BIOMES: Dancing with Uncertainty: The Future of Porous Landscapes | Yale World Fellow Kotchakorn Voraakhom

About the Seminar:
Sinking deltas and extreme climate shifts have exposed the critical limits of rigid gray infrastructure—concrete walls can no longer hold back the compounding threats of flooding and drought. Thus, landscape architect Kotchakorn Voraakhom proposes a fundamental pivot: moving away from fighting against nature toward fluid adaptation. By prioritizing porosity over resistance, urban land can be redesigned to function like a living sponge—absorbing, filtering, storing, and releasing water. This approach transforms single-use hard infrastructure into vibrant public space, anchoring site-specific local identity within a scalable global framework for climate resilience. Drawing from LANDPROCESS and Porous City Network benchmark projects in Thailand, this lecture reframes landscape architecture as vital infrastructure—restoring ecological balance while safeguarding human dignity in an unpredictable future.

About the Speaker:
Kotchakorn Voraakhom is a leading global landscape architect and the founder of LANDPROCESS and the Porous City Network. She pioneers climate-resilient, nature-based solutions in Southeast Asia, with transformative projects including Bangkok’s Chulalongkorn University Centenary Park, Asia’s largest organic rooftop farm at Thammasat University, Chao Phraya Sky Park, and the regenerative design of Thailand’s Government Complex. A Harvard graduate, TED Fellow, and Yale World Fellow, she is the first landscape architect to receive the UN Global Climate Action Award. Her work has been recognized on the TIME100 Next, BBC 100 Women, and Bloomberg Green 30 lists. In addition to serving as a member of the World Economic Forum's Commission on Nature-Positive Cities, she holds an honorary doctorate from the Norwegian University of Life Sciences and an appointment as an A.D. White Professor-at-Large—one of Cornell University’s highest academic honors. Her work seamlessly integrates ecological survival with social equity in rapidly changing urban landscapes.