THE LAND OF PEACH BLOSSOMS AND THE ART OF SURVIVAL: MY JOURNEY TO HEAL THE PLANET

Abstract

On October 8, the 2020 Sir Geoffrey Jellicoe Award of the International Federation of Landscape Architects (IFLA) was awarded to Yu Kongjian, professor of School of Architecture and Landscape of Peking University. This highest honor for landscape architects and scholars recognizes their outstanding lifelong achievements. This article is a record of his speech given in the award ceremony that summarized his academic and professional careers. Looking back, Yu held that his village landscape experiences, melded with modern concepts of landscape and urbanism, sustainability and aesthetics, enables him to deal with the common challenges faced by the landscape architecture industry today. At the moment, the global COVID-19 pandemic is a powerful reminder that this is an incredibly sobering time to contemplate the relationship between humans and the nature. He also believed that the pandemic—together with other crises such as climate change—is highlighting the importance of landscape architecture that can not only heal bodies and minds, but also the planet itself.

Keywords

International Federation of Landscape Architects / Sir Geoffrey Jellicoe Award / Landscape Architecture / Ecology / Aesthetics / Village / Climate Change

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Higher Education Press