“Students and landscape architects must invest in themselves to become better designers and be actively concerned about their future and the future of the planet and the challenges that we are confronting”, was Kotchakorn Voraakhom's challenge to her audience.

In May this year, Kotchakorn gave a public lecture at the Te Herenga Waka—Victoria University of Wellington (Te Wāhanga Waihanga-Hoahoa—Wellington Faculty of Architecture and Design Innovation) on Landscape Porosity: Why we need Water-Based Urbanism. As part of her lecture, she reassured the students and early career landscape architects in the audience that they were in the right profession to make a change about the climate crisis. “It is important that present and prospective landscape architects have a vision about the future and that we design with the purpose of addressing the climate challenges. Design is about making decisions. Those decisions are not only for our clients but for the environment and world that we share.” She spoke about how landscape architecture is uniquely positioned to shape the global response to climate. “Landscape architecture is a powerful profession that works with nature, learns with nature, and designs from nature. As landscape creators, we can rewind the harm that we have done to the planet and reconnect our innate drive to be with nature.”

Kotchakorn works with Dr. Bruno Marques - Te Herenga Waka Associate Dean of Academic Development -  as part of the International Federation of Landscape Architects. Dr. Marques is the President of the International Federation of Landscape Architects, and assisted in organising Kotchakorn’s visit to Wellington. Dr. Marques recalls: “I was following her work on climate change for a while, and we thankfully connected through our federation’s climate change working group.”

Kotchakorn and Dr. Marques mutually identify that those countries that positively engage with their Indigenous knowledge enable them to excel at climate responses. Bruno highlights that “Aotearoa New Zealand’s point of difference is that we address climate change from a cultural and social point of view, where we look at centuries of knowledge from our indigenous peoples on how to manage land moving into the future”.

Alongside her full-time role as a landscape architect, she also chairs the Climate Change Working Group of the International Federation of Landscape Architects. Her many accolades include being featured in Time magazine’s “2050: The Fight for Earth” issue, as one of 15 women leading the fight against climate change, and, in the following year, Kotchakorn won a United Nations Global Climate Action Award and was named in the BBC’s annual 100 Women list and to Bloomberg’s Green 30.

Kotchakorn intends to continue as a practicing landscape architect while expanding into more advocacy work. “I have been heavily focused on my own practice for the past ten years, and I want to continue working on projects. However, I aim to expand my advocacy work, such as working with Dr Marques and the International Federation of Landscape Architects, with women, and those in communities that are at risk from extreme climate events.”

This news item was originally published by Te Herenga Waka—Victoria University of Wellington and is republished with their permission.