Sakura Avenue blooms for about two weeks a year. For the other fifty, its meaning is invisible. That gap is our design problem.
The school archives hold almost nothing on the trees. Their story survives in newspapers, alumni newsletters and oral history.
School of Computer Science signs with Japan's CSK; Tongji–CSK System Software Research Center founded.
Tongji's 90th anniversary. CSK gifts 100 cherry trees in thanks.
Import checks were too slow, so the saplings were bought in China. They were planted on Aixiao Road and in Sanhao Wu, and the stone was unveiled.
A retired couple photographs seven graduates under the blossoms, then writes to find them.
Former dean Xuan Guorong, who signed the 1996 deal, is interviewed beneath "his" trees.
Digital twin and four-season AR of one sample tree.
“Cherry blossoms as witness —
China–Japan friendship,
carried on through generations.”
These trees are like my children. Every spring I come back to see how they have grown.
“这些樱花树就像是我的孩子，每年这个时间，我都要来这里看看。”
Prof. Xuan Guorong, former Dean, School of Computer Science · Tongji News, 2019
In 2014, a retired couple photographed seven graduates in gowns beneath the blossoms. They wrote to the university to find the students, and within two hours of a Weibo post, the students replied. The tree became the setting for a stranger's kindness.
Tennis-court side, R01–R18, at about 5 m centres, so about 85 m from first to last stem.
Football-field side, L01–L15. The spacing here has not been measured yet.
Between the two tree-row axes, read from the campus CAD drawing.
Our digital twin is R01, the first tree on the tennis-court side, at the Nan Avenue end of the grove.
Two paired rows turn an ordinary campus road into a corridor.
Walking and cycling share the centre, under the canopy.
Shrubs and benches at the edges let people stop and look up.
of the summed axis length comes from rule-generated twigs. Any statistic about the fine crown says as much about our rules as about the tree.
Root collar, the twin stems and parts of the main limbs.
Holes filled from cross-sections of the scanned surface.
Main limbs traced branch by branch from the photographs.
Smaller branches read from the photos where visible.
Fine twigs and shoots generated by rules, not observed.
Colour means provenance, not confidence. Following the London Charter, interpretation stays visible and separate from the record.
Span 7.47 m (X) × 8.56 m (Y)
Highest model point Z = 6.87 m
Viewed along the model X axis
Z = 0.26 m
Root collar: irregular, not round.
Z = 0.70 m
The trunk splits into two stems.
Z = 1.30 m
Two separate stems at breast height.
I chose the Tongji emblem as the AR target on purpose. The trees exist because of the university's 90th anniversary, so the university's own symbol summons them.
Scan the QR code. It opens in the phone browser, so there is nothing to install.
Point at the emblem. It can be printed, on a screen, or on any campus sign.
Switch seasons in place. Drag to rotate and pinch to scale. Offline mode is available.
