NaijNaira
The world has lost Yu Kongjian, the Chinese architect celebrated for his groundbreaking “sponge city” designs, after a plane crash in Brazil claimed his life – www.naijnaira.com reports.
Authorities confirmed that the 62-year-old was traveling with Brazilian filmmakers Luiz Fernando Feres da Cunha Ferraz and Rubens Crispim Jr, along with pilot Marcelo Pereira de Barros, when their small Cessna aircraft went down in Mato Grosso do Sul.
According to The Independent, the group had been working on a documentary called Planeta Esponja (Planet Sponge), which focused on Yu’s influential work.
The crash occurred during a landing attempt near a ranch about 100 kilometers from Aquidauana, in the country’s sprawling Pantanal wetlands.
Brazil’s president Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva described Yu as “a global reference with sponge cities, which combine quality of life and environmental protection.”
Yu built his reputation by reintroducing traditional Chinese water systems into modern city planning to counter floods, reduce pollution, and cool dense urban areas.
China adopted the sponge city concept as official policy in 2013, encouraging cities to absorb stormwater through green infrastructure instead of relying solely on concrete drains.
Through his studio Turenscape, Yu oversaw projects worldwide, from Saudi Arabia to Thailand, and received multiple awards from the American Society of Landscape Architects.
One award-winning project, the “floating forest” in Jiangxi, transformed a degraded floodplain along the Yangtze River into a thriving wetland park.
For Yu, architecture was about survival as much as beauty, and he warned that unchecked climate change, urban flooding, and biodiversity loss made his work urgent.
Born in rural China, he often said that ecological design was not optional but essential to the future of humanity.
