
Floods, Heavy Rain, Extreme Weather: Why We Need to Build Differently
Bangkok is sinking while the rain gets heavier: a metropolitan region of roughly 15 million people sits barely above sea level and floods more often each year. Landscape architect Kotchakorn Voraarkhom shows how she is fighting back, building parks and green infrastructure designed to absorb stormwater instead of channeling it into overwhelmed drains, turning concrete districts back into something closer to wetland. The film then crosses to Lower Bavaria, where builder Georg Hofer has revived clay as a construction material, drawn to its low energy footprint, near-zero CO2 output, and freedom from pollutants. Clay walls, he explains and demonstrates on site, keep interiors cool during heat waves and hold warmth through winter without mechanical heating or cooling. Interviews with both practitioners, footage of Bangkok's flood-prone streets and Voraarkhom's completed parks, and shots of Hofer's clay buildings under construction make the case that climate-adapted architecture is not a future technology but something already being built, tested, and lived in on two different continents.