Jie Hu Joins Our Faculty
After completing a Master of Landscape Architecture degree at the University of Illinois, Hu worked for eight years at Sasaki Associates in Watertown, Massachusetts. In 2003, he returned to China to begin work at THUPDI, where he and his team designed dozens of large-scale, transformative landscapes across China, including the 1,680-acre Olympic Forest Park in Beijing; the 1,557-acre Tangshan Nanhu Eco-City Central Park, an intensive remediation project realized on the site of collapsed coal mines, a dump, and contaminated former factory sites; and the charismatic Quarry Garden in the Chen Mountain Botanical Garden in Shanghai. Hu is currently designing a major portion of the Winter Olympics site in Beijing for 2022, while his research focuses on application of the Shan-shui City concept to multiscale landscape practices.
In March 2018, Hu won the Lifetime Achievement Award presented by the Council of Educators in Landscape Architecture. Of his work, the American Society of Landscape Architects (ASLA) writes:
“[Hu] strives to expand landscape architecture’s design scope, and his work exemplifies interdisciplinary collaboration, integrating function, art, science and culture with sustainable strategies for resource conservation. Rehabilitation of landscapes and natural resources degraded and polluted by uncontrolled development, industry and neglect, and mitigation of the effects of rapid urban growth are key aspects of his approach to planning and design. His work has addressed head-on China’s environmental challenges. He is committed to education and research in office design, as demonstrated by the professional development programs in his office.”
Hu is a member of the Chinese Council of Landscape Architecture and a Fellow of ASLA, and he has served as a member of the ASLA Council of Fellows Executive Committee.