Post by SJ Group

“I remember that year we had a heatwave and whenever I was baking, the chocolates kept melting,” recalled Naree Phinyawatana. In 2003, Naree was training as a pastry chef on scholarship at Le Cordon Bleu in London during one of Europe's worst heatwaves on record. The precious ingredients, the precision and the hard work kept collapsing in the heat, making even the basics difficult to get right. What began as a frustrating baking problem soon became something much bigger. For her second scholarship in building technology, Naree turned that experience into her dissertation topic: the urban heat-island effect and what the built environment could do about it. That was when she realised she wanted to find ways for cities and nature to coexist, not compete. That conviction eventually led her to Atelier Ten, an SJ company, where she has spent the past 20 years shaping environmental design and sustainability strategies across the built environment. Today, she serves as Director in the company, continuing to lead projects that push regenerative and sustainable design forward. On a recent project, Nextopia in Bangkok, Thailand, her team challenged the brief entirely. Rather than simply recreating a nature-inspired attraction indoors, they focused on how natural systems could genuinely be sustained and thrive long-term within a shopping mall environment. “I was told that more than three million people would pass through the space every year, carrying what they experienced back to their own countries and communities,” said Naree. "Suddenly, the project felt far bigger than the physical space itself." It became an opportunity to influence how millions of people think about sustainability, nature and what it means for environments to give back more than they take. To Naree, building a regenerative future is not some distant idea. It increasingly exists in the everyday spaces around us. It lives in buildings that perform better, places where nature is genuinely accommodated and small decisions that leave things better than before. At the close of Regenerate 2026 – SJ’s annual sustainability week – her advice is simple: start with one thing. One positive outcome. One habit. One small action to adopt. #Realimpactmadetogether #PeopleofSJ #SJRegenerate2026 #DeliveringRegenerativeFutures