Rooting Regional Characteristic Culture and Cultivating Students’ Design Consciousness: Taking the Teaching Reform of Architectural Landscape Design as an Example

Haifang HE, Kan ZHENG

College of City Construction, Jiangxi Normal University, Nanchang 330022, China

Abstract China has a vast territory and numerous ethnic groups, forming various regional cultures with different styles.However, the architectural design education in colleges and universities of China used to learn from the West, and there is homogeneity in teaching mode, teaching content, and curriculum system construction, lacking regional cultural characteristics.In the context of regional culture, combined with the cultivation of students’ innovation ability, the teaching of the course of Architectural Landscape Design is discussed in this article, in order to promote the inheritance and development of regional culture in landscape design teaching and promote students to truly understand the artistry and practicality of regional cultural resources.

Key words Regional culture, Architectural landscape design, Design consciousness

1 Introduction

In the age of the Internet, under the background of the influx of foreign thoughts and the tremendous pressure of globalization, more and more people realize the importance of national culture and regional characteristics.The teaching of architectural design education in colleges and universities of China used to learn from the West, and there is homogeneity in teaching mode, teaching content and curriculum system construction, lacking regional cultural characteristics.The Chinese nation has a long and excellent cultural tradition of five thousand years, and it has great cohesion for social and economic development and cultivating talents.Due to vast territory and numerous nationalities, various regional cultures of different styles have been formed in China.Architecture is a tangible product of region.Architecture and city are inseparable from the foil and design of the landscape.Landscape, as a new subject in the 21st century, plays an important role in urban construction.The integration of local characteristic culture into architecture teaching has become a trend in design teaching reform, and the cultivation and improvement of the landscape design consciousness of students of architecture major is particularly worthy of attention.

2 Necessity of regional culture in the course of architectural landscape design

Architectural Landscape Design is a new and highly intersecting discipline.Looking at the curriculum settings of most architectural colleges and universities, the teaching content of Architectural Landscape Design focuses on contemporary architectural landscape design, dominated by city landscape, residential landscape, leisure square landscape and park landscape, and local landscape culture has not been involved enough, causing students to have a one-sided understanding.In the formulation of the teaching objectives of Architectural Landscape Design, there are few relevant settings for the expression of regional culture, and regional cultural resources have not been fully developed and utilized in teaching activities, making the foundation of the students’ knowledge structure single, difficult to meet the society’s demand for compound, comprehensive and innovative talents.Regional culture is traditional culture that has been inherited, has a long history and unique characteristics and still plays a role today, is cultural expression of ecology, folklore, tradition, customs,etc., and is the difference between regions due to the imbalance of social development and imbalance of natural conditions.It is integrated with the environment within a certain geographical range, so it is marked with the regional brand, and is unique.The mining and application of regional culture can promote the formation of architectural teaching characteristics of local colleges and universities and turn them into characteristic resource for running a school.Cultivating students’ sense of local landscape design in architecture teaching not only improves the artistry of landscape design, but also improves the public’s aesthetic awareness to a certain extent.The important thing is to help students take root in the local culture to form an "invisible" force that cannot be ignored, laying a solid foundation for shaping and inheriting regional architectural culture.In the course of Architectural Landscape Design, regional culture is integrated, including the integration of regional natural environment, artistic aesthetics, cultural traditions and other elements into the course construction process, enhancing the cultural identity of students.The traditional ideas and value system of a specific region are inherited and developed through the continuation of regional culture[1].

