Living Construction

Nature, as the summation of space and time,
propagates and varies between heaven and
earth, following the order of seasons. Agriculture and
construction were once the best job human beings
could impetrate, people working and recuperating in
accordance with propagation of nature and venation
of topographic environment, reaching a balance
between human's
demands and giving from nature.
Bamboo, absorbing spiritual power from nature,
growing between the shifts of seasons, solidarizes
firmly with nature. Bamboo cannot serve as primary
materials when the construction is applied to resist
the abrasion from time, or to seek for eternity. When
the lifespan of construction conforms to the rhythm
of nature, bamboo, as the significant primordial
material in Chinese daily life and culture realm,
becomes the sustainable material possessing most
naturality.
Teachers and students from School of Architecture,
Southeast University(SEU), conducts teaching
and practice based on the conception of Living
Construction in the regions south of the Yangtze
River, with most prosperous culture of rice cultivation
—— mountainous area of Lin’an, Zhejiang Province,
and reticula lake area of Yixing, Jiangsu Province.
Following the supersedure in the law of nature, the
primordial material of bamboo abound in the local
area was chosen, adopting primitive technics and
craftship, to construct agriculture infrastructures
as duck pens for natural farming of Rice-duck
Mutualism in the paddy field. During the process of
construction, the understanding of the relationships
between human and earth, production and
propagation, construction and nature are pursued,
the locality and sustainability of materials and chosen
technics in rural context are discussed, likewise,
how the once enduring unremitting cultivation and
construction in nature could survive and regenerate
in the conditions du jour of mass production and
excessive consumption.