Kotchakorn Voraakhom
This year, she will open a 36-acre plot with the capability of storing more than 2.5 million gallons of water. Her social enterprise, the Porous City Network, champions green interventions like these “thirsty” parks, as well as urban farming, green roofs and canal restoration to help vulnerable communities in Southeast Asia adapt to the coming deluge. —Laignee Barron
As a child, Kotchakorn Voraakhom liked to pry apart cracked pavement to let seedlings burst through Bangkok’s sprawl. Now, the landscape architect designs park-size cracks to help Southeast Asia’s megacities cope with climate change. Last year, her 11-acre project at Chulalongkorn University was Bangkok’s first new public park in 30 years and won awards for its innovative design, which adds much needed “green lungs” to a dense metropolis and absorbs and reuses excess water plaguing Thailand’s -capital—one of the locations most at risk from worsening storms, floods and sea-level rise.
