The renowned Chinese landscape architect Yu Kongjian, champion of the “Sponge City” concept, died on Thursday during a plane crash in Pantanal moisture areas in Brazil when he made a film on Tuesday.
Yu, 62, dean and founder of the college for architecture and landscape of Beijing University, was the visionary behind China's groundbreaking “Sponge City” initiative. His internationally recognized concept is committed to urban environments that absorb, clean and reuse rainwater like a sponge and offer a sustainable solution for floods and water shortages.
His work, which offered a powerful Chinese model for sustainable urban development, brought him prestigious awards, such as the highest award of the landscape architecture, the Sir Geoffrey Jellicoe Award.
Yu and three other people, the pilot and two local filmmakers, were killed when the aircraft where they traveled had crashed in the Pantanal moisture areas.
Professor Yu's death is an immense loss of Beijing University and the global area of ecological landscape design. The obituary said he is deeply missing.
“We are expanding our deepest condolences to his family, friends, colleagues and students. Our sincere sympathy is also extended to the families of the other victims in this tragedy. They may all rest in peace.”
Yu, whose ecological concepts were promoted by the landscapes of his childhood in the village of Dongyu, Zhejiang, devoted his life to realize a vision of harmony between humanity and nature. As a passionate advocate of ecological civilization, he tirelessly worked the goal of a “beautiful China” and the healing of the planet. Shortly before the tragic accident, he worked in the Brazil's Pantanal moisture areas in field research, an important global ecosystem that reflected the urgent need to protect the remaining natural protected areas of the world.
Brazil's President Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva, expressed “sadness and dismay”. “In times of climate change, Yu became a global reference for sponge cities that combine the quality of life and environmental protection: something that we want – and need – for the future,” said Lula in an explanation.
In a “message from the Dean” published on the Colleges website, Yu, the increasing tension between humans and country, the relative scarcity of the subsistent resources, the energy crisis, the deterioration of the ecological environment in both urban and rural areas, the dilemma of transport and the living environment, the training with the training amount and the training amount, the value and the value and the methods have brought with it with the training company. and urban and rural planning.