Edited by Terreform

With contributions by Ai Weiwei, Thomas J. Campanella, Zhongjie Lin, Xuefei Ren, Peter G. Rowe, Michael Sorkin, Daniel Sui, Julie Sze, and Kongjian Yu

Amidst China’s rapid economic development and spiraling ecological devastation in 2003, the landscape architect and designer Kongjian Yu emerged, with the publication of The Road to Urban Landscape: A Dialogue with the Mayors, as a powerful broker for change in the domain of city planning. Since then, the text has been circulated widely among the nation’s mayors; Yu’s design firm, Turenscape, has flourished and now counts 600 employees and more than 2,000 projects in more than 200 cities among its accomplishments; and Yu’s core design concepts—from negative planning to “green sponge” cities—have been codified at the highest levels of official design guidance. Yu further established his bona fides and influence among young practitioners by founding the College of Architecture and Landscape Architecture at Peking University.