Recharging Bangkok : a climate adaptive vision for Saen Saeb Canal

This proposal aims to investigate an extensive role of Bangkok’s canal system that can potentially serve as a climate-adaptive and multi-functional infrastructure to help address the city’s environmental issues and to support the complex social needs. Together with municipal hydrological systems, the canals can mitigate flooding, land-subsidence and sea level rise while regaining lost cultural functions specific to Thai ways of living with water in both a contemporary context and future scenarios. The investigation focuses on Saen Saeb canal as a primary study area which is historically one of the most important canals at the heart of downtown of Bangkok that connects Chao Phraya River and Bang Pakong River in Chachoengsao Province; it encompasses different transects of the capital city and context conditions form in the urban core to the periphery area. Relying on the fact that Bangkok is a delta city, this project has strategically turned the issues of flooding and land subsidence common in this kind of terrain into opportunities for social and cultural improvements by rethinking the relationship between canal and adjacent open spaces as flood mitigation tools and reconnects people to canal-scape, which can establish long-term strategies for the city to live with water. The study of the dynamic relationships between water, city, people and canal tectonics have been proposed as adaptive strategy that provides the diverse public realms, hydrological functions, and could be apply as rational principles applications for the other canals of the city