In recent years, designers have increasingly emphasized sustainability in landscape design, but they have focused more on the “human-nature” relationship while neglecting the relationship between people. As a result, problems such as inconvenient use of the landscape and waste of resources for management and renovation have been caused. To solve this problem, it is necessary to establish the correct concept at the beginning of design. Traditional Chinese ideas can often provide appropriate reference points for many contemporary issues, including design. Taking the landscapes of ancient academies in southern Jiangsu as an example, this paper tries to explore the methods and ideas of the designers to deal with the “people-people” relationship in the process of construction, as an example of sustainable landscape design. Both textual research and metrological historiography were used to examine and summarize the characteristics of the landscape construction of the academies in southern Jiangsu, combined with the analysis of the theory of “interpersonal view”. It is apparent that the landscape construction of the academies in southern Jiangsu is characterized by site selection with favorable geography and people, scale and function with the balance of supply and demand, building construction with thrift and efficiency, and a site-specific and simple courtyard built. The formation of these characteristics originates from the founder’s design concept of care about education and being kind to scholars, saving materials and taking good care of the people, benefiting others before to themselves, and portraying the Confucian idea of “great harmony in the world”. The thought and design concept of the landscape construction of the academies in southern Jiangsu can provide a reference point for landscape designers to solve the sustainable problem of the “people-people” relationship in landscape design.

To address the growing issues of cognitive overload and psychological stress among college students, this study explores the statistical associations between restorative environmental perceptions within campus healing landscapes, student well-being, and behavioral intentions. Drawing on Attention Restoration Theory and Place Attachment Theory, this research aims to bridge the gap between environmental perception and specific behavioral outcomes in the Chinese university context. Using convenience survey data from 308 university students across multiple regions in China, this study employed PLS-SEM to analyze how four dimensions of restorative perception, namely immersion, detachment, intensity, and compatibility, are statistically associated with psychological recovery, place attachment, campus belonging, learning engagement intentions, and social interaction intentions. Results indicate that immersion and detachment exhibit the strongest correlations with psychological recovery. Psychological recovery emerged as the most prominent factor statistically predicted learning engagement intentions, showing a stronger linkage than parallel pathways mediated by attachment and belonging. A distinct and significant statistical association was also observed between restorative perceptions and social interaction intentions. Overall, this study suggests that healing landscapes may be relevant to students' cognitive focus, emotional stability, and social functioning. The findings highlight the importance of considering regional and landscape heterogeneities, providing evidence-based guidance for optimizing campus landscape design to support student development in diverse Chinese institutional settings.