Keywords: 
• vernacular landscape /
• local landscape /
• modernity /
• spirit of place

Abstract: With the acceleration of city construction and urban-rural integration, the landscape architecture with both Chinese local characteristics and modern features has increasingly attracted public attention in the wave of globalization. The Square Pagoda Garden roots in tradition but goes beyond it, and integrates with modernity. It enriches the local culture and gives a new modernist meaning in the time limit of local culture. The Square Pagoda Garden is the earliest and most representative case throughout the history of local landscape design in modern China. In this article we compared the Chinese and foreign scholars'understanding of the local landscape and vernacular landscape, then we proposed three basic elements of the local landscape: a critical review of modernity, the culture nutrients based on the local culture, and construction with expanding realities. Then the local imagery of the Square Pagoda Garden is analyzed from three aspects: criticism of modernity, spirit of place, and tectonics. Finally, by analyzing typical design cases of contemporary local landscape and architecture, we summed up the basic strategies for the modernist transformation of local landscape.