Kotchakorn Voraakhom is a landscape architect who works on building productive green public space that tackles climate change in sinking cities.
Kotchakorn never thought her childhood playtime favorites–boat paddling with friends in the floodwaters in front of her house–would later become a catastrophic disaster: a sinking city. On a mission to save her hometown from 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.
Building a park may sound easy, but not in Bangkok, 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. Alongside, she is also a design consultant for a major redevelopment project for Bangkok’s 250th anniversary. Voraakhom is a TED Fellow, Echoing Green Fellow, Atlantic Fellow, and Asia Foundation Development Fellow. She received her master’s in landscape architecture from Harvard University.