Global Graduate, Thai landscape architect and urban designer Ratchu Vaan Surajaras brought presented his award winning design for climate adaptation in one of the world’s most flood-prone megacities, Bangkok. As part of the Design Indaba’s Global Graduates programme, Surajaras explored how landscape architecture can become a form of environmental infrastructure, helping cities respond more intelligently and compassionately to rising sea levels and climate change.
Focusing particularly on Bangkok’s increasingly precarious relationship with water, Surajaras explained how Bangkok’s historic canal systems and wetlands once functioned as natural flood management networks before decades of urban expansion disrupted these ecological systems. Today, the city faces severe seasonal flooding, Surajara’s project ‘Recharging Bangkok’ proposes adaptive urban systems that work with natural hydrological cycles resulting in public infrastructure that integrates flood management, ecological restoration and community use. The concept envisions parks, waterways and public spaces capable of absorbing, storing and redirecting water during periods of heavy rainfall while remaining active social spaces throughout the year. Through diagrams, speculative models and urban research, Surajara demonstrated how cities can transform environmental vulnerability into opportunities for resilience and collective wellbeing.
