The international landscape architecture community mourns the loss of one of its most influential pioneers: Chinese landscape architect Kongjian Yu has died at the age of 62 (1963–2025) in a plane crash in the Brazilian state of Mato Grosso do Sul. According to local media reports, the small aircraft carrying Yu and 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 programme of the international Sao Paulo Architecture Biennale last week and was on board the small aircraft with two documentary filmmakers and the pilot. The team was on their way to shoot 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 gained worldwide attention. In China, Yu was an advisor at the highest political level and played a key role in integrating ecological principles into national planning policy – a remarkable break with the technocratic engineering dominance that had previously prevailed in water management. As a result of his work, the sponge city concept has already been implemented hundreds of times around the world.

Yu advocated for landscape architecture that does not block the natural flow of water, but integrates it – a stance he championed throughout his life with scientific precision and poetic persuasiveness. His death seems particularly tragic given that he fought throughout his life for resilient infrastructure and adaptation to the forces of nature – and now he himself has presumably been torn from life by a technical failure.

Visionary behind the sponge city Kongjian Yu has passed away

Kongjian Yu was also an influential and valued author for our magazine topos. In one of the last issues, with the cover story ‘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 sketches the potential of flooding. Especially with regard to urban environments, the water table and the restoration of ecosystems. Today, the text reads like a legacy – and at the same time is an urgent appeal to carry on his ideas.

Among other honours, Yu was awarded the Cornelia Hahn Oberlander International Landscape Architecture Prize in 2023 and the Sir Geoffrey Jellicoe Award in 2020.

The death of Kongjian Yu 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 just design: namely, a tool for resilience, justice and sustainability.