An Architect Who Mixes Water and Nature to Build Resilience

This interview is a part of our newest Ladies and Management particular report, which highlights girls making important contributions to the main tales unfolding on the earth right now. The dialog has been edited and condensed.

Kotchakorn Voraakhom, 43, is a Thai panorama architect whose agency, Landprocess, focuses on social and environmental transformation by way of initiatives like canal gardens, water-storing parks and rooftop farms.

You grew up in Bangkok, acquired your grasp’s diploma from the Harvard Graduate Faculty of Design and labored for panorama structure corporations in the US earlier than returning to Bangkok and beginning your individual agency. Your work combines each worldwide and native views. What’s the benefit of this method?

Responding to local weather change just isn’t one thing generic. We have to tailor every answer to a tradition and a setting. Right here in Thailand it’s about drought and flood. This isn’t about melting ice. There are flash floods, and floods that come to remain. There are completely different patterns of nature. They usually’re completely different than they was. We have to adapt.

Your designs discover each panorama and water. Are you able to discuss your connection to each?

I nonetheless keep in mind sneaking into the canals as a baby and seeing the greenery alongside them. Already there was much less and fewer nature round them, however it was such a therapeutic second for me. My home was a rowhouse alongside the primary highway. We had no yard, simply the road. The one walks you might do had been extremely popular, very harmful and really polluted.

Bangkok is constructed on wetlands and vulnerable to heavy rains. What may be finished concerning the frequent flooding?

When my agency builds parks, we’re accepting that they are going to flood. Proper now, once we construct for floods in Thailand, we see it with worry. We’re constructing dams larger and better. That’s the way you usually take care of uncertainty — with worry. It’s worthwhile to take care of uncertainty with flexibility, with understanding. It’s OK to flood, and it’s OK to be “weak.” Which means resilience. With that mind-set, you create designs that discuss with nature. That dance with nature. It’s very Buddhist — accepting the world as it’s.

Your agency’s first main venture was Chulalongkorn College Centenary Park, within the heart of Bangkok, which you accomplished in 2017. Are you able to discuss that design and the way it helps tackle flooding, overdevelopment and an absence of public area?

It was the primary main park within the metropolis in 30 years, and the college constructed it to have a good time its a centesimal anniversary. We mentioned it’s not nearly celebrating what’s been, however about serving to town and its residents survive and thrive within the subsequent 100 years. So, let’s attempt to outline a brand new approach of working with water and residing within the metropolis.

The entire park is inclined to gather water. On one finish you might have a sequence of sloping buildings containing museums, cafes, parking areas and different capabilities, which we outfitted with a inexperienced roof. Three underground tanks retailer the rainwater absorbed by the roof. The land slopes down from there to a foremost garden and a sequence of wetlands after which continues all the way down to a retention pond. When it rains, extra water from the inexperienced roof is filtered by the wetland, then it flows into the retention pond, which may double in measurement.

The idea comes partly from the thought of monkey cheeks. Our earlier king [Bhumibol Adulyadej] noticed {that a} monkey shops his meals in his cheeks after which eats it when he’s hungry. It is a type of monkey cheek for water within the metropolis.

This looks like instance of how you’re employed. You are likely to push the boundaries of concepts which are already themselves pushing boundaries.

There are such a lot of issues to deal with whenever you discuss public area. So if in case you have one probability, you wish to tackle a number of issues. I don’t assume one design can serve only one consumer. It must serve the entire metropolis, the entire inhabitants, and the entire ecosystem. Design is having surprising purchasers — the birds and the bees. You’re serving purchasers nicely past those that pay you.

What are the most important challenges you face in attaining this?

Change has occurred so shortly right here that it’s been laborious to adapt. Not way back there have been historical cities and rice fields. Then, growth, concrete, huge buildings. All this density has occurred within the final 50 years. The velocity of change has been too quick, and far of the response has come with out course. That’s why we’d like professions like city planning and panorama structure.

You co-founded the Porous Metropolis Community, which addresses methods to naturally scale back the impacts of flooding in Southeast Asia. Clarify this effort and its challenges.

Many individuals don’t perceive what we’re proposing in the event that they’re not educated as architects or engineers. They assume when you simply construct partitions and dams that’s the most effective answer. Being designers, we now have highly effective instruments to create pictures and animations, to indicate them what the truth shall be — the impacts of huge partitions that they’ll need to stay with endlessly. Do you actually need that when it solely floods 5 days per 12 months? We work to persuade them there may be one other approach.

What are among the challenges of being a feminine designer in Thailand?

My id is complicated. In Thai tradition I’m somewhat bit American, and in American tradition I’m very Thai. I don’t need gender to be one other burden.

There are various advantages to being a girl; notably the connection to nature. I believe with motherhood, the cycles of the physique, we’re extra in contact with nature in our our bodies and our hearts.

One other good thing about being a girl is that I don’t really feel afraid to lose face, and I really feel extra versatile due to that. Male stereotypes are so sturdy. For ladies, there are fewer expectations; you are able to do no matter you need. You may be your self.