Kongjian Yu (simplified Chinese: 俞孔坚; traditional Chinese: 俞孔堅; pinyin: Yú kǒngjiān, born in 1963 in Dongyu Village in Jinhua, Zhejiang Province, China), is a landscape architect and urbanist, writer and educator, commonly credited with the invention of Sponge City concept, and winner of the International Federation of Landscape Architects’ Sir Geoffrey Jellicoe Award in 2020. Received his Doctor of Design Degree from Harvard Graduate School of Design in 1995, Doctor Honoris Causa from Sapienza University of Rome in 2017 and Honorary Doctorate from Norwegian University of Life Sciences in 2019, Yu was elected to the American Academy of Arts and Sciences in 2016.
A farmer's son and a strong advocate ecological urbanism, Yu is a founder of the Peking University College of Architecture and Landscape Architecture. He is also founder and principal designer of Turenscape, which Fast Company called one of The 10 Most Innovative Architecture Companies of 2021 for “balancing China's hyperspeed urbanization with green ‘sponge cities’”. An often-outspoken voice in the world of landscape architecture and urbanism, Yu has been heralded by Michael Sorkin as “a hero of effective advocacy within a system fraught with perils”.[1] Several of Yu's core ideas for nature-based climate adaptations and ecological restoration, including the sponge city concept, have been adopted for nationwide implementation by the Chinese government and had a global reach.
Kongjian Yu received his Doctor of Design Degree at The Harvard Graduate School of Design in 1995, with the dissertation, "Security Patterns in Landscape Planning: With a Case in South China" with Carl Steinitz, Richard Forman and Stephen Ervin as his advisors.[2][3] He worked as landscape planner and architect at SWA Group in Laguna Beach from 1995 to 1997. He has been a professor of urban and regional planning at Peking University since 1997 and visiting professor at Harvard GSD from 2010 to 2015. He is the founder and Dean of the Graduate School of Landscape Architecture and the College of Architecture and Landscape Architecture. He has been the founder and Chief editor of the award-winning magazine Landscape Architecture Frontier that publishes bi-monthly.[4] He founded Turenscape[5][6] in 1998, an internationally awarded firm with about 500 professionals and was listed as one of the top 10 most innovative architecture companies of 2021[7] by the Fast Company. Yu and Turenscape's practice covers architecture, landscape architecture, and urbanism across scales. Yu defines landscape architecture as the art of survival.[8] He is globally recognized as a leader in ecological urbanism and constructive postmodernism approach towards ecological civilization.[9][10][11][12][13] He is particularly recognized for his theory and practice of "sponge cities".[14][15][16][17] His innovative concept and research on "ecological security patterns".[18][19][20]Negative Planning[21] and sponge city have been adopted by the Chinese government as a guiding theory for national land use planning, eco-city campaign, and urban ecological restoration.
A native of China's Zhejiang Province.[22][23] He is a design ecologist and practices design as scientific experiments.[24][17] Yu's ecological approach to urbanism has been implemented in over 200 cities in China and beyond.[11] His Sponge City theory and practices have been globally recogzinzed as revolutionary nature-based solutions for climate adaptation with strategies of retaining water at its source, slowing down its flow and being adaptive at its sink that are based on a philosophy totally opposite to that of conventional grey infrastructure approach.[25][26][27]
Yu has published over 20 books and 300 articles.[15][17][28][29][24] His works have been featured in publications such as Scientific American (December 2018),[15] Time,[30] and Landscape Architecture (February 2012), and two recently published books: Letters to Chinese Leaders: Kongjian Yu and the Future of the Chinese City[31] and Designed Ecologies: The landscape Architecture of Kongjian Yu.[32]
He is the founder and chief editor of the magazine Landscape Architecture Frontier. He lectured worldwide at over 100 institutes including American Academy of Arts and Sciences,[33] National Academy of Sciences, World Economic Forum,[34] World Bank,[35] Harvard University,[36] Columbia University,[37] UC Berkeley, and many others, and had delivered over 60 keynote speeches at international conferences including 5 time keynote speeches at the World Congress of the International Federation of Landscape Architects and 3 time speeches at the ASLA annual conference and expo, and taught for 5 year at Harvard GSD as visiting professor. He was a juror for the 2010 Aga Khan Award for Architecture[38] and its Steering Committee in 2015–2016,[39] and the Super Jury for 2011 World Architecture Festival, and many other international award juries. He was elected fellow of the American Society of Landscape Architects in 2012, and International Honorary Member of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences in 2016. He received Doctor Honoris Causa in Landscape and Environment from the Sapienza University of Rome in 2017,[40] and Honorary Doctor in Landscape architecture from the Norwegian University of Life Sciences in 2019.[41] In 2020 Yu received the 2020 Sir Geoffrey Jellicoe Awardfor his “achievements and contributions have had a unique and lasting impact on the welfare of society and the environment and on the promotion of the profession of landscape architecture.” [42][43] and received the 2021 John Cobb Common Good Award for his achievement on " Constructive Postmodernism Approach Towards Ecological Civilization".[12][10]
Yu's projects received both 2009, 2010, 2011, 2015 and 2017 World Architecture Festival Awards of Landscape the 2009 Urban Land Institute Global Award for Excellence, the 2010 and 2012 ASLA award of Excellence, and 13 ASLA Honor Awards, 4 AZ Awards,[63] the 2004 National Gold Medal of Fine Arts of China[64] On September 20, 2019, Norwegian University of Life Science (NMBU) granted an honorary doctorate to Professor Kongjian Yu, for his breakthrough in sustainable landscape design and contribution to harmony between nature and humanity.
In 2023, The Cultural Landscape Foundation awarded Yu the Cornelia Hahn Oberlander International Landscape Architecture Prize.[65]
((cite book)): CS1 maint: location (link)