The Anne Whiston Spirn Lecture: Kotchakorn Voraakhom

The McHarg Center for Urbanism and Ecology is delighted to welcome Kotchakorn Voraakhom to deliver the Anne Whiston Spirn Lecture, presented annually to showcase a practitioner or scholar in the field of landscape architecture whose work expands the disciplinary boundaries of research and practice. Housed in the Department of Landscape Architecture at the University of Pennsylvania Stuart Weitzman School of Design, The McHarg Center was launched in 2019 as a transdisciplinary platform for collaborative research supporting the future of life on Earth. The lecture honors Anne Whiston Spirn (MLA’74), a Penn alumna who led the Department of Landscape Architecture as chair from 1986–1994 and whose work inspires deeper engagements with people and planet.

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.

Kotchakorn Voraakhom is a leading landscape architect specializing in climate-resilient urban design across Southeast Asia. Through LANDPROCESS and the Porous City Network, she implements nature-based solutions to mitigate flooding, enhance biodiversity, and protect vulnerable communities. Her signature projects include Bangkok's Chulalongkorn Centenary Park, the first blue-green infrastructure of Bangkok, Asia's largest organic rooftop farm at Thammasat University, the Chao Phraya Sky Park, and the ecological retrofitting of Thailand's largest government complex.

Her contributions have earned the UN Climate Action Award, recognition on TIME 100 Next, BBC 100 Women, and Bloomberg Green 30. A TED Fellow and member of the World Economic Forum's Commission on Nature-Positive Cities, she holds a Harvard master's degree, an honorary doctorate from the Norwegian University of Life Sciences, and serves as A.D. White Professor-at-Large at Cornell University. Her work integrates ecological survival with social dignity in urban landscapes.

If you require any accessibility accommodation, such as live captioning, audio description, or a sign language interpreter, please email news@design.upenn.edu. Please note, we require at least five (5) business days’ notice.