Dreamers of landscape architecture
The creator of the blueprint of the dream
Observer of mundane details
A combination of reason and sensibility
That's her
Chen Mengyun, School of Architecture
Chen Mengyun, a 2018 phD student of the Department of Landscape Architecture of the School of Architecture, is the winner of honorary titles such as "He Jingtang Science and Technology Innovation Award" and "Chinese Worker Model". He has been awarded the National Scholarship and the Principal's Scholarship for two consecutive years. Up to now, he has published 5 academic papers in high-level academic journals at home and abroad, such as Landscape: the Journal of the Landscape Institute and Chinese Garden. It has won the 2021 Royal Society of Landscape Architecture Awards (LI Awards) Landscape Innovation Award, the 2021 American Society of Landscape Architects (ASLA) Professional Research Honor Award, the 2021 International Federation of Landscape Architects Asia Pacific Landscape Architecture Professional Awards and many other awards.
Drafting
Encounter Garden Encounter HuaYuan Inspirational Walk
The encounter with the landscape garden is a seemingly unexpected thing for Chen Mengyun, but it is a reasonable thing.
Volunteering for the college entrance examination, Chen Mengyun chose the landscape architecture major by chance - an engineering major with both arts and sciences.
It seems that there is providence in the darkness.
Before going to college, Chen Mengyun already had a ten-year-long foundation in Chinese painting and had her own understanding and thinking about classical Chinese gardens, which played a very helpful role in her later professional studies.
After entering the university, in every class, every design and every practice, Chen Mengyun gradually deepened her understanding of the profession and fell in love with the major from the bottom of her heart. The expertise of landscape architecture is like a seed, implanted in Chen Mengyun's heart, so that her senses gradually open, capturing every touching detail in life: she begins to see flowers and plants that she has never paid attention to before, perceives the space that has never stayed in the past, and pays attention to every step she has walked.
Chen Mengyun's Chinese paintings
In the summer of 2017, Chen Mengyun participated in the Summer Camp of Landscape Architecture majoring in the School of Architecture of South China University of Technology. It was this opportunity that Chen Mengyun and Professor Lin Guangsi had in-depth exchanges and discussions. This dialogue gave Chen Mengyun a new understanding of the field of landscape architecture. Professor Lin's rigor and unique insights in governance, as well as his tolerance and encouragement of students, made Chen Mengyun very inspired. Coupled with the influence and support of her family, she subtly conceived the idea of studying for a doctorate.
"It may be meaningful to follow the teachers you admire in your field of interest in your early twenties, do some useful academic exploration, and give yourself more time to think in this fast-paced society where information is fragmented."
In this way, she picked up the paintbrush and paved the way for a straight bo in the picture of life.
Tick the line
Dedicated cartography Cross-border cooperation has won many awards
Chen Mengyun, who started her career as a direct blogger, finally became acquainted with the direction of "urban green space ecosystem cultural service".
With the continuous deepening of academic research, Chen Mengyun has participated in a number of international professional competitions with her understanding and enthusiasm for professional direction, and has won many awards.
Looking back on the experience of participating in the competition, she mentioned, "For the design competition, having high-quality design works is on the one hand, how to pass on the ideas and highlights behind the design works to everyone in a clear way, and tell the story movingly, which is another aspect of the competition that cannot be ignored." ”
In addition to individual hard work, the award of the competition is also inseparable from the common struggle of the team. She sees "learning to communicate" as a very important competency in teamwork. As an English slang saying goes, "You can express anger, but you can't express anger." Effective teamwork requires team members to learn to express their personal opinions in an objective and unsentimental manner.
Some of the award-winning works of Chen Mengyun's team
In the process of closely combining scientific research papers with practical projects, Chen Mengyun discovered the mystery of interdisciplinary collaboration.
In a competition, Chen Mengyun's team members came from four majors: landscape architecture, water conservancy engineering, computer and interaction design. At the beginning of the cooperation, students from four different fields encountered difficulties in communicating professional issues. However, with the increase of run-in time and the number of communications, the team members of the landscape major learned a simple front-end design, and gradually learned to operate some water conservancy simulation software, while the water conservancy professional, computer and interaction design team members also began to put forward their own ideas for research and design, everyone had a deeper understanding of each other's profession, and the progress of the project became particularly smooth.
For this unforgettable experience of interdisciplinary cooperation, Chen Mengyun concluded: "Although the run-in at the beginning was somewhat difficult, the experience of interprofessional cooperation not only broadened our thinking on solving problems, exercised our communication skills, but also allowed us to experience the charm of different professions. Most importantly, this valuable experience gave us the courage and confidence to continue to challenge and explore new knowledge. ”
chromatically
Ingenuity builds dreams, open-minded communication shows its sharpness
Chen Mengyun also actively participates in important academic conferences at home and abroad, showing the style of Chinese workers on the international stage.
