Kongjian Yu, the landscape architect who dreamed up the "sponge city" concept, has died in a plane crash in Brazil's Pantanal wetlands while filming a documentary about his trailblazing work. Yu, 62, was en route to a ranch near the border with Paraguay and Bolivia when the single-engine Cessna he was in went down Tuesday afternoon. Also killed were two Brazilian filmmakers, Luiz Ferraz and Rubens Crispim Junior—who were documenting Yu's work for the film Planeta Esponja—and local pilot Marcelo Pereira de Barros.
The Guardian cites a local report that said the pilot had been trying to abort a landing when the plane lost altitude and dropped, "causing an immediate explosion" on the ground. Yu, a Peking University professor and founder of the Turenscape design firm, was inspired by ancient Chinese water systems in his work to help modern cities better handle floods and droughts. His "sponge city" concept advocates for urban landscapes that use features like parks and ponds soak up and reuse extreme rainfall rather than forcing it away, an approach that's gained traction as climate change brings more extreme weather.
The New York Times says Yu likened his approach to "doing tai chi with water ... It's a whole philosophy, a new way of dealing with water," in a 2024 interview. In an interview two years prior with the AP, Yu faulted much of Asia's modern infrastructure for being built on European ideas, which he said don't neatly fit with the needs of Asia and its monsoons. Turenscape recently notched a top prize from the American Association of Landscape Architects for its "floating forest" in Jiangxi, notes the Guardian, which explains the firm turned a 126-acre degraded riverside into a lush wetland that better handles stormwater. The judges lauded it as a "template for other cities seeking to resuscitate blighted waterfront landscapes."
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