Kotchakorn Voraakhom is a Thai urban landscape architect and an expert on the philosophy of porosity. Explaining why we need porosity, Kotchakorn writes: “Our solution calls for permeable interventions such as urban agriculture and rain gardens that provide ways to absorb a city’s excess water.”
The Bangkok of tomorrow is connected in this way to the Capri of 1924. And especially to the night when philosopher Walter Benjamin met Asja Lacis, a young playwright, in the German café Zum Kater Hiddigeigei, and together they wrote Napoli Porosa. “Architecture is as porous as this stone,” they wrote while viewing the tuff caves. “Everywhere suitable space is kept to become the scene of new unforeseen circumstances.”
For us, this might be Porosity: to describe the material for building spaces to experience unpredictable social relationships. Because porous architecture allows us to see a sustainable future within its cracks.