President of Beijing University of Civil Engineering and Architecture Zhang Ailin

Honorable presidents and colleagues,

It will be the turn of the vice president of the Russian Academy of Architectural Sciences to make the report according to the original plan of the manual. However, due to the adjustment of his flight, he has not arrived yet and will not arrive until this afternoon. Therefore, I become the first speaker. There is a Chinese saying that the first speaker is to throw out a minnow to catch a whale. I will serve as a modest spur to induce you to come forward. My topic is to hold the future orientation, innovate the cooperation mechanism, and cultivate innovative talents in architecture.

I will talk about in three aspects.

In the materials sent to you, we have already introduced the basic information of our school. Beijing University of Civil Engineering and Architecture founded in 1907 and has been 110 years this year. At that time, we had the major of civil and wooden structures. Therefore, our school has a relatively long history in the field of architecture. Of course, the development time is relatively long. I will not elaborate on this process.

Let’s focus on today’s topic. Apart from the whole process of personnel training system from undergraduate and postgraduate students to doctoral students to postdoctoral mobile stations, we won the Beijing Advanced Innovation Center for Future Urban Design last year. In addition, our doctoral personnel training in architectural heritage protection has done well in cooperation with the State Administration of Cultural Heritage.

In the history of our school, we can see from the top ten buildings since the establishment of new China that the teachers, students and alumni of our school have made important contributions to the Beijing Asian Games in 1990 and the Beijing Olympic Games in 2008. In the 1950s, our professors and teachers, for example, Zhu Zhaoxue had made plan for Beijing city, and the plan is linked to Mr. Liang Sicheng’s plan. Their plans were different, but their ideas were to protect the ancient capital and to build a new city outside. Unfortunately, their ideas were not realized. These projects were all done by our alumni and our students. In history, our school has two major characteristics. One is that we have been serving the construction of the capital Beijing for a long time. The second outstanding characteristic is that we make efforts in the transformation and upgrading of our national construction industry. Last year, Beijing approved us to build a high-tech innovation center for Beijing's future urban design. This is a special zone for innovation and technology. It invests at least 50 million RMB per year in a five-year cycle. 70% of its funds are used to employ high-end talents at home and abroad, of which 50% are not less than international talents. We have five major research directions, such as cultural heritage protection and organic renewal of cities, green cities and green buildings, underground engineering, urban theoretical big data, including sponge cities, environment and other disciplines.

With the help of such an innovative platform, we have innovated the operation mode of scientific research organizations. First, according to the PI system, the first level consists of a team of chief experts, followed by an academic team of academic leaders. We have already hired famous experts from other schools at home and abroad to participate in our high-tech centers. For example, these are professors from Harvard University, Michigan University, and this is Professor Mark from Holland, including Professor Michel, etc. For the project that we serve the country’s major needs, I want to give a few examples: one is the protection plan for the old city of Beijing, which is building a sub-center. As we all know, Zhangjiakou and Beijing will jointly host the 2022 Winter Olympics. We have made all the protection plans for the Great Wall in Chongli area, including the surveying and mapping of the Forbidden City and the Bird's Nest, and our new sponge city pilot project in Beijing, including the sewage treatment research and development centers in China and Holland. We recently completed the utility tunnel project of the Beijing Sub-center, and we have just completed the experiment of the Beijing new airport. Our future goal is to build a high-level, open and innovative university with outstanding architectural characteristics that is first-class in China, internationally renowned, and is consistent with our concept of “the belt and road initiative”.

Secondly, I want to talk about how to make sure of the future orientation and problems of the development of architecture universities.

Why should we make sure of the future orientation? As you can see, the students we teach today are the modern students. Our current university is today’s university. So what do we teach him? What do students learn? The relationship between time and space is that through how we teach, how we learn and how we manage, we can build a trinity of knowledge, ability and quality for students so that they can satisfy the future. What have students learned today about their future as individuals, the future of the world, the country, education, industry and regional economy? What they have learned and how they can use it in the future. Therefore, our education is to reserve talents for the future. Such space-time logic is not what we teach today, what they learn today, what they will use immediately today, what they will use today, but what they will meet in the future. This is the challenge we have encountered. It is possible that when we just graduated, the knowledge we learned today was outdated, and the student did not learn the newly generated knowledge.

Second, as we all know, the 38th UNESCO General Conference issued the 2030 Framework for Action on Education. Its core is inclusive, fair, quality education and lifelong learning for all. It has open education, sustainable education and equal education. This is our blueprint for future education. Therefore, an important feature, the information technology revolution, has pushed forward the globalization of our education revolution. We have adopted an open and connected education mode. So our learning model and teachers role have turned out to be the lecturers of the platform and become today's leaders and demonstrators. AlphaGo is a software plays Go. China. Masters of Go from Japan and South Korea, like world Go master Li Shishi lost several times to AlphaGo in chess. He said that his daughter played Go with AlphaGo instead of playing Go with him. AlphaGo is his daughter’s teacher. To some extent, he lost his role and the machine defeated him. Because of my learning ability, learning from machines is better than learning from you. This is the challenge brought by the information revolution.

