Designed Ecologies: The Landscape Architecture of Kongjian Yu edited by William S. Saunders
Birkhäuser, 2012
Hardcover, 256 pages

Letters to the Leaders of China: Kongjian Yu and the Future of the Chinese City edited by Terreform
UR Books, 2018
Paperback, 300 pages

One of the most memorable crits I attended during the World Architecture Festival a couple weeks ago was Turenscape's presentation of Puyangjiang River Corridor, which involved the demolition of the channelized river's concrete embankments and subsequent "softening and remediating" of the 10-mile-long river corridor. Even though the concrete-lined river sprouted industrial uses along its banks, Turenscape convinced the city's mayor to remove the concrete and the industry in order to bring the river back to life. How, the jury asked the designer from Turenscape, did they manage to do that" "Six months of drinking with the mayor!" It seemed like a joke and elicited laughter from the jury and audience, but it was true. And it captured something unique about Turenscape beyond its distinctive, influential "sponge city" landscapes full of winding colorful walkways and pavilions: founder Kongjian Yu and his other partners engage with mayors to transform sizable chunks of urban China into productive cultural landscapes.
Yu's political engagement is the theme of Letters to the Leaders of China, the eighth book from Terreform's UR Books. It collects almost ten of his letters to mayo...