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.