Kongjian Yu recently passed away whilst travelling in Brazil and working on a documentary called Planeta Esponja (Planet Sponge) [1]. He was a professor at Peking University and founded Turenscape, a landscape architecture firm in Beijing, China. He also established the College of Architecture and Landscape Architecture at Peking University.
The impact of Kongjian Yu on the landscape architecture industry has been profound, and he has won numerous awards and accolades for his design work and writings from universities, Fast Company, the TCLF Oberlander Prize, and was most recently named one of Forbes’ Sustainability Leaders 2025.
Kongjian Yu will be remembered for the immense impact that he had on the landscape architecture profession, not just in China but across the world. In my opinion, his most outstanding achievement is not only advocating for sustainable landscapes and developing the concept of sponge cities. But he went on to convince many governments and clients to integrate the sponge city principles into their landscapes. After visiting many of Kongjian’s projects in China and Thailand, it is often hard to put into words and images the impact he and his colleagues at Turenscape and Peking University have had on the world.
Kongjian Yu designed Houtan Park in Shanghai, as part of the 2010 Expo, which catalysed many landscape architects in China to explore the possibilities of what could be achieved with river edges and water treatment. “Kongjian dared us to challenge the traditional engineering mindset, to break the concrete embankments and harness nature to manage water. His work has inspired many of my projects by leading the way, most notably through his work at Shanghai Expo 2010 for Houtan Park.” – Lee Parks, Executive Director / Global Landscape Practice Technical Practice Group Leader AECOM
I met Kongjian Yu several times over the past 20 years at conferences and at his office in Beijing, and he was always been enthusiastic about landscape architecture and interested in hearing about your ideas and thoughts about the profession. Our last in person meeting was last December at his office at Turenscape. We had a long conversation over tea and lunch about water and his recent collaborative paper [2] regarding the “Sponge Planet” concept. He was very enthusiastic about the possibility of making as many sponge cities as possible and making connections through waterways, wetlands and other blue infrastructure. He had recently attended a kick-off meeting for the IFLA Water group, encouraging me to join to help make a difference regarding water and sustainability. Kongjian Yu’s last message to me was sharing his latest LAF paper on Sponge Planet [3] showing that he was constantly passionate about the water sustainability cause.
There has been a great deal of sorrow on Chinese social media with many resharing his last video of the Pantanal wetlands. Others have shared memories and teachings of Kongjian Yu on social media and remembering the impact that he had on their lives.
I hope that his advocacy, design work, and teachings provide examples for not just landscape architects but everyone to continue to the cause of valuing water as a precious resource and that Kongjian’s dream of achieving a Sponge Planet can be realised.
Article by Damian Holmes, Founder & Editor – World Landscape Architecture
[1] Renowned ‘sponge city’ architect Kongjian Yu dies in Brazil plane crash https://www.theguardian.com/world/2025/sep/24/architect-kongjian-yu-dies-brazil-plane-crash
[2] Yu, K., Gies, E. & Wood, W.W. To solve climate change, we need to restore our Sponge Planet. Nat Water (2025). https://doi.org/10.1038/s44221-024-00355-x
[3] Kongjian YU. Sponge Planet: Nature-based Infrastructure for Climate Adaptation Beyond Concrete. Landsc. Archit. Front. 1-13 DOI:10.15302/J-LAF-0-020052
Kongjian Yu had kindly agreed to be a keynote speaker at the 2025 WLA Shanghai Landscape Forum. We will take time to reflect and make a statement at a later date.