Enlightment of American Green Land Rainwater Management Art to Chinese Modern Landscape Architecture

Green lands are natural rainwater management facilities. Natural landscapes manage rainfall through a combination of evapotranspiration, infiltration, and runoff. Artful rainwater management is emulating nature split-flow rainwater in the processes of collection, conveyance and retention. Through artful design, the rainwater management facility will become a kind of site amenity that has varied values, functions, attributes. This paper introduces the American rainwater management theories and practices, proposes that the Chinese landscape architecture planning idea and design methodology should be changed. That is to use green land as natural rainwater management facility, to put the rainwater management into the procedure of landscape architecture planning and design, to ensure enough permeable area, to take measures to collect, filter and purify impervious surface runoff, to display the rainwater management process, to show the various values of drainage system. Based on the rainwater management, new Chinese modern landscape architecture model is put forward.