Chinese architect Kongjian Yu found dead in Brazil plane crash

Chinese landscape architect Kongjian Yu died in a plane crash late on Tuesday in the vast Brazilian wetlands of Mato Grosso do Sul state, Brazilian authorities said on Wednesday.

Yu, 62, gained global relevance as a landscape architect and urban planner after the Chinese government adopted his concept of “sponge cities” using nature-based solutions to absorb and retain water instead of concrete infrastructure to channel it away.

The concept has since been adopted in hundreds of places in China as well as urban areas from the U.S. to Russia.

Brazilian authorities confirmed that Yu and three other people, the pilot and two local filmmakers, were killed when the aircraft they were travelling in crashed in a rural area near the town of Aquidauana, in the Pantanal wetlands.

“It was with sadness and dismay that I received the news of the plane crash,” President Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva said in a statement.

“In times of climate change, Kongjian Yu became a global reference with the sponge cities which combine quality of life and environmental protection,” he added.

Yu was featured in the opening program of the Sao Paulo International Architecture Biennale last week. Newspaper Estadao reported that he then joined a trip with filmmakers shooting a documentary about his work.

Peking University’s College of Architecture and Landscape, which Yu founded and led as a professor and dean, and Turenscape, a Beijing-based design firm Yu founded in 1998, did not immediately respond to requests for comment outside normal working hours.

Yu has led Turenscape as the firm’s principal designer, growing it into a team of more than 500 specialists, according to the company’s website.