Kongjian Yu, a Beijing-based landscape architect, author, and academic famed for pioneering a particularly porous approach to urban design that employs large-scale green infrastructure with recreational elements to mitigate flooding accelerated by climate change, is the winner of the second Cornelia Hahn Oberlander International Landscape Architecture Prize.

Climate Adaptation-Sponge City

Professor Kongjian Yu is the founder and principal designer of Turenscape, which Fast Company named one of the 10 Most Innovative Architecture Companies of 2021 for its work in “balancing China’s hyperspeed urbanisation with green sponge cities”. An often-outspoken voice in the world of landscape architecture and urbanism, Professor Yu has been heralded by Michael Sorkin as “a hero of effective advocacy within a system fraught with perils.”