Eternal Peace.

A posting from Poetry Café

This year, the International Horticulture Expo is being held in Xi’An, China. The expo has already had over 1 million visitors – and there will be about 12 million more until October. This year’s theme is “eternal peace and harmony between nature and mankind”. The idea is to use the Expo to show how to ”nurture the future earth and co-exist in peace. There is also a set of “master gardens” from leading landscape architects like Martha Schwartz’s “Garden of Labyrinth” that are worth seeing.

Martha Schwartz says “gardens can be regarded as anything but marks of buildings. They exist ubiquitously in every corner of a city. In the Xi’an International Horticultural Expo, I designed a labyrinth with both Chinese and American characteristics. It can be seen as a bold attempt and exploration in expressing western culture by means of Chinese architecture, and the crystallization of the blends of Chinese and American cultures.”

The Architizer.com blog interpretes her garden like this: spaces are laid out not necessarily to showcase horticulture, but to curate a set of movements and views. And the act of leading a crowd through a public space, inevitably, is embedded with some implicit political value. Her monolithic grey walls and sharp, angled perspectives — as well as the mirrored glass and ambiguity of visibility — speak a language that’s far more political than the exhibition may have intended. One interpretation is a reference to the impenetrability of the Chinese government, and the silence of activists like Ai Weiwei lost within its maze of closed doors and thick walls.

Situated at the intersection of landscape, art, and urbanism, Martha Schwartz Partners is committed to the design of urban landscapes and the public realm as the foundation for sustainable cities that are healthy across all aspects and sectors of urban life.

Links
International Horticultural Exposition
Website Martha Schwartz

Gardens can be regarded as anything but marks of buildings. Martha Schwartz”

Architizer Blog