Honouring visionary landscape architect Kongjian Yu (1963-2025)

Landscape architect Kongjian Yu (1963-2025) has died in an aeroplane accident, it's been announced. The renowned Chinese design professional was working on a project in south-western Brazil when the small vessel he was in crashed.

Kongjian Yu: the landscape architect and founder of Turenscape

Kongjian Yu was a respected member of the global landscape architecture community – and a pioneering specialist in his country, China, and beyond. He was the 2023 recipient of the prestigious Cornelia Hahn Oberlander International Landscape Architecture Prize – the biennial accolade designed by Washington-based The Cultural Landscape Foundation (TCLF) to raise awareness of and celebrate excellence in its field, as well as commemorate renowned Canadian landscape architect Cornelia Hahn Oberlander, who died in 2021.

The landscape architect headed the field-leading firm Turenscape, and his growing portfolio included the seminal 'sponge cities' model and campaign. This sought to address urban flooding caused by climate change, and it was so influential that it was adopted as national policy in China in 2013.

Yu was also the founder and leader of the Graduate School of Landscape Architecture and the College of Architecture and Landscape Architecture at Peking University.

'Kongjian Yu was the global champion of the “sponge cities” concept, a global ambassador for the profession of landscape architecture, and a global advocate for addressing the effects of climate change,' said Charles A Birnbaum, president and CEO of TCLF.

'Only two years ago, he was awarded the biennial Cornelia Hahn Oberlander International Landscape Architecture Prize, which is bestowed on a recipient who is “exceptionally talented, creative, courageous, and visionary". The Oberlander Prize Jury Citation [called him] a “brilliant and prolific designer … [who] is also a force for progressive change in landscape architecture around the world”,’ continued Birnbaum.

Meanwhile, Gary Hilderbrand, chair of the Department of Landscape Architecture, Harvard University Graduate School of Design, said at the time of Yu's Oberlander Prize win that he was the ‘all-time greatest spokesperson for landscape architecture in China – a nation that needs environmental rescue on a colossal scale’.