We used to be a very low-income country in 2000. By 2020, three years later, China will enter the lowest threshold for high-income countries. By 2030, we will enter a medium average level. By 2050, we will enter the average level of developed countries. Therefore, this is such a future for China. What is the demand for China’s future training and construction industry in such a future? Therefore, we have already talked about the proposal of "the belt and road initiative" this morning, and experts will also talk about the concept of "the belt and road initiative" this afternoon. We should consider our problems in this international perspective, that is, in the perspective of globalization.

In the second process of urbanization in China, when the People's Republic of China was founded, our urbanization rate in China was only 10.64%. For a long time, in the course of our poverty, our urban greening rate was very low. It was only 20% in 1981. However, over 40 years of reform and opening up, the rate have become this curve. Now we have reached 57.3% in 2016, we will reach about 60% in 2020, we will reach about 70% in 2030, however 70% compare with the 80% of the world's developed countries is still a big gap, but this is a huge urban change.

In order to achieve this goal, our Chinese construction industry must transform and upgrade and change its development mode. We are transforming and upgrading to greenery, industrialization and informatization. 50% of our new buildings will reach the green building standard by 2020. We will vigorously promote innovation in construction mode with emphasis on the promotion of fabricated buildings. In addition, we will achieve 30% in fabricated buildings. I am a professor of steel structure. We have done a great deal in steel structure. Steel structure is less than 5% now, and we will double to 10%. In addition, the capital Beijing has just passed a new general plan. By 2030, Beijing's overall urban plan will include the construction of sub-centers and the construction of Xiong'an new area. Therefore, in 2020, we will achieve the phased goal of a world-class harmonious and livable city. The phased goal is that the management of our major cities will have significant effects. In 2030, we will basically build a harmonious and livable city and in 2050 we will fully build a harmonious and livable city.

So this is what I said just now, the future orientation, the following is the problem orientation, the problem orientation is a lot, and I will sum up a few. One is that our awareness of international standards of world vision is not enough, our Chinese professors and students that go aboard are relatively few, so we invite you to come here, today we invite you to come here, and we will continue to invite you to come to China for a long time and often, to Beijing University of Civil Engineering and Architecture. And the second is that our disciplines are so finely divided that split up the organic integration of disciplines, let me give an example. For example, smart cities, we all know smart cities. Whether computer major is engaged in smart cities or information control is engaged in building cities, or construction, civil engineering s. In fact, smart cities are multidisciplinary cross-fields, and a single subject and a single major cannot solve the problem. At present, a new engineering course is proposed, which is currently under discussion, but it will return to the concepts of the past major disciplines and multi-disciplines.

Third, the ability to innovate and practice is still insufficient, so everyone knows that Washington Accord, China joined Washington Accord last year, which is student-centered, training their ability to solve complex engineering problems through theoretical analysis, and this ability training should run through the whole process of student growth. In the future of architectural universities, the future orientation, problem orientation and goal orientation, that is, first of all, universities should be innovative. We should break through the concept of universities in the past. Students should also learn the concepts and influences of other universities, including first-class disciplines, including the importance of cultivating an international perspective and understanding international rules, because our “the belt and road initiative” concept is the concept of connectivity.

As we all know, universities have four basic functions. Among these functions, today's Belt and Road Architectural University International Consortium is international exchange and cooperation. In fact, it runs through all aspects of talent cultivation, scientific research, social services and cultural heritage. International exchange and cooperation are needed to link it up, interconnection is needed, and resources are needed to be open and shared.

Then the choice of development path for architectural universities is openness, innovation and cooperation. Only through openness can realize win-win results. Only through resource sharing can we transform our system. Only through innovation can we solve new problems. We have solved old problems, and we have created new problems. Therefore, we must constantly innovate and solve new problems. Cooperation means that one plus one is greater than two, one plus one is greater than three, or even greater than N, which is the idea of winning all.

Fourth, in the morning, I said that the concept of “the belt and road initiative” should be implemented, mechanisms should be innovated, and innovative talents should be cultivated. Therefore, in this architectural university international consortium, we have something to discuss, our platforms and shared platforms should be jointly built, our achievements should be shared, and win-win results should be achieved. We should cooperate deeply to cultivate construction talents, and all-round and all-region alliances should be exchanged. All of us here are presidents and leaders of university. Our education management and service should push forward the docking of development strategies and visions. We should exchange ideas and resources of education, and then cooperate in running schools. There are many ways to cultivate innovative talents. Just now, when we took a break, we said that our summer school work camp should be promoted in many ways, like short-term mutual visits, short-term learning, which is rich and colorful, specialized, subject-specific, classified, including teacher exchange. Teachers are the most critical part, and only our teachers have innovative ability that our students can have innovation ability. Only our presidents have international vision that our management team can have international vision. Therefore, in the scientific and technological innovation, social services, we need more international research and cooperation projects, etc. We hope that with the platform of high-tech innovation in future urban design of Beijing, experts from your universities present here will be professors at Beijing University of Civil Engineering and Architecture, and I will pay you.

Finally, we need cultural bridges and ties, just like our logo, we really become bridges and ties. I will repeat this words that I said in the morning, we will turn the initiative of “the belt and road initiative” into our actions, turn the vision of “the belt and road initiative” into our reality, and innovate and promote the cooperation of the Belt and Road Architectural University International Consortium. I believe that we will succeed, thank you all!