Chong Nonsi Canal Park
Kotachakorn Voraakhom and Multiple Urban Planners
Thailand
Description:
1. Identify the specific urban or suburban area where your solution will be deployed.
Chong Nonsi Canal Park
The first canal is the blue-green infrastructure public park at the heart of Bangkok.
Once known as the Venice of the East, Bangkok was famous for its vast interconnected network of canals rich in life, brimming with culture and spiritual significance. When the first settlements in Bangkok were created, important communal hubs like temples and markets were built into the canal banks utilizing the canals as a primary means of transportation, making them the city’s lifeblood. Regrettably, the vibrant and harmonious blue-green spaces that once dominated that Bangkok cityscape is now a distant memory.
Once known as the infamous canal for its dirty water at the heart of CBD. The Chong Nonsi Canal reflects the modern canal, which shares little resemblance to the canals of the past. Rapid urban development has pushed the city to fill in its waterways, disconnecting canals from its neighboring communities and causing a deterioration of the ecosystem services that the communities of Bangkok previously relied on. No longer receiving the regular flow of current it used to, the modern canal has become filled with stagnant sewage covered with grey infrastructure to hide the unsightly view.
2 Describe the primary purpose of the solution. Consider land, maritime and aviation domains.
Restoring the blue-green infrastructure with urban connectivity is a new concept in Bangkok.
Chong Nonsi Canal Park connects the Heart of Bangkok CBD to dense residential neighborhoods for 3 districts; the 4.5 km Chong Nonsi is paired with BRT lane. The canal park presents a unique opportunity to reimagine the role of canals in 21st-century Bangkok. The Chong Nonsi Canal Park project set out to integrate a public space into the canal and apply nature-based solutions to restore ecosystem services that were once a staple of life in Bangkok. The project is a paradigm shift in how we interact with our urban mobility with natural dignity. The canal is the first of five ambitious projects to Regenerate Bangkok with the goal of reconnecting ecological communities and integrating blue-green spaces into the grey cityscape creating a resilient infrastructure capable of facing the threats of climate change.
3. Show how each pillar of sustainability is reflected in the design.
People
Urban mobility
Connecting the Bangkok CBD to residential neighborhoods, the 4.5 km Chong Nonsi. Provide Sky train connectivity to the pedestrian walkway and the linear park. The project aims to create health space for the city.
Profit
The Blue Green infrastructure
The Chong Nonsi Canal Park project set out to integrate a public space into the canal and apply nature-based solutions to restore ecosystem services that were once a staple of life in Bangkok. The project is a paradigm shift in the way we interact with our environment and is the first of five ambitious projects to Regenerate Bangkok with the goal of reconnecting ecological communities and integrating blue-green spaces into the grey cityscape creating a resilient infrastructure capable of facing the threats,of climate change.
Planet
Future risk adaptation
With a warming climate comes the increase in frequency and magnitude of extreme weather events that the city must be ready to face. The ever-growing nature of the city amplifies previously unresolved issues while also creating new challenges that the city’s infrastructure must be able to adapt to.
Focusing on these critical areas has ensured the success of the project in its mission of revitalizing the Chong Nonsi canal by restoring ecosystem services and improving public welfare. Critically we must not become complacent with the success of one project as the Chong Nonsi Canal Park is merely the start of a difficult journey in rebuilding the cities infrastructure necessary for a resilient blue-green Bangkok embracing the city’s rich history and reclaiming the name “The Venice of the East.”
Biography:
Kotchakorn Voraakhom is a landscape architect from Thailand who works on building productive green public space that tackles climate change in dense urban areas and climate-vulnerable communities.
Opened in 2017, Chulalongkorn Centenary Park is the first critical piece of green infrastructure in Bangkok to reduce urban flood risk. With on-site water management, the park can collect, treat, and hold up to one million gallons of water, alleviating overwhelmed public sewage during heavy rainfall. In 2019, Thammasat Urban Rooftop Farm, Asia’s largest, was opened. Landprocess repurposed wasted rooftop space to address food and water scarcity in preparation for future climate challenges. In 2020, Chao Phraya Sky Park was realized. Once an inaccessible and incomplete sky railway, the old ruins are now whole, becoming the first realized bridge park to cross a river in any world capital city.
United Nations awarded Voraakhom as Winners of the UN Global Climate Action Awards, Women for Results. She is featured in the 2019 TIME 100 Next, a list from TIME Magazine —that spotlights 100 rising stars shaping the world’s future, CNN Design, and New York Times. She is also on the list of 15 women fighting against climate change from TIME. She was named BBC100 Women, the Green 30 for 2020 by Bloomberg and was a keynote opening speaker for 2019 Movin’ On Summit.
Voraakhom is now teaching at Harvard University’s Graduate School of Design. She is a Chairwoman of the Climate Change Working Group of the International Federation of Landscape Architects (IFLA World), TED Fellow, Echoing Green Climate Fellow, Atlantic Fellow, and Futurity Fellow from BMW Foundation in exploring landscape architecture-based solutions to working with the water-based city she calls home.
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