About

Zhang Jie is an architect, urban designer, scholar, and professor at Tsinghua University. He leads Studio Zhang Jie, an architecture and urban design team working across historic quarters, industrial heritage, and cultural landscapes across China, including Beijing, Nanjing, Fuzhou, Jingdezhen, Ji‘nan and many other important cities.

For over three decades, Zhang has pursued a consistent idea: Continuity Through Change. He works with inherited urban fabric, local craft, productive culture, and landscape order as foundations for contemporary life. Projects including Sanfang Qixiang in Fuzhou, Taoxichuan in Jingdezhen, and Daming Lake in Jinan have become influential models in China for bringing inherited urban and landscape traditions into contemporary life.

His work has received a 2024 AIA International Award, RIBA International Awards for Excellence, UNESCO Asia-Pacific heritage awards, and recognition from IFLA. Zhang is a National Engineering Survey and Design Master, one of China’s highest design professional honors, and holds a UNESCO Chair. ICOMOS named him its first Chinese Honorary Member, a lifetime distinction recognizing his outstanding contributions to heritage conservation in Asia amid rapid urbanization. Through his professional and academic practice, he has dedicated his intellectual endeavors to exploring how tradition can remain a generative force in the contemporary city.