TED Talk by Kotchakorn Voraakhom
The Thai landscape architect offers a heartfelt dissertation on how landscaping can prevent cities from flooding due to climate change
Kotchakorn Voraakhom is a Thai landscape architect and founder of the landscape architecture design firm Landprocess. A native of Bangkok, Voraakhom discusses her childhood experiences of urban floods in her TED Talk. She recalls a childhood in which the floods caused by the rain were a source of joy when watering the fields and allowing boat paddling. Today, however, things are a little different. Climate change and global warming, becoming increasingly more threatening, are putting the coastal cities of Southeast Asia at risk.
As a landscape architect, Voraakhom describes her vocation as letting nature ‘sprout between the cracks of the city’s concrete’ – taking advantage of disused paved areas to create spaces for greenery, designing green roofs for buildings and creating large urban parks that are able to counteract the effects of flooding and even provide water collecting and recycling systems.