Climate change and Biodiversity working group members

Kotchakorn Voraakhom

Working Group Chair

Kotchakorn Voraakhom is a landscape architect from Thailand who works on building productive green public spaces that tackle climate change in urban dense areas and vulnerable communities. She created the first critical green infrastructure for Bangkok, the Chulalongkorn Centenary Park. Her complete design works also include, Thammasat Urban Farm Rooftop, a 36-acre urban farm rooftop featuring the biggest urban farming green roof in Asia, and the first bridge park across the river in any world capital, Chao Phraya Sky Park.

Voraakhom was awarded from UN climate change for Winners of the 2020 UN Global Climate Action Awards, Women for Results. She was featured in the 2019 “TIME 100 Next” list, one of 15 leading women fighting against climate change from TIME Magazine, BBC 100 Women 2020, and the “Green 30 for 2020” by Bloomberg.

Voraakhom received her Master's in landscape architecture from Harvard University's Graduate School of Design and teach there as a design critic in Spring 2020. Currently, she is also a TED Fellow and an Echoing Green Fellow.

Pamela Conrad

Working Group Vice-Chair

Pamela Conrad, PLA, ASLA, LEED AP, is an internationally recognized landscape architect, 2023 Loeb Fellow at Harvard, and Architecture 2030 Senior Fellow. Her passion for the environment is deeply rooted – from growing up on a farm in the rural United States to degrees in Plant Science and regenerative landscape architecture. Conrad’s 20-year career most recently as a Principal at CMG Landscape Architecture has focused on implementing nature-based solutions in the built environment from large-scale habitat restoration to a decade of climate adaptation projects in San Francisco, California.

Pamela’s influential research on carbon sparked by the LAF Fellowship for Innovation and Leadership is elevating landscape architecture’s role in climate change and informs her work as the Founder of Climate Positive Design and Faculty Lecturer at the Harvard Graduate School of Design. She focuses on finding solutions to the climate crisis and planning for a resilient future as ASLA’s Climate Action Plan Chair and IFLA’s Climate Action Committee Vice-Chair. Conrad has been featured in the New York Times, Forbes, TIME Magazine for Kids, the recent book “Build Beyond Zero”, and on stage at COP27. She has received numerous awards including the Metropolis Planet Positive Award, ASLA’s Award of Honor, and San Francisco Business Times Women of Influence Award.

Working Group Voting members

Raquel Penalosa

Representative of IFLA Americas

A practicing Landscape Architect for more than 30 years, Raquel Peñalosa works at the encounter of Landscape Architecture, Urban Participatory Design, Active Citizenship and Social Innovation. Through her practice, she has developed public space projects, and consultancies in the fields of planning, design and construction, directing multidisciplinary teams, with private and public sectors, in Canada, California and France.

She is currently, practicing participatory design and integrating open collaborative processes to bring into the design conversation the active citizenship practice for more thriving and human oriented cities. La Dame se refait une beauté! A Participatory Design Project for the redevelopment of Notre-Dame street, Montreal (2015). She is presently leading "Canary", a citizen science project to connect Climate Change impact with citizens experience in their neighbourhood to measure air pollution, in collaboration with the Fab Lab échoFab in Montreal.

Her practice aims to combine in a fair and respectful way the reading of the intrinsic character of the place, the experience and needs of the citizens with the ecological requirements of the site, to create living spaces, adapted to the dynamics of time and living systems when put into action. She was part of a Winning Team in 2021 of a Public Space Competition in downtown Montreal. A project proposal for the implementation of an urban micro forest according to the Miyawaki methodology.

As part of her engagement in the community, she has dedicated time and efforts to advance organizational and citizen governance as well as the involvement of the younger generations. She was a Board Member and President of the Urban Ecology Center, 2011 to 2014. Instrumental on the candidature to host IFLA World Congress 2017 in Montreal, she was co-chair of the Landscape Architecture Scientific Committee, 2009 to 2017.

She was CSLA IFLA Delegate from 2011 to 2017, chairing the emergence of the Canadian Landscape Charter. As IFLA AMERICAS President 2014-2018, she lead a movement, BRIDGING THE LANDSCAPES OF THE AMERICAS to envision the AMERICAS LANDSCAPE CHARTER, launched in 2018. She is Chair of the IFLA Americas Climate Change Working Group. She is presently the President of Communautique, an Open Innovation Organization, who has led the coming of the FABCITY movement to Montreal, as a shift for a more locally productive, globally connected cities in 2054. She has been invited to participate as Jury member at local and international competitions.

Tony Williams B.A (Nat Sci). M.L.Arch Mili

Representative of IFLA Europe

Tony is Principal Landscape Architect at Transport Infrastructure Ireland (TII). www.tii.ie

He is a graduate of Natural Science (Moderatorship in Botany) from Trinity College Dublin and holds a Masters in landscape Architecture from University College Dublin. He is currently engaged in a research PhD programme (due to complete in March 2023) in Natural Science (Botany) on implementation strategies for the design, construction and management of Nature-based Solutions. www.tcd.ie www.connectingnature.eu

He was President of the Irish Landscape Institute from 2013 to 2016 and is a current council member. https://www.irishlandscapeinstitute.com/

He was President of International Federation of Landscape Architects (IFLA Europe) from 2015 to 2019 and an Honorary Member of IFLA Europe since 2021. https://iflaeurope.eu/

He is a member of the ICOMOS Ireland National Scientific Committee on Cultural Landscapes. http://www.icomos.ie/index.php/committees/cultural-landscapes

He is chair of the IFLA Europe Climate Change Working Group. https://www.iflaworld.com/climate-change-working-group

Tamsin Faragher

Representative of IFLA Africa

Tamsin Faragher, principal resilience officer at the City of Cape Town is a built environment specialist who has worked in both the private and public sector within the planning, regeneration, built environment, landscape architecture, infrastructure planning, environment, water governance and most recently - food “spaces”.

Her career started in Dubai where she worked on a number of large public space projects associated with the Burj Khaliefa and the Dubai Marina. Tamsin returned to South Africa in 2010 where she has been able to pursue her interest in sustainable development via various planning projects and policy initiatives. Her interest in development policy includes focuses on the nexus between policy, practice and implementation, particularly as it relates to sustainable, resilient city-making and the contrasting, competing demands between the environment and development. Most recent work includes research into water and groundwater governance, alternative water governance, promoting water sensitive design and open space, in addition to ongoing ground-breaking food systems work.

As an active member of the landscape architecture community, Tamsin relentlessly pushes the boundaries of the profession in terms of its role in making cities liveable, resilient and climate adaptive. This passion is expressed as a panellist in a variety of forums and contexts and is captured in regular contributions to various publications including academic journals, in addition to occasional part time lecturing at the University of Cape Town.

Tamsin has a Bachelor of Architecture, a Masters in Landscape Architecture and a further Masters in Infrastructure Design and Management both from the University of Cape Town.