Historical Background of the Old Summer Palace 圆明园历史背景

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The Old Summer Palace is located in Haidian District, the western suburb of Beijing. Firstly built in the 46th year during Emperor Kangxi's reign (1707), the Old Summer Palace is composed of three gardens: Yuanmingyuan, Changchunyuan and Qichunyuan. With the floor area of 350 hectares and building area of almost 200,000 square meters, the Old Summer Palace was a huge imperial garden, established and operated for over 150 years by emperors in Qing Dynasty. The Old Summer Palace has a worldwide reputation for its grand land scale, outstanding construction skills, elegant architectural landscape, rich cultural collections as well as extensive and profound national culture implication, and is renowned as the “model of all garden construction arts” and the “Garden of Gardens”. In October 1860, during the Second Opium War, the Anglo-French forces looted Yuanmingyuan and burnt it down. Since then, the Old Summer Palace became a relic.

圆明园位于北京市西郊海淀区，毗邻颐和园，始建于康熙四十六年（1707年）。圆明园由三个花园组成：圆明园，长春园和绮春园（俗称“圆明三园”）。圆明园占地350公顷，建筑面积近20万平方米，是清朝皇帝建造和运营超过150年的宏伟皇家园林。 圆明园以其宏大的土地面积，出色的建筑技巧，优雅的建筑景观，丰富的文化收藏以及广泛而深刻的民族文化底蕴而享誉全球，被誉为“园林建筑艺术的典范”和“万园之园”。1860年10月，在第二次鸦片战争中，英法联军洗劫了圆明园并将其烧毁。此后，圆明园成为了一处遗址。

The School of the Design and Arts of the Beijing Institute of Technology (BIT), founded in 1984 as the Department of Industrial Design, is one of the design schools that first opened industrial design courses in China. Since its establishment, the school’s teachers, and outstanding graduates and alumni have been spreading across China and to other countries, achieving great results in a broad spectrum of fields, including military product design, barrier-free and universal design, interactive design, visual communication, architecture, internal design, landscape design, ceramics, painting, cultural heritage studies, and art theory. The school provides ideal training grounds for students to carry out design projects and artistic creations, and also co-founded institutes for teaching, research and internship with well-known enterprises both in China and other countries, in order to improve students’ team spirit and creativeness.

北京理工大学设计与艺术学院成立于1984年，是中国最早设置工业设计学科体系的设计院系之一。自成立以来，该院杰出的师资、优秀毕业生和荣誉校友遍布国内外相关艺术领域，在军品工业设计、无障碍通用化设计、互动设计、视觉传达、建筑与景观、室内设计、陶瓷艺术、美术创作、文化遗产研究、艺术理论等领域成果优异。学校为学生开展艺术创作以及设计项目提供了理想的场所，并与中国和其他国家的知名事业单位共同成立了教学、科研和实习学院，以提高学生的团队合作精神和创造力