At the invitation of the architecture student club at Xi’an Jiaotong-Liverpool University, (XJTLU) The Wenzhou-Kean University (WKU) chapter of the American Institute of Architecture Students (AIAS) went to Suzhou, China on November 14, 2020 to tour the UNESCO world heritage gardens and participate in the XJTLU-WKU Architecture School Student Exchange Conference. XJTLU and WKU are two of the few universities in China that offer architecture courses at the undergraduate level through Sino-foreign cooperation. The architecture programs at XJTLU and WKU have established a strong collaborative relationship with close ties and frequent exchanges. This exchange activity further deepened the understanding and strengthened the mutual trust between the two. Prof. Ralph Spencer Steenblik, AIAS faculty advisor, Prof. Zhang Xingu, Zhang Zitao, WKU AIAS President and some first-year architecture students attended this event.
After visiting the world-renowned Suzhou gardens, the activity, hosted by the XJTLU architectural student group began with a tour of the campus. Along the way, everyone kept asking XJTLU’s students about campus architectural design, school management system, and subject evaluation issues. Xi’an Jiaotong-Liverpool University is divided into two campuses, north and south, with a total area of 610 acres and a construction area of 407,000 square meters. The campus construction planning and science building of Xi’an Jiaotong-Liverpool University were designed by the Perkins & Will architectural design firm. The auxiliary landscape design of the campus combines the minimalist aesthetic with the artistic conception of Chinese traditional garden landscape plants.
