By Ethan Wu
On September 23, 2025, landscape architecture lost one of its most consequential voices. Kongjian Yu, FASLA, died at age 62 in a small plane crash in Brazil’s Pantanal wetlands, where he was working with filmmakers on Planeta Esponja (Planet Sponge), a documentary exploring the ideas that had defined much of his life’s work.
Yu spent his career asking a deceptively simple question: What if cities stopped treating water as an adversary?
As founder of Turenscape and professor at Peking University, he advanced the idea of the “sponge city”—an approach that uses wetlands, parks, permeable surfaces, and other forms of ecological infrastructure to absorb, store, cleanse, and slowly release stormwater. His work connected flood protection with biodiversity and human well-being, while insisting that landscape architecture could be not merely decorative, but essential infrastructure.
Nearly one year after his death, a group of landscape architects, designers, colleagues, and friends is working with the Central Park Conservancy to create a permanent memorial bench in his honor.
The location feels particularly fitting. The bench will sit beside the Harlem Meer, at the northeast corner of Central Park, where water, vegetation, public life, and the changing seasons meet. In a small way, the setting echoes the principles Yu spent decades advancing: landscapes that welcome water rather than resist it, and public spaces where ecological function and everyday human experience are inseparable.
Once dedicated, the bench will remain part of Central Park and be maintained by the Central Park Conservancy—a permanent place to remember Prof. Yu and to introduce future generations to the ideas he championed.
The campaign seeks to raise $20,000 for the memorial. More than $6,000 has already been contributed by individuals, and the organizers hope to complete fundraising by September 20, ahead of the first anniversary of Yu’s passing on September 23. Donations are made directly through the Central Park Conservancy and are tax-deductible.
This bench is modest in scale compared with the landscapes Yu imagined and built. But perhaps that is part of its meaning: a place to sit beside the water, observe the living landscape, and remember a landscape architect who taught the profession to see both differently.
Support the Kongjian Yu Memorial Bench.
We have also set up an email list for anyone who would like to receive occasional updates from the team about fundraising progress, the memorial bench, and the dedication. If you or your colleagues would like to stay informed, please join here.
Published in Blog, Cover Story
