Peking University, Apr. 28, 2014: On April 24th, the eighth lecture of PKU Master Class Series of "Ecological Civilization and Beautiful Land" took place in the Zhong Hua Hall of the Lake View Hotel.

Jiang Yi, academician of Chinese Academy of Engineering, started his speech with the question "why we need architecture", pointing out that architectural landscape was designed to create a space different from the outdoor environment.

Thus he introduced the interrelations among architecture, landscape architecture and ecological civilization, indicating that the era of ecological civilization, after the era of agricultural civilization and industrial civilization, had already come.

Jiang Yi

Integrating with domestic realities, Jiang demonstrated the major problems confronting China's ecological civilization construction, which included the tightening energy supplies, severe environmental pollution, deteriorating ecological system, and the challenge caused by climatic changes and the low-carbon development mode.

With the support of rich and credible data, Mr. Jiang illustrated the gap between China and other countries and explained the complexity and difficulty of achieving building energy conservation in China. 

The site of the lecture

In the speech, he discussed why the situation of architectural energy-consumption was so different at home and abroad. Instead of believing "human beings control everything", he advised people to promote an ecological civilization for the purpose of lowering energy-consumption and achieving an overall harmony with nature.

He also spoke highly of Chinese traditional virtues of "diligence" and "frugality", and made some specific suggestions and instructions in respect to both the national construction design and the daily life planning of individuals.
 
On behalf of PKU, Yu Kongjian, dean of College of Architecture and Landscape Architecture, extended great gratitude to Jiang Yi and praised his lecture as informative and remarkable. "Jiang's speech was really inspiring and it could break down the misconceptions people usually have on energy saving," said Yu.

Yu Kongjian

As an expert in energy, Zhang Dongxiao, dean of PKU College of Engineering, further explained some other important issues and complemented Jiang on his suggestions about energy saving and emission reduction.

Zhang Dongxiao

"China's environmental protection work has a long way to go," Zhang said, "Mr. Jiang's speech is significant to popularizing the knowledge of energy-saving and emission-reducing and promoting the efficiency of energy consuming."

Background Information:

Jiang Yi, academician of Chinese Academy of Engineering and expert in architectural and environmental engineering. Born in April 1952 in Beijing, he acquired doctorate degree of thermal physical engineering in Qsinghua University in 1985.

As one of the advocates of the subject of artificial environmental engineering, he firstly proposed the idea and method of "Design by Simulation (DEST)", and developed the large DEST software to implement this new design. With this method, more than 10 air conditioning designs of commercial architecture, the energy-saving transformation of nearly 40 star-rated hotels and the transformation of heat-supply networks of more than 10 major cities have been established around China.

Jiang, with 100 papers published in renowned academic journals, has won the Second Price of National Scientific and Technological Progress Award once and the First Prize of Provincial Scientific and Technological Progress Award twice.

Since 2013, the Master Class Series of "Ecological Civilization and Beautiful Land", was undertook by PKU Alumni Association, and co-organized by PKU Science Park, PKU News, Landscape Architecture magazine and Landscape website. All the lectures are open to the public, inviting people from all fields to participate in the discussion of environmental issues.

Written by: Wang Yawen
Edited by: Li Wenrui
Source: College of Architecture and Landscape Architecture