International landscape architecture is mourning the loss of one of its most important pioneers: Chinese landscape architect Kongjian Yu died in a plane crash in the Brazilian state of Mato Grosso do Sul at the age of 62 (1963-2025). According to local media reports, the small plane Yu was on board with three other passengers crashed last Tuesday during a domestic flight near the municipality of Aquidauana. None of the passengers survived the accident.
Yu was part of the opening program of the International Sao Paulo Architecture Biennial last week and was on board the small plane with two documentary filmmakers and the pilot. The team was on its way to film a documentary about Kongjian Yu’s work.
Kongjian Yu was the founder of the internationally active landscape architecture firm Turenscape and taught as a professor at Peking University, where he also headed the College of Architecture and Landscape Architecture (CALA). He became particularly well known for his tireless commitment to nature-based solutions in urban planning – especially for the concept of the “sponge city”, which brought him worldwide attention. In China, Yu was an advisor at the highest political level and was instrumental in integrating ecological principles into national planning policy – a remarkable break with the technocratic engineering dominance of water management that had prevailed until then. As a result of his work, the concept of the sponge city has been implemented hundreds of times around the world.
Yu advocated landscape architecture that did not block the natural flow of water, but rather integrated it – an attitude that he advocated throughout his life with scientific precision and poetic persuasiveness. His death seems particularly tragic in light of the fact that he spent his life fighting for resilient infrastructures and adaptation to natural forces – and was now himself presumably torn from life by a technical failure.
Kongjian Yu was also a formative and valued author for our sister magazine topos(www.toposmagazine.com). In one of the last issues with the cover topic “Flood”, he wrote the lead article “Reimaging the flow of nature”. In it, he outlines nothing less than a new water culture: a culture that outlines the potential of flooding. Especially with regard to urban environments, the groundwater table and the restoration of ecosystems. Today, the text reads like a legacy – and is also an urgent appeal to pass on his ideas.
Among other things, Yu was awarded the Cornelia Hahn Oberlander International Landscape Architecture Prize in 2023 and the Sir Geoffrey Jellicoe Award in 2020.
Kongjian Yu’s death is a great loss – for the international planning community, for ecological urban development and for all those who believe that landscape architecture can be more than design: namely a tool for resilience, justice and sustainability.
