TIME Magazine Profiles Development Fellow Kotchakorn Voraakhom

TIME magazine profiles landscape architect and 2016 Asia Foundation Development Fellow Kotchakorn Voraakhom in their “2050: The Fight For Earth” issue as one of 15 women leading the fight against climate change.

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.