New Jiu Zhou Qing Yan Roof Garden, China Pavilion at the Shanghai Expo 2010

新九州清晏

Nine Territories Living in Harmony

Shanghai, China | 2008-2010 | 28,000 sq.m

Collaboration Ron Henderson, Team Minus: Zhang Li

Trees (399) diverse species of trees plus a collection of bamboo

The roof garden of the China Pavilion is the largest and the most important roof garden in Shanghai. The name 'New Jiu Zhou Qing Yan' reveals the conceptual framework of this roof garden; a reinterpretation of the founding fable of China, Nine Continents in Harmony, a narrative first explored during the Qing dynasty at Yuanmingyuan. 'Jiu Zhou,’ or Nine Continents, is an ancient Chinese construct—a system that represents the whole territory of the universe. The China Pavilion roof garden takes that ancient theme and from it builds an abstraction of the contemporary Chinese landscape—a matrix of nine climatic and geological situations.