Simplicity & Complexitiy (1)

“探索自然的复杂性与统一性，简单和复杂之间的转换和平衡，单一元素在外界条件改变下的无穷变化和可能性，以及复杂要素之间单纯的逻辑关系。”张唐景观 理念 www.ztsla.com

My first design studio in U-Mass gave me really a hard time. My professor, a rigorous old gentleman, told me ‘Chinese tend to make things complex and difficult’. I knew what he wanted to say about my design and knew he was right. But when I talked to my other classmates, I used chopstick as an example to demonstrate how Chinese tend to make things simple and easy. Although they nodded through out our conversation, I knew they were not convinced. No America thinks chopstick is simple and easy.

I would not use Chinese classic garden as an example to talk about this issue. To me, at that time, there is nothing simple and easy about it. Since I studied landscape, I never thought about simplicity and complexitiy, and always believed that simple means boring and complex means rich. Actually, I had been proud of myself that I can make some super complicated stuff.

In another studio, when professor Cardasis kept talking about simplicity, I asked him why he was so into simplicity and ignored complexitiy. He said ‘simplicity is something you will never achieve and complexitiy is something you will never avoid’. Due to the hard time in this two design studios, I started to realize that there is a huge difference between simple and boring, between complex and rich.

Before I really pursued simplicity in my design, Ziying and I spent a lot of time to discuss this issue. We went to Dia Beacon Museum, a museum for Dia Art Foundation's renowned collection of minimalist art from the 1960s, to see the root of minimalism design.

I was completely overwhelmed.

Good firm & bad firm

‘There are people who do only conceptual works and never get anything built, and there are people who are really good at building and detailing but don’t have any ideas. And then there are critical practices and a few good firms in the country that are engaged at both levels’ (Ken Smith)

When I worked in EDSA Beijing office, I believed EDSA was one of the best landscape design and planning firms in the states, because it was quite big. And I thought EDAW might be better than EDSA, because it was even bigger, and maybe the biggest one in this field. This was how people in China evaluate a design firm. It is funny, but it is true.

I also remember how I thought about McDonald when I was in Beijing. I really liked it because I thought it was one of the best restaurants in the world: It was always clean and nice-looking. And most importantly, it was one of the biggest chain restaurants in the world.

I feel embarrassed that just 6 years ago I was so naïve about evaluating restaurants and design firms.

To be frankly, even today, the real modern landscape design practice is still new and unfamiliar to most Chinese people. People including well-educated professionals have hard time to tell a good design firm from bad one. The only practical way to evaluate a design firm is to look at its size. It is easy and safe, although it is not necessarily true. Bigger firm means better business, but, unfortunately, good business does not mean good design.