In Oslo, Norway, she was invited to participate in the 56th International Federation of Landscape Architects, the European Council of Landscape Architecture Doctoral Forum, and the Sustainable Built Environment (SBE) Conference Series of Regional Conferences. At the theme meeting of "Urban Agricultural Heritage" in the Hanover conference series in Germany, Chen Mengyun became the only student from a Chinese university present to report.
This series of academic exchange practices allowed her to hear different voices in this discipline, and also allowed her to see the most cutting-edge researchers concerned and researched topics.
Chen Mengyun made an academic exchange report
In fact, on the road of scientific research, Chen Mengyun is not smooth sailing. Looking back at the initial topic selection, to the finalization of the topic, and then to the dissertation research work being carried out now, I have experienced many iterations, struggles and wanderings during this period. After attending several international conferences, in addition to allowing her to gradually begin to explore the research directions she wanted to explore, she also changed her habit of sharing and communicating with others.
Under the guidance of the mentor, Chen Mengyun also began to try to share and discuss the research process with different people. She realized that the process of telling and sharing is also a process of gradually clarifying the logic of research. Different people's questions about the phased research work from different perspectives also prompted her to think about the blind spots that she had not paid attention to again and again, laying the foundation for deeper research in the future.
Dot
Careful planning Enjoy life and stay cute
A colorful life cannot be lived in a mess.
Chen Mengyun believes that whether it is academic practice or hobbies, it is an important part of daily life. How to balance the relationship between them requires a methodical plan and firm execution.
"Doing the prescribed things within the specified time" is a habit that runs through Chen Mengyun's daily study and life. Every Sunday she plans for the coming week, down to the work, exercise, reading plan, and so on that she wants to complete each day. Every morning, she makes morning plans, laying out the things to be done for the day, down to the time of each event.
For the rhythm arrangement of large-scale projects such as scientific research and competitions, Chen Mengyun will adopt the method of DDL reversal, split the tasks, change the long-term plan into multiple short-term and medium-term plans, and set a deadline for each stage of the task.
"The sense of order that comes with making a plan will save me a lot of internal friction and procrastination, because it will make me know that I only need to complete every small node every day, and I am methodically taking a step towards a bigger goal, and this sense of direction and solidity is very necessary for me."
Chen Mengyun has a strong curiosity, and in addition to scientific research, she is interested in and wants to try a lot of things. In addition to Lego, tinkering with the home, painting, what occupies her most time is sports. Fitness, boxing and aerial yoga are all "regulars" in her sports program. In addition, this exploratory sports girl occasionally tries niche sports such as "indoor rock climbing", "outdoor cycling" and "TRX".
Chen Mengyun is climbing
Chen Mengyun's love for photography began when she wanted to capture every little sparkle in her life. "Every time you look at the recorded images, it's like opening any door and pulling yourself back to those trivial but vivid moments: either the summer night breeze with the fragrance of gardenia flowers, or the evening when you are happy to achieve a small scientific achievement."
"Imagine how romantic it would be to start looking through these old photos when you become a grandmother, like gifts from different periods."
Chen Mengyun's life photos
Sister's suggestion:
1. When communicating with the tutor, first of all, we must be sincere and truthful to explain the reasons, objectively explain the difficulties and needs, and hope to get the help of the teacher, so that we can give feedback in a timely and accurate manner. The second is to think in a different position, from the perspective of the tutor: whether the request is reasonable, and how to deal with it will be more convenient for the teacher.
2. In terms of professional competitions, the most important thing is to learn to transform the context. It is the most taboo to talk about things when competing, because most viewers and evaluators do not live on or around the venue. Therefore, the most important thing in doing the competition is to put the issue of being limited to the venue into a larger international context, and construct it as a context topic that is both local but also has the consensus of international peers. In addition, we need to pay more attention to how to use the expression effect that is simple and easy to understand and can take into account the surface.
3. For the excavation of innovative points in the selection of thesis topic, we can start from the two levels of content and method. First of all, in terms of content, we can start from the shortcomings of the previous research, such as scholars studying problems that are limited to the times, resulting in low accuracy of research, then we can use more advanced scientific methods to obtain more accurate research results. In addition, some phenomena that are not enough to be paid attention to in the academic community but need to be solved urgently will also be a good entry point for research. Secondly, in terms of methodology, on the one hand, we can pay more attention to the cutting-edge journals within the profession to open up ideas, on the other hand, we can also adopt interdisciplinary methods and draw on tools and technologies of different disciplines to solve research problems in this discipline. However, instead of innovating for the sake of innovation, finding the most appropriate research method according to the research problem is the top priority.
The years are more quiet because of youth
The world is more magnificent because of the youth standing up
Chen Mengyun went to the far away with her love
See the flowers of the four seasons from the green mountains and green waters
From Chinese gardens to international gardens
We look forward to Mengyun
Discover more beauty in her world
South China University of Technology Student Press Corps
Figure: Provided by respondents
Text: Jiao Libei Luo Hongjie Xiao Kunyao Zhao Qiuzhi
WeChat Editor: Bowen