Spirit Of Place

As the reforming of China getting deeper in the past 10 years, the economic development and the prosperity of real estate market expedite the requirement of residents of high environmental quality. The essential landscape design for the demand of basic function couldn't satisfy the public aesthetic temperament and interest any more. The landscape design isolated from the subsidiary project of architectural design and became an independent one. Landscape designers are trying to find out a way that reflects not only the feature of the place, but also the usage of the place. The direction of design can be mainly divided into 2 kinds at the aspect of form:1. Imitate and develop the classical garden of China;2. Imitate, even duplicate the style of other countries'view design.But it is difficult to find some good works in both directions these years. The design that we could see is either the simply stacking of materials or the confusing convoluted of languages, and the style is neither Chinese nor western. The designers even sacrifice the demand of function in order to chase a certain form. This situation is resulted from the 3 points below:1. Study of the culture background of landscape designing form is insufficient;2. Because of the building skills and construction craft, the final results are different from the initial design;3. The large construction amounts shorten the designing time cycle.But among these questions, I think the essential problem is the weak culture connotation in the landscape design. That is to say our design has deviated form the cultural foundation. Although the design has combined the two major elements of form and function, the spirit of the place has been abandoned. The spirit of place is an abstract concept. It can't be expressed by a part of the design, even the whole design itself, but can be decided by some complex factors such as the characteristic of place and the designing style.The article contains 3 chapters, and roughly discusses the development of the sprite of place. These 3 chapters will explain the appearance and the development of the place and the spirit of place concepts, analyze the principle of the sprite of place's production in the aspect of history. Chapter 2 will use the modern landscape design concept and the principle of architectural designing to explain the essential factors of spirit of place's...