'Nature, Man, and Spirits as One': Kongjian Yu/Turenscape ascend to the 2025 RAIC International Prize

Kongjian Yu’s 27-year-old Beijing-based practice Turenscape has been named this year’s winner of the RAIC International Prize by the Royal Architectural Institute of Canada (RAIC). 

His work, which was described as an aesthetically sound and philosophically grounded endeavor to “create inspiring spaces that foster human reconnection to our natural world," includes more than 1,000 projects in 250 cities worldwide. 

Yu, who also won the 2023 Oberlander Prize and the Cooper Hewitt's National Design Award for Landscape Architecture the same year, has gained notoriety for the development of the 'Sponge City' concept he began espousing during China's accelerated urbanization push in the 1990s. Yu has taught at Peking University since 1997.