By Ziting Bao and others
A three-day excursion to Belgium left a deep impression to us, we visited many attractive cities and diversified landscape design projects. Well-designed parks, green spaces, and plazas provide ideal places for crowded urban living.
Memorial Word War I landscape of Ypres promote our reflection on the war and view the battlefields as a flow landscape. Verbeke foundation museum evokes our sense of the life cycle and our concern for biodiversity. At Cycling through the Trees in Pijnven forest, bike paths that weave through the trees and delicate small buildings that blend into the forest provide the infrastructure to dive in nature, feel comfortable and quiet.
C-mine Genk gives us a sense of the technological developments of the Industrial Revolution and the power of human being to change nature by manipulating machinery. On the other hand, it makes us think about how these massive machines should be adapted to the demands of present and future as they grow old or lose their original functions.
From the perspective of landscape architects, what role can we play in facing this dynamic and uncertainty future? Perhaps through effective landscape design, we can offer more and more vibrant and inclusive open spaces, providing facilities for people to enjoy nature, or promoting the revitalization of historic areas and the renovation of declining areas.
More and in depth impressions of participants of the Belgium excursion follow soon!
