Kotchakorn Voraakhom is a landscape architect from Thailand who works on building productive green public space that tackles climate change in urban dense area and climate vulnerable communities.
Voraakhom never thought her childhood playtime favorites--boat paddling with friends in the floodwaters in front of her house--would later become a catastrophic disaster: In 2011, Thailand suffered its worst flooding in its history, stranding families, including Voraakhom’s. In response, Voraakhom set out to populate the Thai capital with climate-resilient green spaces as buffers against the annual tempests. This park, the Chulalongkorn Centenary Park gives Bangkok a spark of aspiration in how the city can choose to address its threatened future while allowing new landscape architecture strategies to emerge.
After winning a contract to build Bangkok’s first public park in three decades, she created an 11-acre “thirsty” plot capable of absorbing 1 million gallons of water through a combination of sloped gardens, wetlands and a retention pond. Later this year, her firm opened a second 36-acre park featuring the biggest urban farming green roof in Asia.
Building a park may sound easy, but not in Thailand’s capital, where Voraakhom and her team has turned an invaluable commercial property in the heart of the city, into a flood-proof, water-retention public green space, the Chulalongkorn Centenary Park, the 2019 World Landscape Architecture Award, American Society of Landscape Architects, The Best of the Best Award from Iconic Architecture by German Design Council and many more.
On a mission to save her hometown from flood, rising sea levels and climate change, Voraakhom has founded landscape architecture design firm Landprocess and Porous City Network, a social enterprise working to solve urban environmental problems and increase urban resilience across Southeast Asia by aiding, engaging and educating climate-vulnerable communities about productive landscape design.
Alongside, Voraakhom is featured in the 2019, TIME 100 Next, a list from TIME Magazine —that spotlights 100 rising stars who are shaping the future of the world. Voraakhom is also on the list of 15 women fighting against climate change. Voraakhom is a chairwoman on the landscape without border of International Federation of Landscape Architects, Asia Pacific Region (IFLA APR). She is a TED Fellow, Echoing Green Climate Fellow. She received her master's in landscape architecture from Harvard University's Graduate School of Design.
