Peking University, October 9, 2020: At a virtual award ceremony on October 8, 2020, James Hayter, president of the International Federation of Landscape Architects (IFLA), announced Peking University Professor Yu Kongjian as the winner of the 2020 Sir Geoffrey Jellicoe Award.
Professor Yu gives a speech
Inaugurated by IFLA in 2005, the Sir Geoffrey Jellicoe Award celebrates a living landscape architect whose “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.” It is the highest honor IFLA can bestow on a landscape architect. The award is named after notable British landscape architect Sir Geoffrey Jellicoe, a founding president of IFLA, whose most well-known works included Cheddar Gorge and the Kennedy Memorial at Runnymede in the UK.
Professor Yu received his Bachelor of Agronomy in Landscape Architecture and Master in Landscape Architecture (Beijing Forestry University), and Doctor of Design at Harvard University’s Graduate School of Design in 1995 with a dissertation titled “Security Patterns in Landscape Planning.” Professor Yu is the founder of Turenscape, one of the first and largest private architecture, landscape architecture and urbanism practices in China.
For over 20 years Professor Yu has spent his academic career fighting against deteriorating urban ecologies and the environment. His pioneering research on Ecological Security Pattern (1995) and Ecological Infrastructure, Negative Planning and Sponge Cities (2003) has been adopted by the Chinese government as a framework for nationwide ecological protection and restoration campaigns.
Professor Yu defines landscape architecture as the art of survival. A native of China’s Zhejiang province, he drew on inspiration from his childhood farming experience and the ancient wisdom of water and waste management to design and test a series of nature-based solutions.
Among his most recognized projects are the Shanghai Houtan Park, Harbin Qunli Stormwater Park, the Qinhuangdao Red Ribbon Park, Zhongshan Shipyard Park, the Rice Campus for Shenyang Jianzhu University, Tianjin Quaoyuan Park, Qian’an Sanlihe Greenway, Jinhua Yanweizhou Park and Quzhou Luming Park.
The Qinhuangdao Red Ribbon Park
Shanghai Houtan Park
This design seeks to use rice to keep the landscape productive while also fulfilling its new role as an environment for learning. It is designed to raise awareness of land and farming amongst college students who are leaving the land to become city dwellers. In addition, the designer also seeks to demonstrate how inexpensive and productive agricultural landscape can become, through careful design and management, usable space as well.
His work has been featured in such publications as Landscape Architecture Magazine, Topos, Domus, Architecture Review, Architectural Record and Architecture Design. The recent book, Designed Ecologies: The Landscape Architecture of Kongjian Yu (William Saunders ed., Birkhauser, 2012) explores Professor Yu’s work with extensive documentation of selected projects and essays.
Professor Yu has published 25 books and over 300 papers, and is founder and chief editor of the magazine Landscape Architecture Frontiers. Moreover, he is the founder and the first dean of the College of Architecture and Landscape at Peking University.
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 the Doctor Honoris Causa in Landscape and Environment from the Sapienza University of Rome in 2017, and received an Honorary Doctorate from the Norwegian University of Life Sciences in 2019.
The Jury noted “Yu is undoubtedly one of the most influential landscape architects in the world. The visibility of his high-profile design work and his lecturing and educational activities have a great impact on professionals and students as well as on a broader public – with the chance to change the perception of the profession”.
With the announcement of the 2020 award, Professor Yu joins American landscape architects Kathryn Gustafson and Anne Whiston Spirn, and Dutch landscape architect and planner Dirk Sijmons who were the most recent recipients of the award in 2019, 2018 and 2017 respectively.
Source: IFLA
