A Special Edition of our series following the tragic death of the visionary landscape architect, Kongjian Yu, who died in a plane crash in Brazil on September 23. No one was leading the way more boldly to save our planet from the climate crisis than Kongjian Yu. He was world famous for his successes in China and around the world. Kongjian’s core philosophy is Sponge City, a landscape infrastructure based on the idea that land can retain, mitigate, and purify rainwater. To describe it he himself evoked an ancient Chinese martial art: “doing tai chi with water.”

93-year old architect, theorist and professor Peter Eisenman, holds a place in architectural history as one of the New York Five, and the founder of Deconstructivism. He’s the recipient of the Gold Medal from the American Academy of Arts and Letters. And he has made a lifelong commitment to teaching, serving on the faculty of Yale, Princeton, Harvard, Cooper Union and Cambridge. He now teaches at Cornell University in Manhattan where he plans to adapt his newest course on the genealogy of architecture as the subject of his 28th book.

90-year old Raj Rewal is one of the most distinguished Indian architects of all time – and Victoria’s old friend. He is the architect of Delhi’s most important Modern buildings and with many masterpieces published in the History of World Architecture. His work, recently displayed at an exhibition of Post-Colonial architecture at MoMA, is displayed in the 2025 Venice Architecture Biennale. Raj talks about his latest creative passion – miniature paintings and drawings inspired by historical Indian works of art.