A red footbridge, that is both a path, a bench and a source of light, winds its way like a ribbon along the river and marks a recreational area which used to be a dump; fish farms attract visitors to their landscape of isles and gardens and the Olympics’ forest park provides the landscape setting for the Olympic venues: China’s landscape architects are internationally up to the mark.

It is the building boom in China, the rapid and rigorous reshaping of its cities as well as solitary landmark buildings by internationally renowned architects that has shaped both the discussions in specialist circles and China’s image in the media. When thinking about Chinese landscape architecture, however, this has so far mainly evoked pictures of ancient imperial garden splendours, huge open spaces characteristic of socialist planning or green and intermediate spaces with patches of grass, ornamental flower borders and scant lines of trees. In its exhibition "greening" ifa gallery Stuttgart will present groundbreaking approaches to landscape architecture in China beyond nostalgia and arbitrary internationalisms.

The younger among the planners have intensively concerned themselves with Chinese landscape architecture and its underlying philosophy. In addition they are well familiar with and aware of the most recent results in biotechnological and ecological research. They develop innovative and sustainable solutions for dealing with nature and the environment, the design of green spaces and for the conversion of industrial wasteland, as can be seen in Yu Kongjian and his Turenscape office’s 2006 "The Red Ribbon - Tanghe River Park" in Qinhuangdao. These designers and planners manage to create awareness in public or private clients for new approaches that are both ecologically sustainable and aesthetically ambitious in their design. Other examples include the Zhongguancun Software Park north-west of Beijing or the archipelagic island gardens in Xiamen Bay for 2007’s China International Garden Show by Wang Xiangrong and Atelier DYJG. Turenscape and Atelier DYJG are typical for the "greening" in Chinese landscape planning.

Apart from these two Beijing offices the exhibition will also show two other projects that couldn’t be any different from each other: one on a small scale, the other Beijing’s large-scale project par excellence. Mima Design Workshop, a young team of architects, built a small café near the Imperial Summer Palace, in which the borderlines between inner and exterior space, between nature and culture seem to dissolve. The Olympic forest park, on the other hand, is one of the mega-projects for the Olympic Games: the plan by Tsinghua University, Beijing, for the forest park that is both a recreational and a nature reserve covers an area of 7 square kilometres and is based on Hideo Sasaki’s master plan for the Olympic park. The directives for Hu Jie’s designs for the forest park were the development of a lung for Beijing by applying the most recent bio-ecological methods and technologies besides creating a vivid implementation of traditional symbolism.

Philosophy, religion, symbolism and the attitude towards nature are the cornerstones for the traditionally close relationship between garden and landscape architecture, literature and the fine arts. There are also young Chinese artists who deal with nature and landscape explicitly: within the exhibition the photographic and video work of Cindy Ng Sio Ieng and Liu Wei will serve as examples in which they will perceive, interpret and represent anew two prime subjects of Chinese landscape images and natural philosophy: water and mountain.

The exhibition is accompanied by a fully illustrated 88 pages catalogue, with essays by Valerie Hammerbacher, Yu Kongjian, Hu Jie and others. Available at ifa for the price of 14 Euros.