URBAN GREEN

Is it too late to talk about the Beijing Olympics - a spectacular global event that took place over half a year ago?

Needless to say, the party is over. But for residents of Beijing, the legacy of those games are still being felt in the form of the Olympic Forest Park - a green area located to the north of the city. The park was opened last July and has become popular among Beijing residents. The park also served as sport stadiums for tennis and hockey competitions during the Olympic Games.

For Prof Hu Jie, well known Chinese landscape architect who helped design this project, "The park is the facility that helped China win the competition to host the games." In winning the bid to host the 2008 Olympics, the Beijing government promised the International Olympic Committee (IOC) they would create an additional Olympic forest park around the sport facilities to help absorb carbon emissions and protect the environment.

As the park was to be used as a civilian space and public park after the games, the Beijing government earmarked 2.2 billion Chinese yuan, or 11.6 billion baht for the project. Such an amount of money for a public park seems staggering. But Beijing - the ancient city with breathtaking gardens like the Summer Palace or Beihai Park near the Forbidden City - has a soft spot for parks and gardens.

Chinese people, said Hu Jie, also a native of Beijing, have a special love affair with public spaces. "Beijing residents love to hang out, socialise or exercise in public parks."

For instance, at Ho Hai - a famous tourist spot around the lake and a green area, Chinese women practice aerobic dance until late at night. During the day, many people bring reclining chairs and tea pots are ubiquitous.

Hu Jie - now director of the Planning and Design Branch of Landscape Architecture at the Beijing Tsinghua Urban Planning and Design Institute at Tsinghua University - was chief designer of the Olympic Forest Park. Previously, he was an architect at Sasaki Associates - a famous US-based landscape design firm. The firm subsequently won the Beijing government's design competition for the Olympic Park - the reason Hu Jie returned to his homeland.

Born in an academic family, Hu Jie aspired to become an architect like his parents. But he had special eyes on landscape design, traditional Chinese gardens in particular.

"I always had a passion for traditional Chinese garden design. For me, it is unique ... beyond the matter of trees and gardening. Chinese traditional gardens must hold the elements to imitate natural beauty and convey poetic sense," he said.

Hu Jie later pursued masters and doctoral degrees in the US on landscape design and worked there over a decade.

He said he is still glad to be a part of the 2008 Olympics - a major event in modern Chinese history. "I would say the making of the Olympic Forest Park was tantamount to the making of the Summer Palace ... only it is still much cheaper," Hu Jie said, joking on the extravagant vacation garden palace.

Started in 2004, the authorities had to remove two villages for construction. To develop the area in a limited time, 530,000 trees were taken from forests elsewhere to transplant at the park, as well as beautiful rocks from mountains in the provinces.

The difficulty of construction was not only the scale and limited time frame. To make sure good environmental standards were followed, the Beijing government invited environmental organisations German Technical Cooperation (GTZ) and Greenpeace to audit the construction work.

To reduce fossil fuel consumption, construction materials came from recycled materials or at least from areas in the vicinity of Beijing. Four million cubic metres of soil excavated from the construction sites of the Bird's Nest, Water Cube and other facilities were reused to build artificial hills in the park.

The authorities decided not to use popular mainstream waste-water treatment because it consumes large amounts of electricity; a natural wetland system was built to use natural plants to filter out waste and toxic elements.

Energy consumed in the park is mostly clean. There are no electric wires as most of the light bulbs and other electric appliances are run by solar and geothermal energy.

There is imitation agricultural land, and underwater corridors for park-goers to observe wetland ecology from a different view.

A small tower was built for birds to live in. Beijing has had problems with birds nesting under the roofs of ancient palaces. "Now birds migrate to our new park. People even said this place is the real Bird's Nest ... not the National Stadium,"he said.

Located north of Beijing, the park - as large as 680 hectares, or almost 12 Lumphini Parks combined - has become the ancient city's largest public park. The park helps improve the environment of the city. Half a million trees will help absorb 7,200 tonnes of global-warming inducing emissions per year. The park will purify oxygen worth 5,400 tons annually for the polluted city.

For those who are interested in feng shui, the system of laws governing spatial arrangement, the park is a rare civil structure being built according to the feng shui concept - once taboo in communist mainland China. Feng shui is an ancient Chinese system of aesthetics believed to utilise the laws of both heaven (astronomy) and earth (geography) to help one improve life by receiving positive qi (energy). Traditional feng shui practice requires an extremely accurate Chinese compass, or luo pan, and astrological data of the property owner in order to determine the directions in finding any auspicious sector in a desired location.

Well known among superstitious Chinese, the belief is still a hush-hush subject in mainland China, its birth place. Calling the traditional belief bogus science, the Communist Party banned feng shui - along with other traditional beliefs and religions since it took control of the country in 1949. Practitioners were prosecuted during the Cultural Revolution.

Hu Jie said the design team respects the surroundings. "We began with an in-depth historical and traditional analysis of the city and location."

The park is located at the north end of the "central axis" of Beijing and thus has a great influence on the feng shui of Beijing. As long as 7.8km, this imaginary axis serves as a reference point for construction in Beijing. Running from the south, it included the ancient Qianmen gate and ran to the Imperial Palace and other ancient monuments. Nowadays, this axis contains major ancient and contemporary landmarks such as Chairman Mao's Mausoleum, Tian'anmen, the Forbidden City - to the Drum and Bell Towers at the north of the city, according to Hu Jie. The new park and Olympic stadiums, including the famous Bird's Nest (National Stadium) and Water Cube (National Aquatics Centre), are also located on the axis.

Within the park, all features are designed and built to appear natural. The 48-metre mountain was constructed and a large lagoon in the shape of a dragon was dug with cascades of water to enhance natural likeness. To respect the city's feng shui, the highest point of the mountain is exactly on the central axis line, with a lagoon nest in front - a perfect location according to feng shui.

"As a national landmark project, the Olympic Forest Park must respect the balance and integrity of the axis and the other monuments nearby," he said.

For Hu Jie, public parks like this one are not only parks but evidence of social transformation. In the old days, public space hardly existed. Gardens belonged to elites, feudal lords or the royal dynasty. Ordinary people who wanted to get in touch with nature needed to travel outside their homes.

But the concept of gardens changed over a century ago with the birth of urban areas and cities in the US. Public parks such as Central Park in New York and Park Slope in Brooklyn were created, and that become a trend of urban planning later.

For Hu Jie, the trend of landscape design and public space will become famous in the future as more people move to live in the city. Public space is an essential tool to enhance the quality of life of the people, he said.

For him, good public parks do not have to be beautiful or extravagant; an ideal public park is one with easy public access. As a landscape architect, Hu Jie loves the public park facilities in Boston as all parks work together and are easy to access by the people. The most beautiful park to him is Beihei Park in Beijing and the city that seriously lacks public parks is Shanghai - a place "where even couples do not even have space to act romantically ... or awkwardly holding hands," said Hu Jie.

"There are many gardens in the world that are beautiful. But without people, these parks are just objects for photographing."