Tawatchai Kobkaikit

Following the graduation of his Bachelor's degree from the Department of Landscape Architecture at Chulalongkorn University in 1991, Tawatchai then accomplished his Master's degree in Landscape Architecture from the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign in 1996. He returned to Chulalongkorn University as a lecturer from 1996 to 2000, and later returned to the US to work for the architecture firm NBBJ in Columbus, Ohio during 2000 and 2001. From 2001 to 2005, Tawatchai worked as a landscape architect for the SWA Group in Dallas, Texas. In 2005, he has settled in Bangkok to establish his own landscape practice and is now the Founder & Managing Director of TK Studio.

Tawatchai has extensive experience in landscape architecture both in Thailand and overseas. His design philosophy lies in the environmental concerns, arts and cultures from which they have emerged. When commencing a project, Tawatchai always look into natural processes within and surrounding the site by conducting thorough cross-professional analysis to ensure the landscape design will blend well and be part of nature. He advocates the application of Productive Landscape in delivering functioning landscape design. Users comfort and experiences, ecosystem services, landscape resilience, capture of seasonal changes and less softscape maintenance are major concerns when he delivers landscape projects. In order to ensure the design responses well to the site, Tawatchai always works with his team to explore the design alternatives through research, using new software, hand sketches, building physical models, and sometimes even testing details with 1:1 models on site. Hence, all landscape design delivered by Tawatchai are functional, lively, and be able to co-exist with nature well. In addition, the signature design of Miyawaki Eco Forest planting has stimulated the natural forest-like design at TK Studio, and the number of eco forest saplings planted is rocketing by each year.