57 Body Borders: Anything Can Break by Pinaree Sanpitak

We are designers, surely not artists.
Compare to them (artists), what we do are closer to the utility side of things. However, we love art. We love the way art blows our minds and brings us to the territory where we cannot completely reason with our logic - it makes our hearts beating fast, our brains going dizzy....

Recently we have a chance to be closer to this mind-blowing territory we like. Thanks to Pinaree Sanpitak, one of the most prominent contemporary Thai artists who gave us a chance to collaborate with her on one of her trilogy exhibition, Body Borders: Anything Can Break at The Art Center, Chulalongkorn University, Bangkok. (She actually held her exhibition as 3 parts in 3 venues at the same time last August. The other two were at 100Tonson Gallery and H Gallery. You can say that not so many artists could achieve such a thing here in Thailand).

(photo by Aroon Permpoonsopol)

In this exhibition, we were basically installation display consultant for Pinaree. She had this idea to fill the whole gallery's ceiling with thousands of Origami Flying Cubes mixing with her glass Breast Clouds. Also the whole space would play music interacting with the movement of people. We just helped to realize the physical parts of the installation. It was great fun and super interesting.


The first day we met with the team who were, apart from Pinaree herself, the other two consultants of sound and interactive system. (It was just the beginning because at the end of the installation we have learned that there were many other collaborators with different systems: music, lighting, fiber optic, installation and so on). This is what she showed us on the first day: Her extremely beautiful Murano Breast Cups and her latest Breast Clouds, both are very nice and cute.

Talking to her, we had this image of the space in her painting - a bit blurry and weightless - flipping from the wall on to the ceiling.

(QUIETLY FLOATING QUIETLY FUNNY, PINAREE SANPITAK, 2008
ACRYLIC ON CANVAS
78 X 98 1/2 IN.)

We went back to the office and tried to mock up an installation technique. Basically we used a very common metal grid unit which street venders used to set up their stalls as a main structure to hang the Breast Clouds and the Origami Cubes - very simple, very cheap and light.

Then we got Kris Manopimok, our super lighting designer to involve. After checking the venue, he recommended that we should also have a light source coming out from some opaque Breast Clouds.

The only solution would be fiber optic light because it would not create heat and can be lit in a very small spot

Beyond the floating objects on the ceiling, actually there were many layers of technical elements superimposing on each other - the interactive sensors, amplifiers, fiber optic lighting system, the existing light tracks, the metal grid units hanging the cubes and the clouds... They worked together smoothly. Here is the ceiling plan:

The process of installation was pretty complicated too. Thousands of Origami Flying Cubes were made in advance, but they needed to be arranged and hung. So the contractor made several roles of long structure where more than a hundred units of metal grids could be placed, and then the cubes were hung --- the space looked like a 'farm' growing some birds (since the cubes could slightly move).

After the interactive and sound systems were installed, the units of the metal grid was lifted up and hung with the ceiling structure one by one.

Sometimes when there was something improperly installed, the assistants had to 'dive' into the sea of thousands Flying Cubes using a tool made out of some sticks to make a room... You can see how deep it was -_-".

Kris came back after everything is almost done for the last lighting set up.

This is the final...Thousands Origami Flying Cubes floating in the space with the Clouds. The cubes were slightly moving... as if they were alive... their little glittering paper surface greeting with the light gently.

The sound interactive installation was very nice. Moving around the space as drawn by the slightly moving cubes and clouds, every few meters, the music changed.. with many people in the space at the same time, the music was randomly mixed... the whole space became a forest of sounds, clouds and cubes... very dreamy... I think we have reached the image we had in mind from the beginning: to make her painting into physical space.

At the same time, another exhibition of the other twos, was on this flying cubes made out of rattan.

The exhibition at H Gallery, you could sit casually on the Flying Cubes!

Along the process of working on this installation, we have learned at lot about art, about Pinaree.. It was great fun. Thanks to Pinaree and everybody involved, you have made our hearts beating fast again. Body Borders: Anything Can Break is flying to Sydney next June. Looking forward to.
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56 New Taipei City Musuem of Art

Last few months we have been very busy with several things: exhibitions, buildings, travelings. However, one of the most intensive and exciting among all is a competition we did together with 12 students of mine: New Taipei City Museum of Art International Design competition. Surprisingly, we won a Merit Award, 1 out of 10. :)
Apart from us, allzoners, the 12 students are: Puttikit Suwannboon, Pote Laddphan, Kiattikun Nimcharoenwan, Thanyaporn Tassatarn, Patsaraporn Liewwatanakorn, Kanya Vithayadumrong, Kanyada Nijarankul, Nattanan Vonpen, Nattapat Paiboonvarakit, Asrin Sanguanwongwan, Soon Thaitavorn and  Chalankiate Sukathammo. Also our intern Jarupa Tachasirinugune was collaborating with us too.


