帝国时代 The Age of Empire（2000-2012）

2000年，郑国谷在他的家乡阳江城郊遭遇了一片5000平方米的土地，到2004年他开始建立“帝国时代”的“城墙”时，那块土地已经增加到2万多平方米。那段时间郑国谷称为“拼地”时期，它基本上奠定了“帝国时代”的主要疆域范围。2005年，“帝国时代”的建造正式开始。

郑国谷一度非常着迷于《帝国时代》网络电脑游戏，“帝国时代”的名字即来源于此。多年之后，随着空间探索的深入和生命经验的变化，他将“帝国时代”改名为“了园”。

“帝国时代”的建造始于某种着迷，而非理性的规划。从一开始，它就不是一般意义上的按图施工的过程，而更多是根据艺术家感受和思考随时进行调整的一个过程：在家中、旅途中、酒店里，郑国谷会随手画下他对“帝国时代”空间的想象，这些散见各处的手稿在随后的过程中慢慢聚合成整体空间的关系。

建造“帝国时代”，郑国谷最初是希望将对游戏的兴趣和他想要探索的建筑问题结合起来，同时通过移形换景，从平常的郊外农地中营造出“帝国时代”的奇异景观。和电脑游戏的虚拟现实不同，现实中的“帝国时代”势必要面对更为复杂的空间形态和社会关系，而他当时就感到，只有通过一个融合在现实生活情境里的建造过程，才能打通个体感知的秘密通道 。

In 2000, Zheng Guogu encountered a 5,000m² plot of land in the suburb of his hometown Yangjiang. When he commenced the construction of The Age of Empire in 2005, the land had expanded to more than twenty thousand square meters, during a time that Zheng Guogu called the “land expansion” period, laying the main territory of The Age of Empire.

Zheng Guogu used to be obsessed with the video game series Age of Empires, from which the name of his project derived. Years later, he renamed The Age of Empire to Liao Garden.

The Age of Empire was founded upon certain fascinations rather than rational planning. Instead of building it according to a master plan, it has been a process of spontaneous readjustments following the artist’s feelings and thinking since its very beginning: at home, on the road, in hotel rooms, Zheng Guogu would sketch out his imaginations of The Age of Empire. These scattered pieces of drawings would slowly form the spatial relations of the whole in a later process.

Zheng Guogu’s initial aspiration was to merge his interests in the computer game with the architectural questions that he wanted to explore. Through the transformation of landscapes, he created a strange spectacle of The Age of Empire from an ordinary rural farmland. Unlike virtual reality in computer games, the real The Age of Empire is bound to face more complex spatial forms and social relations. He already had the feeling at the time that it was only through a construction process that was integrated in real life, that a personal secret passage of perception would unfold.