Finally the first interview by Yworkshop is ready to publish! I visited Joe Y. Wai in his vancouver office in July 2005 and had a great chat with him. Joe is a well-known architect who made a great contribution to Vancouver China Town through architectural practice. The Dr. Sun Yat-Sen Classical Chinese Garden project at the center of China Town, Vancouver is one of his best works among so many his other great designs. Here is the interview.
Y-Yworkshop
J-Joe Y. Wai
Y:How do you see this Authentic Chinese Garden in the context of Vancouver China Town Architecture?
J:Today is July 21 2005, We are at our office. Now the context of the garden is interesting. This is the first Chinese garden built in North America, outside China. How we get there is interesting and certainly it is an authentic Classical Chinese Garden modeled after Suzhou Scholar’s Garden. Obviously, it is built in a different context because there are no scholars locally in it. It is not used by scholars. It is used as a showcase for the Classical Chinese culture and also in the context of a unique community like a Chinatown in North America; a Chinatown that does not have a Classical Chinese architecture but it has Chinatown architecture which is quite different. So the inclusion of a Chinese Classical Garden in a Chinatown is quite unusual, and certainly the first one there is. And it is hard to distinguish it for other people who may not have the background. For the non-Chinese people, they think Chinese is Chinese. They couldn’t really tell what is Chinatown and what authentic Chinese culture is. But this is ok, in the end people will know this is the authentic Chinese Garden modeled after the Garden in Suzhou.
Y:Could you tell me more about the Site Selection process?
J:We can say that because we had the cooperation and guidance from the Suzhou Garden Administration from 1980. We know history tell us that is about the time when China opens to the West once again after looking internally for the previous 31 years if not beyond. Now what is the guidance? The consultants from Suzhou… we have had a space scenario for the garden and that took place in another 10-15 years before. The whole area in that part Chinatown was going to be part of the freeway system . In mid 1960′s to the early 1970′s Vancouver had debated with itself whether to allow the freeway system to go through. Lots of people protested, they are from Chinatown, many people are from outside of the Chinatown. Mostly academics and people who have see a larger picture of how city should go in North America. They rejected the freeway system to go through the city. So the irony, of course, is that this is also the area where Chinatown was born. About the same time the city of Vancouver was born in the 1880′s and 1890′s. This is the original site .
Y:Freeway go through china town?
J: Yes, So when the debate went on for quite a few years, a number of us proposed we had a Chinese Culture Center at that location and then maybe the freeway will not come back again. In proposing a Chinese Culture Center which is a real proper building, traditionally it have to include topic building and proper gardens as all Chinese formality of architecture and the organic nature of gardens, the marrying of the hard and soft, the formal and informal. So we proposed a Chinese garden in 1973 and we didn’t really know what we were doing except we know the concept of the Chinese gardens. Fortunately some of us were able to go see Suzhou in two years later. I really couldn’t believe the profundity of a Classical garden. I said we must have it. Of course 1n 1975 we didn’t really have much money and again this fate intervened. The UN conference on human settlement was in Vancouver in 1976 the Canadian Federal Government decided to lead a few legacy projects and a few parks. One of them was dedicated to Chinatown. And of course we have had a plan of combining a garden with a culture center. So we had some original money from the Federal Government to start this. We used most of this money to buy the land, the city got involved, the provincial government got involved. Soon the city of Vancouver started staring at the project. We are also very fortunate to be selected as the consultants. Don Vaughan Landscape Architect was my partner and we began working with Suzhou group in 1980. In a way it is much a new and unfamiliar ground for anyone of us dealing with this thing. Overall we have tried to marry the plan for the Chinese culture center which had started its first phases on the site.
Y:How do you collaborate with Suzhou Garden Administration?
J:The Suzou Garden Administration has just finished a small dry museum garden in NewYork in 1980.They spent the first week with us in the summer of 1980 to decide where we should concentration on what. And I admitted that Don Vaughan and I didn’t really know what we were doing. We just thought we have some urban design sense and certainly know how the culture center was oriented. The next two years, we exchanged drawings with Suzhou and those days there is no fax no email, so it takes one month to come back and forth. Finally we visited them in 1981 and visited many of the gardens in some depth. I always thought it was the dream to be having meeting in Suzhou with artisans and designers in Zhuozhengyuan and in Wangshiyuan. I just thought I should pinch myself whether it was real. After some time the project didn’t really have that much difficulties, but it took a while to get the funding together. Nobody realized how much a garden would cost. It is certainly beyond people’s comprehension of why a garden would cost five and half million dollars Canadian. They think it might just be a few rocks a few trees and a pond.
To be Continued…