LongiPark! Expanding Park, Expanding Life

Today, the most pressing health challenges are driven not by viruses or accidents, but by lifestyle, including unhealthy diets, physical inactivity, and accumulated urban stress. As cities grow denser, environmental and social pressures intensify, while access to green space becomes increasingly limited. In this context, urban design must evolve beyond function and aesthetics toward more holistic, human-centered solutions.

Longevity is no longer just about living longer, but living well, sustaining physical, mental, and emotional health while preventing chronic disease. Among the most effective urban tools to support this is green space. As essential ‘third places’ beyond home and work, green areas play a critical role in everyday life. Research shows that accessible, high-quality green spaces can mitigate climate impacts while delivering measurable health benefits. Even a short 20-minute exposure to nature can significantly reduce stress and improve mood.

LongiPark! explores how small, underutilized urban spaces can be reimagined as meaningful third places that support rest, interaction, play, movement, and healing. Presented during Bangkok Design Week 2026, the project invites people to experience green spaces not as passive scenery, but as active infrastructure for well-being.

At its core, LongiPark! integrates design with research. Human behavior is studied through surveys, observational mapping, and user satisfaction assessments to understand how people move, pause, gather, and engage with space. It also evaluates how users perceive comfort, safety, accessibility, and atmosphere. By correlating behavioral patterns with user feedback, the design process becomes evidence-based and grounded in lived experience and measurable impact.

The project unfolds through 5 spatial formats across the city: Long Heal, Long Pause, Long Plearn, Long Share, and Long Walk, each addressing different rhythms of urban life.

Long Heal – From Urban Heat to Urban Heal

Rising temperatures from climate change, dense urban form, and loss of green space are reshaping city life. The Long Heal exhibition brings forest bathing into the city as a restorative experience for body and mind. An elongated, folded pocket forest transforms hardscape into sensory spaces for engaging with nature.

Long Plearn – Turning Streets into Places for Play and Learning

Environments that encourage play alongside thinking are known to positively support child development. The Long Plearn exhibition transforms Unakarn Road by returning the street to children as a place for fun and learning. Designed as a curving, spiral-like garden, the space is stretched and layered to support a wide range of uses, inviting children to play, explore, meet, and take part in activities together.

Long Share – The Lonely City to City of Life

Big cities bring diversity and opportunity, yet often foster loneliness and isolation. The Long Share Exhibition at Captain Bush Lane builds connection through spatial design along House No. 1. An elevated walkway and wave-like seating invite rest, conversation, and gathering, activating the neighborhood.

Long Pause – Activating Urban Gaps into Urban Green

The Long Pause Exhibition transforms a 5 sq.m. space at Choduek Community into a compact garden that invites people to pause. It slows pedestrians, offering moments of physical and mental rest while adding activity space for the community. Through a vertical garden design that supports multiple uses and flexible furniture that expands and contracts as needed, Long Pause becomes a living prototype for small-scale urban parks.

Long Walk – From Car-Centric to People-Centric: Creating a Walkable Life

In Thailand, many people don’t enjoy walking not because they’re lazy, but because cities aren’t designed for people. Long Walk is a public space along the Chao Phraya River that encourages walking better and longer for a more sustainable, healthier life.

This project uses Pop-up Parks to test how walking improves physical and mental health. These parks are connected to safe neighborhood walking routes and linked to public spaces across the city, encouraging everyday movement for people of all ages. All walking experiences are recorded through a web app to generate a Longevity Score based on four well-being factors: Move, Rest, Nourish, and Reset.

Expanding the Meaning of Public Space

More than a temporary installation, LongiPark! is a proposition. It reframes public space as essential health infrastructure, enabling people not only to occupy space, but to move, heal, connect, and grow. In doing so, it expands not only green space, but the possibilities of urban life itself.

Landscape Architects: Shma Company Limited and Shma SoEn Company Limited
Client: UNESCO Creative Cities Network, CEA, Thai Health Promotion Foundation, BMA, Embassy of the Netherlands in Thailand

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