Sponge city creator Kongjian Yu killed in Brazil plane crash
Landscape architect Kongjian Yu, the founder of Chinese studio Turenscape, and three others have died in a plane crash in Brazil's Pantanal wetlands while reportedly making a documentary about his sponge city model.
A small aircraft crashed in Brazil's Mato Grosso do Sul state on Tuesday as it attempted to land at a farm near Aquidauana municipality, killing 62-year-old Yu.
Two Brazilian filmmakers, Luiz Ferraz and Rubens Crispim Junior, and local pilot Marcelo Pereira de Barros also died in the crash.
CNN Brasil reported that the victims of the crash were in the Pantanal region to film a documentary titled Planeta Esponja, which translates to Planet Sponge, exploring Yu's pioneering sponge city concept – an urban planning model for managing rainwater in cities.
The cause of the plane crash has not been disclosed. However, according to Brazilian newspaper Folha de Campo Grande, the aircraft exploded when it hit the ground.
Yu's sponge city model gained global attention after it was adopted by the Chinese government in 2014 as a guide for future urban developments. The concept proposes using green, nature-based infrastructure for flood and stormwater management instead of relying solely on grey infrastructure drainage systems.
Born in 1963 in Jinhua, China, Yu studied landscape architecture at Beijing Forestry University. He completed his master's degree in 1987.
He worked as part of the landscape studio SWA Group in California in the 1990s before returning to China in 1997 to establish his own studio, Turenscape, which has completed over 600 projects internationally.
Yu also established the department for landscape architecture at Peking University, where he was a professor.
In 2023, he won the Cornelia Hahn Oberlander International Landscape Architecture Prize for his contributions to the field, with juries hailing him as "a force for progressive change in landscape architecture around the world".
Speaking with Dezeen after receiving the award, Yu said that creating sponge cities must be a priority in the face of increased flooding, as concrete-based infrastructure "will fail due to their non-resilience".
The Cultural Landscape Foundation, which awards the biennial Oberlander Prize, said Yu "demonstrated that one person can make a difference".
"Thanks to his unceasing efforts, the sponge cities concept was adopted as national policy in China," it said in a statement yesterday.
"Leading by example, he unequivocally demonstrated how a landscape architect can change the way a major country sees and acts, and inspired a global movement."
Turenscape won the World Landscape of the Year prize in 2015 for a natural wetland park in Jinhua with flood-resistant topography, and again in 2017 for Chengtoushan Archaeological Park, which features pathways elevated over a 6,500-year-old archaeological site.
More recently, Turenscape transformed a concrete sea wall on an abandoned fish farm in Hainan into a public space with an improved stormwater management system, aiming to alleviate the local threat of rising sea levels, which was highly commended in the 2024 Dezeen Awards.
The top photo of Yu is by Barrett Doherty, courtesy of The Cultural Landscape Foundation.
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