M.Landscape Arch with Distinction, Graduate School of Design, Harvard University, 2017

B.Engineering in Landscape Arch, School of Architecture and Urban Planning, Chongqing University, 2015

Visiting, School of Planning and Geography, Cardiff University, 2013

Visiting, MIT Sloan School of Management, 2016

Yujia Wang is an Assistant Professor of Practice in Landscape Architecture at UNL College of Architecture. His education background is international and interdisciplinary, during which he sought a path that involved landscape architecture as well as regional and urban planning, urban design, architecture, and in addition policy and financial studies. Through this education and research background, he has developed a unique set of lens to observe and operate in the built environment.

Prior to joining UNL, Wang has practiced in the United States and China. At Sasaki Associates' Boston office, he worked on a range of domestic and international projects across a multitude of scales. The work include urban landscape projects such as Chongqing Twin River Waterfront Vision Plan, and built projects like Cantigny Park, Boston WTC Pier, and Jinan MixC Retail District. He has also worked at and led the Chongqing Chapter of Wuzhiqiao, a series of charitable projects focused on enhancing security and access by building bridges for distant and under-served villages in rural parts of China. Notably, the Qingling Phase I bridge, a 50-meter bridge he and the team completed in 2013, was used as a example of success and was widely covered by national and local media.

In addition to practice, Wang curates exhibitions and creates exhibits, working with distinctive institutions and venues such as Shenzhen Museum of Contemporary Arts and Planning Exhibitions (MoCAPE) and Shenzhen Bi-City Shenzhen Biennale of Urbanism\ Architecture.

Selected Publications

Wang, Yujia, et al. "Reinvigorating Urban Under Space: Towards a New Type of Public Landscape." Nakhara: Journal of Environmental Design and Planning 13 (2017): 41-58.

Areas of Interest and Research

Wang places emphasizes on both research and practice.

Wang is interested in two parallel lines of research. One of the topics he has been focusing on is the urban renewal process that involves inserting and/or reinforcing spatial structure, using landscape as a strategic tool. He looks at this process in relation to existing infrastructure, hydro and ecological corridors, and potential public spaces. His past research, the Urban Underspace Project, investigates un-used under bridge spaces and abandoned underground spaces to see how they form a city-wide network that offers new grounds for public use. The other line of research he has taken an interest into is in evaluation of landscape projects' performance, as a way to inform design process and as it fit in financial models.

He is committed to a continued involvement with practice that focus on creating and iterating the place of gathering, and of delivering the vision through grounded operations. The definition allows him to experiment with the effectiveness of different project types, to work with each the unique sets of drivers, constraints and potentials, and to examine the meaning of public space at different scales and for different clients / missions. The body of work has been carried out both in the United States and in international context. Yujia is strongly interested in embracing the risks and opportunities of design tied in culture background, climate, population, technical capacities, cost and revenue, local regulations etc. This line of thinking on culture energy and diversity, and on delivering concepts and vision is further experimented through small scale interventions, as Yujia continues to curate and design exhibitions at various venues of art.