Yu, Kongjian

俞孔坚 土人设计 Yu Kongjian was born to a peasant family in Zhejiang Province, south of Shanghai. He studied landscape architecture at Beijing Forestry University and, a decade later, did a PhD at the Harvard Graduate School of Design. After two years with the SWA Group (formerly Sasaki, Walker and Associates) he returned to China and became a professor of urban planning and landscape architecture in Beijing University. In 1998 he estalished a firm, Turenscape, with his wife. In Chinese tu means earth and ren means people, so Turenscape means "people from the land". This reflects a desire to plan and design relationships between man and the land on which he depends, understood through the disciplines of hygrology, ecology and geography. Having won a sheaf of national and international awards, Turenscape was employing 600 staff by 2012. Turenscape's clutch of ASLA awards include:
2012 Qunli Stormwater Park ('A Green Sponge for a Water-Resilient City')
2010 Shanghai Houtan Park ('Landscape as a  Living System')
2010 Qinhuangdao Beach Restoration ('An Ecological Surgery')
2007 Tanghe River Park ('The Red Ribbon')
2002-4 Floating Gardens Taizhou Yongning River Park