All of us at Sasaki are devastated by the news of Kongjian Yu's sudden passing earlier this week. He was a visionary in ecological landscape design and his legacy inspired so many of us. Whether we knew him personally or encountered his thinking through his writings, public lectures, and the many practitioners he inspired.

As the founder of Turenscape, his influence on our field was immense. In 2023, he received the Cornelia Hahn Oberlander International Landscape Architecture Prize, which recognized his bold, creative, and socially meaningful contributions that embody the spirit of landscape architecture.

Yu believed deeply in honoring the ordinary and in working with nature, its cycles, its thresholds, and even its moments of instability, like flooding. His framework of "ecological security patterns" connected people directly to China's natural systems for sustenance and livelihood. His advocacy for the "sponge city" approach, where landscapes capture, filter, and store stormwater to reduce flood risk, helped spur its adoption in many regions.

Within Sasaki, many of us were fortunate to have had him as a teacher, mentor, friend, or employer. It is our hope that we can continue to honor his memory by advocating for design that restores, connects, and heals.

中文翻译:

本周早些时候，Sasaki的所有同仁都对俞孔坚突然逝世的消息感到万分悲痛。他是生态景观设计领域的远见卓识者，他的遗产激励了我们许多人。无论我们是私下认识他，还是通过他的著作、公开讲座以及他所启发的众多实践者来接触他的思想。

作为土人设计的创始人，他对我们领域的影响是巨大的。2023年，他获得了科妮莉亚·哈恩·奥伯兰德国际景观设计奖，该奖项表彰了他大胆、富有创意且具有社会意义的贡献，这些贡献体现了景观设计的精神。

俞先生坚信尊重平凡，并与自然、其周期、阈值，甚至其不稳定的时刻（如洪水）共存。他的“生态安全格局”框架将人们直接与中国的自然系统联系起来，以维持生计。他倡导的“海绵城市”方法，即通过景观来收集、过滤和储存雨水以减少洪水风险，推动了该方法在许多地区的采纳。

在Sasaki内部，我们中的许多人有幸曾将他视为老师、导师、朋友或雇主。我们希望能通过倡导修复、连接和治愈的设计来继续纪念他。