Investigations On "Embodiment" In Landscape Design Of University Campus

Colleges and universities play important roles in cultivating specialized talents, carrying forward the excellent traditional culture and promoting the construction of socialist spiritual civilization, therefore a reasonable and humane design of the university landscape is the foundation to build healthy and comfortable living space and humanistic space, meanwhile meet people’s functional requirements and aesthetical needs, such as daily life, teaching and entertainment. Besides the general functionality, artistry and ecology principles, the university landscape design should especially follow the people-oriented policy and focus on combining the embodiment which the major participants form. Moreover, the university landscape design should be carried out based on the integrity and multi-dimensional correlation of senses(seeing, hearing, touching, smelling) in order to remain the landscape formed naturally and create a consummate humanistic environment. Thus, a dialectical unity of landscape, human being and environment could be achieved, and the function of university cultivating people and rejuvenating the country could be maximized. Embodiment is the aesthetic experience and psychological reaction produced by the interaction between people and environment where human beings live. It is a sensation and cognition of the subjects to the objects, as well as an abstract dynamic process of both perceptual knowledge and theoretical experience. The interactivity and educational features resulting from experiencing this process are indispensable important factors, which have great guiding significance for the field of modern landscape design.Currently, our country has gained remarkable achievement in improving and optimizing the functionalities and aesthetics of environment in the field of landscape design. However, an integrated system has not been constituted that how people interact with landscape from the perspective of experiencing. Compared to the lagging state of theoretical research and academic literature in our country, more mature and integrated researches on planning and implementation of humanistic landscape construction in university landscape design have been done abroad.Hence, this paper takes Environmental Psychology and Maslow’s hierarchy of needs as the theoretical foundation, and the behaviour and experience of participants as well as the relationship between human and environment summarized in People Places: Design Guidelines for Urban Open Space as the design principle. By the analytical method of “5W+1H”, this paper aims to explain how embodiment provides an important guideline for landscape design. Besides, plenty of examples are analyzed through a research method which combines field investigation, literature analysis, synthetical analysis and physical planning. Furthermore, through deep investigation on the inner landscape design of Huaibei Normal University, this paper discusses the improvements that need to be carried out and provides a detailed design scheme for Siyuan Square and the surrounding areas of Xiangshan Campus. It is reasonable that the early landscape design policy of Huaibei Normal University took the greening requirement as the top priority. However, with the change of the times and the society, different kinds of problems that caused by the Interactive experience between people and the interaction space of the university landscape become more and more noticeable, so it is necessary to reorganize and improve the landscape situation of university. Taking three classifications of the interaction space of university landscape as an example, here illustrates some problems in the landscape design of Huaibei Normal University: 1. In the dynamic interaction space, there is no obvious partitions between the roadway and the pavement, which has safety risks and will cause traffic snags. 2. The lack of entertainment facilities and parking space in the interaction space where people may stay will result in minor or serious traffic block. 3. Some facilities of the compound interaction space violate the people-oriented principle so that they cannot meet people’s basic need of activities. Finally, a specific design scheme to improve the landscape design of Huaibei Normal University is raised, which combines the early plan, the mid-term experience and the later feedback. This paper just acts as an start of such investigations on “embodiment” in landscape design of university campus, in order to create an pleasant outdoor environment for the activities of the community in universities and colleges, thus to make universities be a harmonious and efficient spiritual carrier to spread and share the campus cultural information through experiencing with the outside.