The competition entry was a brief of my class "Design Method" in Faculty of Architecture, Chulalongkorn University. The class began in June, when we met every week for 4-5 hours discussing various topic related to art, art museum, contemporary culture of Asian city.

During the last few weeks before submission we set up our 2nd floor as a 'WAR Room' for the final stage of the competition. -_-"




The key idea is to create a museum that is NOT a 'sacred place' for art, rather it should be a place where people in town feel as comfortable and fun with art as a shopping mall. Asian lifestyle of colorful events and seasonal changes is the image we have for the atmosphere.

The very dynamic condition of Asian city is seen through the concept of 'on-going construction'. The building began to take shape of the physical concept with this image the gigantic outdoor Buddha statue in Burma. It has a clear shape, but at the same time, it suggest the potential of changes.

Given the complex requirement the programs, the building area is gigantic. We, therefore, had to split the given program requirement into smaller section. We use the scale of Yinge Town, one of small periphery towns where the New Taipei City has swallowed and the museum is located, to be the point of reference by superimposing the urban fabric onto out site. Moreover, we want the museum to be as lively as the town market - Asian Urban Space...

The scale of the building has to be familiar to all grandmas in town, so the ground floor scale of the building is basically the Yinge town itself (the downtown) where all the super familiar and relax programs such as markets, restaurants, shops, workshops are located as attractors to the people. The upper town is basically the same scale of the downtown, but upside down, where all the serious art program are located. The void in-between is a flexible area where art activities and local general activities could meet and mingle - with no separation between 'art and life'.

The building is cover by 'super grid' structure to accommodate temporary expansion programs in all direction and to hold up the overall building as a whole loosely --- always on-going construction.




The overall atmosphere of the building in the void between the uptown and the downtown where all activities are happening and changing - art and life.


The 'super-grid' allows the building to be transformed upon different events:
The Chinese's New Year:

Taipei Biennale of Art:

Taipei Film and Media festival:

The competition was announced when some of us were attending a workshop of MAT Fukuoka in Japan, so we were celebrating together with the rest who were in Bangkok online via Skype. :)

Also we promised each other that next time we will try to get more than Merit Award. :) Until then, see you! Continue Reading

55 Singapore Colorful Songlines

Singapore is a soulless place..

All modern urbanism ideologies which failed to work anywhere else in the world, became a reality here. The reality that is somehow like a dream - a soulless utopia dream.

The whole city is feeling as if it was a collective gigantic projects of architecture/urban design students - optimistic almost naive about how the (rest of the) world works - but it is real. It has been like this for decades.

Last weekend in Singapore, I began to notice something new after being there several times. Many brutal hyper-modern housings in the city center are transformed. The greyscale color of modernism scheme was replaced by super bright almost eye-sore colors.

People's Park Complex from 1960s. According to wikipedia, the original finishing material was exposed raw concrete. But it was perhaps too brutally modern... The green and maroon colors are quite brutal in a different way though. But perhaps now, it is time when people speak a bit in this quiet country.



This building is close to Singapore Art Museum where the art biennale was held. The super modernist architectural language is transformed by the two shades of blue...


The neighbor of the blue building went even more extreme to the combination of super bright red and heavy orange with mural giant mural painting...


Even the so elegant hyper modern building of Bras Basah Complex next to National Library and Raffles Hotel could not escape the bright blue trimming lines all around...


The towers are so modern, so elegant...However the blue strikes.


A part of the podium is a commercial space where all the book stores are. (We love Basheer Graphic Books here.)


The trimming lines and planes somehow lessen the brutality and sleekness of modernism. Perhaps the city was so filled with all the coldness of modernism that it is time to be more lively.


Once (4-5 years ago) I was at a lecture of Tay Kheng Soon, who is one of the Singaporean pioneer architects (he was partnered with William Lim and Koh Seow Shuan for a design office which nowadays is DP architects). The old architect mentioned that modern architecture beauty (perhaps especially in Singapore) was composed of all industrial almost inhuman surfaces of raw concrete, steel, glass and etc. It was so machine-like that people who dwelled there became closer to a machine than a human. (Well this could be the case of Singapore?). Perhaps, Singapore has already attained all modernism living environment aspects, and felt something missing --> now it is time to go wild!

Another story but somehow relevant, visiting Singapore without meeting the famous lion is a big shame. After 3-4 times of visiting Singapore, finally I had my first photograph with the beast. Thanks to Singapore Art Biennale for a cool project of Merlion Hotel by an artist/architect Tatzu Nishi, that finally we had a chance to get that close with the beast (we also secretly touched him when nobody saw us -_-"). I am quite certain that we would never be this close again with the lion who usually is in the middle of the water. (Well, please do not argue what is so significant of being so close to him, that is another story though.)

At least, finally, for the first time, I had 'fun' in Singapore. Perhaps, the city has really changed!

P.S. Thanks for Chai who was our 'local' of the trip - a cool architect/urbanist. You can find him here too. Continue Reading