Sonny Meng Qi Xu

Sonny Xu (b.1990, Beijing, China) is a Chinese Canadian landscape architect and architectural designer based in Cambridge, MA and New York, NY. He is currently working as a landscape architect at STIMSON. Sonny is co-founder of post·rock with Jialei Tang and serves as the creative director. With a decade of work experience, he has practiced as a senior landscape designer at Stoss Landscape Urbanism and as an architectural designer with Mohsen Mostafavi Architecture, FxCollaborative and Epiphyte-Lab, among other firms.

Sonny is passionate about design teaching and discourse. At RISD, Sonny served as a critic for a third-year Master of Landscape Architecture advanced elective studio on the Canada-US border in fall 2021 and the Site|Ecology|Design landscape studio in spring 2022. He co-taught three Master of Architecture studios on site design exploring granite as a material and reimagining quarries, museums, archives and breakwaters with Joseph Kennedy at the BAC from 2021–23. He also served as a teaching fellow at University of Calgary in 2020 and a studio instructor for the Harvard GSD Design Discovery summer program in 2018 in addition to lecturing at a wide range of universities.

Sonny pursued graduate studies at Harvard Graduate School of Design, receiving the Master of Architecture II and Master of Landscape Architecture with Distinction in 2018. At the GSD, Sonny worked as a teaching assistant for five design studios, and as a researcher at the Harvard Mellon Urban Initiative. Upon graduation, Sonny was honored to receive the KPF Paul Katz Fellowship 2018, The Peter Walker and Partners Fellowship for Landscape Architecture 2018 and the Penny White Travel Fund 2018.

Sonny’s work has been exhibited at museums including Cooper Hewitt, the Smithsonian Museum for Design (with Stoss Landscape Urbanism), the National Academy Museum (with FXCollaborative), the Bibliowicz Family Gallery at Cornell University, Druker Gallery at the Harvard GSD, University of Calgary and Washington States University. His design work and writing were published in a wide range of journals, including Harvard Urban Review, Transient Spaces (by CCNY Spitzer School of Architecture), Pamphlet of Architecture #36: Buoyant Clarity (Princeton Architectural Press, by Meyer, Hemmendinger, & Meyer) and Exacting Fantasy (Tsinghua University Press).