Dean's Journal
On Wednesday, September 14, I flew to Beijing to teach for two weeks in the new Department of Landscape Architecture in the School of Architecture at Tsinghua University. In advance, Assistant Dean for Administration Raquel Elizondo and I had made arrangements for ongoing communication while I was in China.
Francisco "Paco" Arumí-Noé. Photograph by Dana Norman.
Our ability to connect across continents and time zones is a marvel. As a result of email and my cell phone, I was able to remain connected to events in Austin, which brought first good news, then sad. We learned on September 14 from the Landscape Architecture Accreditation Board that our Master of Landscape Architecture degree achieved "candidacy" status, the first step toward accreditation. This happy news was quickly overshadowed by the death of our colleague, Professor Paco Arumí-Noé. With considerable intelligence, enthusiasm, and good humor, Paco pioneered the rigorous study of climate in design. He established the program that has become our M.S. in Sustainable Design. Paco was always trying to convince me to mount a sundial on the south face of Goldsmith Hall, while always carefully reminding me that it really didn't face true south. I enjoyed watching his students explore sun angles with their models around the School. The shadows of September and of the equinox will always remind me of Paco. In that light, I am committed to identifying a suitable location for a sundial in memory of Paco's many contributions.
Located at the heart of the oldest area on Tsinghua campus is the imposing auditorium. Construction on what is now one of the favorite buildings on campus began in September 1917 and concluded in March 1920. In its day, it was the largest auditorium of its kind at a university in China and could seat the entire faculty, staff and student body for school assemblies. Photograph courtesy of Tsinghua University.
Tsinghua University has an interesting history. When eight Western nations overthrew the last Chinese emperor in 1911, they then demanded to be reimbursed for the costs of their troops. To our credit, the United States returned some of the funds for educating Chinese youth. Tsinghua was founded as a prep school for American universities and evolved into a university itself. Its original campus was designed by the American architect Henry Murphy (1877-1954) on the summer palace grounds of Qing Dynasty princes. With its large lawn and prominent domed focal building, the older campus looks like the University of Virginia and its many American followers. (Murphy went on to design the nearby Beijing University campus, this time with an Eastern motif. But, he got many details of Chinese iconography wrong, using tomb elements in academic buildings, for instance).
The older campus with its wonderful assemblage of brick buildings, lakes, and green spaces is called the "red" campus. The newer "white" campus has been built since the late 1980s and is more monumental in scale with an odd mix of both Soviet and American influences.
The School of Architecture was established in 1946 by Liang Sicheng (1901-1972), who had been a student of Paul Cret's at Penn. The undergraduate architecture curriculum maintains some Beaux-Arts influences, such as required watercolor drawing. The five-year undergraduate architecture degree exposes students to a broad range of related fields including planning, landscape architecture, historic preservation, and urban design. Two years ago, they established a Master of Landscape Architecture degree. Penn Professor-in-Practice and our former Ruth Carter Stevenson Chair Laurie Olin became the first chair of the new Department of Landscape Architecture. He asked me to be a visiting professor. During my two-week stay, I gave six lectures and worked with a team of students and faculty in their graduate landscape planning studio. I discussed the curriculum, research, and staffing challenges and opportunities facing a new academic program in a well-established school.
The studio project is called "Three Hills and Five Gardens: From Garden to Landscape." The location is the northwest section of Beijing, in an area famous for the imperial gardens of the Ming and Qing Dynasties. The area has important cultural, historic, scenic, and natural values and is facing intense development pressure from real estate and high-tech interests.
While in Beijing, I met with Austinite Robin Rather (who is a member of our Center for Sustainable Development advisory committee) and two of her Earth Council Alliance colleagues, Dr. Marcelo Carvalho de Andrade from Brazil and Darrell Erb from Eugene, Oregon. They were in China to build bridges with conservation groups, including non-governmental organizations, universities, and government agencies. We discussed the prospect of a UN North American sustainability conference in Austin next June (2006).
Also in Beijing, I watched from a great distance as Hurricane Rita approached the Texas coast. I was touched by the sincere concern expressed by my Chinese colleagues. As Rita came ashore, another tropical storm in the China Sea, called Typhoon Damrey (the Cambodian word for elephant), brought destruction to the Chinese coast. As with the hurricanes in the Gulf of Mexico, this was the second destructive storm within the past month. Hurricanes cannot be avoided. However, the loss of life and property can be minimized through environmental design and planning.
I spent considerable time in China talking about the prospects for environmental planning and landscape architecture. My Tsinghua host, Professor Yang Rui, deputy department chair and director of the Tsinghua Institute for Resource Protection and Tourism Planning, believes that landscape architecture can help China address many of its environmental and urban challenges. I agree with him, but this promise will only be realized if we have the wisdom to learn from Katrina and Rita and their Chinese counterparts, that is, if we learn to design with nature.
—Fritz Steiner
