Transect: Bangkok

3 units

Bangkok, a global mega city of 15 million people, is located at the mouth of the Chao Phraya River, in an expansive deltaic landscape. The city sits roughly 5 meters above sea level on a soft bed of sediment, and is slowly subsiding. Over the past century, the city has expanded along its historic canals, covering water ways and exchanging porous land for impermeable surfaces. Climate change is resulting in more intense rain storms which inundate the city, straining infrastructure and putting the vast majority of the city at risk of increasingly long floods. Sea level rise is eroding the coastal area of the city, displacing communities at the outskirts of the city. At the same time, intense development pressure continues, and the few remaining open spaces in the city are under threat of being paved over. While the challenges facing the city are manifold, Bangkok continues to be a vibrant, culturally diverse place with a deep history of living in balance with the River. In Bangkok we see the confrontation of politics, climate change, globalization, and everyday life. While in the field, students will divide their time between direct observation, urban documentation, lectures from designers working to adapt and transform infrastructure, and recuperate natural systems, to increase the city's resilience and enrich the public realm. We will be joined by Kotchakorn Voraakhom, the Pulitzer Artist in Residence. By working between embodied experience (field work) and abstract representations of the city (mapping), students will grapple with the cultural and environmental implications of climate change.