The world has lost a visionary

Professor Kong Jian Yu (1963–2025), founder of Turenscape and Professor at Peking University, leaves behind a legacy that transformed how we understand the relationship between nature and cities.

Professor Yu is best remembered as the mind behind the “Sponge City” concept — a radical yet deeply intuitive approach to urban planning that embraces nature as infrastructure. Rather than fighting against water with concrete pipes and walls, his vision was for cities to absorb, filter, store, and reuse rainfall through green spaces, wetlands, permeable pavements, bio-swales, and restored waterways. This was more than flood control. It was about healing landscapes, reviving biodiversity, improving water quality, cooling urban microclimates, and reconnecting people to the rhythms of nature.

Through Turenscape, he and his team completed hundreds of projects across China and around the world, restoring degraded rivers, protecting wetlands, and re-imagining urban design for resilience and beauty. His concept of “negative planning” — putting ecological security first, and letting nature guide where and how we build — continues to influence planners globally.

Professor Yu extended his thinking from sponge cities to a vision of a “sponge planet”: a call for humanity to restore the earth’s hydrological and ecological systems at scale. This is what we today call Nature-based Solutions — working with nature to address climate change, disaster risk, water scarcity, and biodiversity loss, while providing benefits to people and communities.

In 2023, he was awarded the Cornelia Hahn Oberlander International Landscape Architecture Prize, recognizing his profound impact on the discipline worldwide. His teachings and mentorship inspired a generation of landscape architects, ecologists, and policymakers.

For me personally, this loss is profound. I have lost a friend, a mentor, and a leader who consistently reminded us that “to design with nature is to design for life.”

Professor Kong Jian Yu’s vision will endure in every wetland restored, every city that embraces the sponge approach, and every young planner inspired to put nature at the center of their work.

May his legacy continue to guide us toward more resilient, beautiful, and life-sustaining landscapes.
RIP Professor KJ.