3 Construction of architectural landscape design from the perspective of regional culture

3.1 Theoretical teaching: consolidating the cultural foundation of studentsArchitectural Landscape Design, as a cross-course, covers the fields of society, culture, nature, disciplines, modern technology and art.It is necessary for students to understand the meaning and development trend of landscape design, as well as to master the methods and procedure of landscape design, in order to cultivate students’ consciousness of landscape design.However, the introduction of regional culture into landscape design cannot be taken as example directly.Instead, people should have a deeper understanding on regional culture.On the basis of grasping the essence, it should provide locals with a sense of identity and belonging more from the perspective of urban regionality, letting people experience the local cultural characteristics and traditions of their own area[2].When regional culture is incorporated into the teaching theory link of curriculum construction, the theoretical knowledge framework will be expanded, historical information of landscape will be mined, and regional history and culture will be refined.Selecting valuable local characteristic resource courses and applying complete local development strategies will promote the development and revival of the architectural landscape and inject new vitality into the place.When taking advantage of the regional connotation of the architectural landscape to teach the interdisciplinary and comprehensive knowledge points of environmental science, anthropology, social development and behavioral psychology and transforming the regional characteristic culture into a space element, teachers need to guide students to find physical carriers that can embody this cultural element, carry out conversion design, and analyze the combination of regional architectural landscape and modern architecture.From the perspective of botany and ecology, the differences and connections between the two are analyzed to provide reference for redesign and innovation[3].

3.2 Art teaching: improving students’ aesthetic qualityArchitectural landscapes are mostly positioned as relying on the natural environment of the region and traditional regional historical context to meet the requirements of modern people in pursuit of high-quality life and create a scenic, recreational and leisure landscape where nature and culture blend, and history and modernity coexist.Architectural landscape design is always rooted in the local environment, and is affected by factors such as local economy, society, humanities, geography and existing buildings.In the teaching system, it can be incorporated into the professional talent training program to form a systematic and gradual art teaching mode, thereby improving students’ aesthetic quality.Art teaching is to cultivate a kind of aesthetic quality for students of architecture major.In the Architectural Landscape Design, the curriculum teaching content with regional characteristics is added, and the visual language of folk art must be combined with real life to achieve innovation in practice and help students form unique aesthetic ability to the regional culture.Teachers should encourage and inspire students to boldly innovate according to the laws and expressions of folk art from the perspective of current real life.They can choose a local landscape that is representative of the local area or has a profound traditional cultural heritage according to local conditions and available resources to make modern people moved by the folk local culture with rich local flavor and provide reference for modern design education.In the art teaching link, materials should be selected according to local conditions.Using the current network media technology, the forms of local art that show different regions and nationalities are incorporated into teaching to continuously enrich teaching methods and let students deeply understand the connection between regional culture and modern landscape design.In the course of teaching, relevant special lectures can be carried out, so that students can listen to the explanations of folk artists face to face, fully understand the connotation of the excellent national art and culture, and be inspired in terms of artistic design inspiration.

3.3 Technical teaching: constructing students’ ecological thinkingMan and nature must develop together.Architecture and landscape design complement each other.The internal and external spaces penetrate each other.The development of city cannot be separated from the joint effect of architecture and landscape, harmonious and symbiotic.The important thing in landscape design is the establishment of a holistic view of the ecosystem.Starting from the whole, a three-dimensional space design that comprehensively considers ecological functions, environmental aesthetics, and human needs is conducted.In the course of Architectural Landscape Design, regional characteristic culture is added to the teaching content, an ecological chain of landscape design is constructed, and students’ holistic and systemic views are cultivated.Cultivating students’ ecological technology thinking starts with cultivating students’ concepts of protecting the environment, maintaining ecological balance, improving the quality of human settlements, improving the quality of the ecological environment, and minimizing human interference and impact on the ecological environment.The natural landscape and vernacular architecture of a certain area are hard to imitate.It has eternal charm.In the teaching process, mining, inheriting and innovating regional cultural elements will effectively improve the pertinence and effectiveness of education and teaching.If students focus on regional characteristic culture in landscape design, their fascination with pure aesthetics and formal beauty will be effectively improved, and they will also be helped to face landscape practice projects under different geographical conditions.

4 Thinking

In the process of cultivating "applied" architectural talents for nearby regions, architectural education in colleges and universities must be based on the law of architectural development, originate from the local area, and highlight the research and practice of local architectural culture.The development of architectural landscape education must adapt to local conditions, combine the characteristics of region, culture and history and combine the advanced concepts of Western landscape architecture, and only in this way can we make progress in cultivating students’ artistic quality, aesthetic sentiment and design consciousness.The cultivation of design quality and consciousness should also vary from person to person.Good design quality is obviously not limited to this.Integrating regional cultural resources into the teaching of design majors in local colleges and universities is helpful for students to truly understand the artistry and practicality of regional cultural resources.