Meet Kotchakorn Voraakhom, the Thai force in landscape architecture

The awards keep coming: UN Global Climate Action Awards; BBC100 Women; The Bloomberg Green 30. But for Kotchakorn Voraakhom, the real measure of success isn't the recognition, but whether Bangkok will still be above water in 50 years. As founder of Bangkok-based Landprocess, the Thai landscape architect has made it her mission to transform one of the world's most flood-prone cities – Bangkok is sinking 2cm each year while sea levels rise, making every monsoon season more dangerous – into a model of climate resilience. The broader mission is to help ‘shift cities to a carbon-neutral future and confront the future climate uncertainty’, she explains from her studio, where 15 designers work on what many might consider impossible urban challenges.

Meet Kotchakorn Voraakhom, the Thai force in landscape architecture

Since founding Landprocess in 2012, Voraakhom has pioneered a nature-based approach using living plants as infrastructure. ‘Nature is our medium, our process, and our teacher – humans included,’ Voraakhom says. ‘We are inspired by its systems, where nothing is wasted, where beauty emerges not from form alone, but from function.'

A good example is Chulalongkorn Centenary Park, completed in 2017 as Bangkok's first critical green infrastructure project. Where others saw an underused urban plot, Voraakhom envisioned wetlands, detention lawns, and biodiverse plantings that collect, clean, and reuse a million gallons of rainwater while providing public recreation space.

Then there's the Thammasat Urban Farm, completed in late 2019 as Asia's largest organic rooftop farm. The 22,000 sq m terraced green roof mimics traditional rice paddies, using cascading native plants and vegetables to slow run-off 20 times more efficiently than concrete while producing 20 tons of organic food annually. Her current work spans training government teams across Southeast Asia on flood-resilient plantings and water management, sharing techniques developed through projects such as Chulalongkorn's constructed wetlands and the Thammasat farm's soil-holding root systems.

Voraakhom’s most ambitious current project reimagines Thailand's Government Complex in Bangkok’s Lak Si district. Rather than adding conventional landscaping to the existing 178 acres, Voraakhom is inserting biodiverse green corridors, rooftop gardens with native species, and cooling plant systems that naturally regulate building temperatures for the 40,000 workers. ‘Government buildings worldwide often reflect authority rather than accessibility,’ she observes. ‘But what if civic architecture could embody transparency, sustainability, and human connection instead?’

The koan comes from hard-won experience, each project teaching Voraakhom that beautiful parks filled with ornamental plants aren't enough if larger systems remain broken. The most exciting shift for her, though, is moving beyond traditional design to co-create transformative processes where communities, policymakers, and ecosystems all shape the outcome. If nothing else, she’s learnt that lasting change requires bringing together people who don't usually collaborate: bureaucrats and community leaders, engineers and botanists, residents and officials.

Which is why, in 2017, Voraakhom launched Porous City Network, a social enterprise led by landscape architects and urban planners to mobilise communities – especially youth – around plant-based climate solutions to transform vast concrete wastelands into a city-wide web of permeable public green spaces such as urban farms, green roofs, rain gardens and canals filled with water-absorbing plants. Landprocess creates the built projects, she explains, while Porous City empowers. ‘Landscape architecture has never been more critical,’ Voraakhom argues. ‘Our discipline holds vital solutions for the climate crisis, but the key lies in collaboration.’

The future, as Voraakhom sees it, demands breaking silos and reimagining the designer's role – not as solitary problem-solver, but as orchestrator of change. In Bangkok, where rising waters threaten the very existence of the city, that change is happening one plant-filled park, one food-producing rooftop, one government complex at a time.