The Pairi Daiza, meaning paradise in ancient Persia, is located 60 km away from Brussels, capital of Belgium. The Chinese
garden Figure 2 in this zoo was built in 2006, covers an area of 45,000 ㎡, and is considered the largest Chinese park in
Europe. The design of this park mainly considers two questions: firstly, how to combine a Chinese garden with local Chinese
animals, secondly, how to combine the Chinese garden with consuming activities.
The answer to the first question was to build a long zigzag corridor Figure 3, 4. The linear space of a corridor brings
tourists with a sense of guidance, and the zigzag shape leads the tourists’ sight to both sides of the corridor. Thus, the two
sides become a perfect space for animals’ exhibition. The long zigzag corridor covers almost half of the Chinese garden,
which is rarely seen in traditional Chinese gardens, and the
design of combining corridor with local Chinese animals and plants is also scarce in modern landscape design.
The answer to the second question, how to combine the Chinese garden with consuming behavior, is to build some
group buildings associated with courtyards, such as a teahouse Figure 5, a footbath room and a Chinese restaurant. These
buildings located at the entrance and existence of the Chinese garden.
From above we can see, most of the area has nothing to do with consuming behavior, but how could the zoo profit from these
facilities? While the visitors are wandering in the zoo, they are immersed in the atmosphere which contains not only the
animals, plants, but also all kinds of experiences. These integral activities increase the zoo’s attractiveness and as a result
increase the tourists’ number.
4. The Simplex Cultural Consuming Type ——taking example
of Yu Garden in Hamburg Figure 6
Chart 1 shows that most of the overseas Chinese gardens in simple cultural consuming type have little popularity and some
of them are even gradually dying out. How did the simple cultural consuming type come into being? A typical case below
shows the inherent characteristics of the simple cultural
consuming type. The Yu Garden in Hamburg, Germany was built up in 2008.
The motivation for construction was to build an arena for holding Chinese cultural activities. While the investment is
from Yu Garden Company, a private company in shanghai, the garden had been seeking to make profit since its opening until
2013. In 2010, only 2 years after its completion, the Yu Garden in Hamburg was closed as a result of non-profitable earnings
and building decay. It was not until 3 years later in 2013, that the Yu Garden in Hamburg was opened up again. This time it
was managed and funded by the Confucius College in Hamburg University, and the outcome of the transformation
remains to be seen. Looking back to the process of this project, the choice of
location had nothing to do with the designers: the government leader actually chose the site without any market survey. and
Figure 3.the long corridor in Pairi Daiza Image source: taken by the author
Figure 4.the animals in Pairi Daiza Image source: taken by the author
Figure 5.the tea house in Pairi Daiza Image source: taken by the author
25th International CIPA Symposium 2015, 31 August – 04 September 2015, Taipei, Taiwan
This contribution has been peer-reviewed. doi:10.5194isprsarchives-XL-5-W7-483-2015
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the garden copied the original Yu Garden in Shanghai without further design changes. What’s more, the function of the garden
only consists of a tea house and a Chinese restaurant, which has no connection with its environment. From this case, we can
find that the simplex cultural consuming type is essentially kind of a static, isolated operation system, which cannot build up
an interactive relationship with consumers, and the social environment, therefore, it descends to a symbol which
nobody cares about at last.
5. Conclusion
