Every designer, regardless of his or her fame and profile, will usually have a design project that raises eyebrows and defies the norm. For Kotchakorn Voraakhom, a 33-year-old landscape architect, it was her idea to paint more colours in a humdrum swimming pool that did just that. This was a facility for blind students at the Foundation for the Blind in Thailand under The Royal Patronage of Her Majesty Queen Sirikit in the Phaya Thai area of Bangkok. Her idea took people aback and dropped many jaws.
“People asked why I needed to use colour when blind swimmers are not able to see those palettes. But my question is, why not?” said Kotchakorn, talking about one of her most famous designs with a laugh.
The cheerful architect managed to calm and convince any who disagreed.
“Indeed, I believe that blind people need even more colourful surroundings. Bringing them vivid colours will help stimulate their visual sensors.” Officially opened in 2013, the colourful swimming pool at the school for the blind is often praised for its soothing, cheerful and stimulating effect. It is being used as a practice facility for Thailand’s paralympic athletes.
Kotchakorn is known as one of the most-sought-after landscape architects in the country and the multicoloured swimming pool marks only one of her many great works. Her recent profile includes the landscape design around the Thai Pavilion at the 2015 Expo in Milan, where she created a river and rice field to tell the story of Thailand’s agrarian culture. She is the creator of the “Concrete Jungle” green area in Siam Square One commercial complex. She is also the one who modernised the area of Samyan and the new Samyan Market.
She also teaches landscape design at Chulalongkorn University, where she is an alumna. Although the course focuses on designing, she often teaches her students to “read” landscapes, to understand the breadth and depth of the space they will be required to design.
“Landscape is more than green areas and parks and the design is more than drafting on paper,” she said. “Designers need to understand what landscape is and, indeed, it is everywhere. Messy electric wires, electric poles, street vendors, telephone booths are also landscape. The question about it is whether or not people can read and understand it,” added Kotchakorn, who also received a master’s degree in landscape design from Harvard University in the US.
Reading and understanding areas of land and people has helped expand her horizons and added stories and content to her designs.
For example, she successfully convinced the property management division of Chulalongkorn University to keep old shophouses near the National Stadium area in order to preserve the cultural identity of the place. Her idea of converting the rooftop on the seventh floor of Siam Square One into a rice field was partly inspired by the history of the area, which over a century ago was a rice field. She also asked contractors to keep the soil and earth from under the torched Siam Theatre in order to add nostalgic elements to the rooftop rice field.
For her, landscapes are more than spaces for they can reflect the character and psyche of people who are living within them. As for Bangkok, where she was born, the city’s landscape is like Thai food that reflects the Thai ability to mix things together.
“Look at our food and look at our streets, they reflect our ability to combine. There are mixed activities, mixed land use in one space. It reflects our ability to open up to new things and integrate and mix with existing objects.”
Obviously, the architect seems to have fallen in love with the landscape of the city, regardless of its messiness.
“When you understand the interaction between people and spaces, you will understand the landscape. And when you understand it, you will be able to see its value.”
She believes that Thai people have started to perceive landscapes differently.
“I think Thai people realise that they need more than buildings and structure. People need to interact with the space around those buildings and that is when landscape designing provides the answers to their needs,” said Kotchakorn.
During the past five years, society has witnessed a number of public campaigns — raised by city residents and conservationists, asking the authorities to provide state land for public parks and recreation areas. She has also taken part in this movement. She is one of the active figures in the campaign asking the State Railway of Thailand to allocate part of the huge land plot in the Makkasan area of Phetchaburi to be used as a public green space.
As a landscape architect, Kotchakorn looks at this campaign as a watershed movement in the urban development of Bangkok and the country.
“Most public parks in Thailand are donated by the state or the royal family, such as the famous Lumpini Park. But this park will be the one that is made possible by people power. It is quite symbolic in a way,” she said. She reads the landscapes of public parks differently to most. For her, the landscape of a public park is more than just spaces, trees, a pond and design.
“The public park is the classroom of democratic activity. It is the place where rich and poor share the same space and the same rule equally. Not many places can provide that unique opportunity.”
Kotchakorn is also seeing changes around the country and indeed Bangkok. She witnesses transformations and more debates over how the state will use public spaces. This means that designers now need to differentiate between the price of property and the value of it.
“Price and value are not the same thing. If you know only the price, you will judge and treat it in terms of financial figures. But if you see and understand its value, you may come up with a decision and design that might be praised by future generations.”
