Internationally celebrated landscape architect Kotchakorn Voraakhom (Kotch) will serve as designer-in-residence for the Pulitzer Arts Foundation and the Sam Fox School of Design & Visual Arts at Washington University in St. Louis. Kotch designs urban green spaces that alleviate the effects of climate change in at-risk communities. Major projects include innovations across Thailand, including the collection and storage of up to a million gallons of runoff and floodwater in a Bangkok park; the largest urban rooftop farm in Asia; and a pedestrian walk and elevated garden installed on an abandoned bridge over the Chao Phraya River.
This summer, Kotch will host Washington University students in Bangkok as part of the 2022 Global Urbanism Studio, the annual capstone for the Graduate School of Architecture & Urban Design’s Master of Urban Design program. After the studio in Thailand, she will spend a month in St. Louis with students, faculty, and community members across the city discussing climate factors and water systems in our region. The residency will culminate with a public event in spring 2023.
Kotchakorn Voraakhom is Bangkok native and is the founder of the Bangkok-based design firm Landprocess as well as the nonprofit Porous City Network.
A TED Fellow, Echoing Green Climate Fellow, Atlantic Fellow and BMW Foundation Futurity Fellow, Voraakhom currently chairs the Climate Change Working Group of the International Federation of Landscape Architects. In 2019, she was featured on Time magazine’s “Time100 Next” list and in Time’s “2050: The Fight for Earth” issue as one of 15 women leading the fight against climate change. The following year, she won a United Nations Global Climate Action Award and was named to the BBC’s annual 100 Women list and to Bloomberg’s Green 30.
