48 New Kids on the Block: Thai Parliament House Competition

Within architectural scene in Thailand now, nothing is hotter than the competition of our new Parliament House - another gigantic almost-too-long-to-be true project of about 300,000s sq.m. The competition began around mid 2009, the first submission was in last August, and the final result was announced last week. Well, we wont talk about the result yet, rather one of the 10 finalists.

The youngest team of the 10 finalists is a team of 11 of my students who just graduated less than two years. The 'really' NEW KIDS ON THE BLOCKS. (For the first round of the competition, anybody who has an architectural license in Thailand is eligible to enter. However, for the last round of the 5 finalists, each team has to find a big enough firm to work with to guarantee the execution of the project in case of winning.) I invited them to give a lecture in my Contemporary Asian Architecture class last month, before the result was announced. Although they did not make it to the 5 finalists after the presentation & interview, I believe their scheme is one of the best among the 10 - you can say that my opinion is a bit bias because they are my students.. but well, it just cant help! :)

Let me give the names of all of them to honour and thank them for coming to give the lecture for me: Kawin Horayangkul กวิน หรยางกูร / Korkiate Kittisoponpong ก่อเกียรติ กิตติโสภณพงศ์ / Kalyawat Lertpeerakorn กัลยวัจน์ เลิศพีรากร / Kirin Tanglertpanya กิรินทร์ ตั้งเลิศปัญญา / Kanin Mantanachart คณิน มัณฑนะชาติ / Piya Limpiti ปิยา ลิ้มปิติ / Pongsan Suwanmaneechot พงษสันต์ สุวรรณมณีโชติ / Worawut Euerareemit วรวุฒิ เอื้ออารีมิตร / Wipawee Kuersirikul วิภาวี เกื้อศิริกุล / Sorakij Kijcharoenroj สรกิจ กิจเจริญโรจน์ / Sasichonwalee Sawadisawanee ศศิชลวลี สวัสดิสวนีย์



The atmosphere of the lecture... very fun and friendly. Many students who were not enrolled in my class also attended the lecture. Because this was really a big thing among the kids. Their senior who just graduated made it that far for such a big competition - perhaps the biggest in Thailand ever.



The key image of the project:

Their interpretation of the space for democracy is this triangle shape space, an open space of people under the same roof. People could enter this space and move freely. The shape of this triangle is the shape traditional Thai roof in a quite subtle approach compare to the rest of the entries. The key representation of the parliament system through architecture is the main conference hall where all the decisions of the country's policies are made here. The hall is placed under the triangle void, at the lower level than the main level so that people could actually watch the parliament meeting from above. It is very daring scheme, I believe. The disposition emphasizes the role of people over their political representatives. If you think about all the political conflicts we are having in this precise moment, the scheme is a bit didactic as well as optimistic - the architects believes that our politicians would be aware of this idea, and behave properly. :O

The diagram explaining this idea:



The building:

The building mainly divided into three parts the office of the Senate (the Upper House members), the office of the Representatives of Thailand (the Lower House members) and the main conference hall which is placed under this open void in between the two offices. The office parts are arrange with triangle module, so that every unit could also gain a cross ventilation, if wanted.

The whole idea of site planning is related to water, since the site is by Chao Phraya River. The water is used as barriers for different security levels. The water moats are made in the square pattern, again, borrowed from traditional Thai pattern. The water could be pumped in during the normal time, when the security is rather high, and it could be drained out so that the plaza could be fully used for different events.


Here are the different event diagrams.


The building at dust time...not bad at all. Well some said that it looks a bit 'starwars-like', I took this as a compliment for them :).



Although the project did not pass into the 5 finalists. This is really a very big step for these "New Kids". From the final result announced last week, I am more than certain that if we are going to have another competition of the Parliament House again in the next few decades when these new kids will be no longer kids, we will surely have a really 'New' Parliament House that we all could refer and be proud of. It will not be a building that looks as if it was built a couple of centuries ago like the one we are about to get !

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47 Selinunte, Sicily: the Greeks were so cool!

Since last week until yesterday, I was participating in a design workshop/competition in Selinunte, a small archeological site town in Sicily, the biggest and south-most island of Italy. The town is a small summer resort town with the Greek ruins. There is a long page of Selinunte in Wikipedia HERE.




The venue we worked during the workshop was actually in the archeological site. :O very impressive. The vast landscape with ruins, almost without anything in your sight apart from ruins..




An old traditional Sicilian farmhouse was our base in the archeological site (supposedly the biggest archeological site in Europe), it is just few hundreds meters from this temple (Temple E).



Therefore, I had a chance to go there everyday.. many times a day I walked by the temple... under the sun, under the rains..


The whole archeological compound aged around 2300 - 2700 years old... Seeing all these stones, I have to accept that the Greek were so so cool. And compare to them, I am a pretty lousy architect, indeed. -_-"



For the privilege of being there for the workshop, we were allowed to be around the temple at night, after tourist time too. Very impressive, isn't it?



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46 all(zone) goes wallpaper :)

We just received the latest September issue of Wallpaper* Thailand which featured our little work in ARCHITECTURE HOTSHEET column --> we are very honored, flattered and so so hot :D





The project published is Pim's House and Ceramic Studio we finished late last year --you perhaps knew it already.


The article written is very interesting. The writer, Suriya Garudabandhu, could communicate the key issues of the project very well without bombarding a lot of architectural jargon to confuse common audiences. Still it is has a bit of entertaining sarcastic humor, such as when he writes: "We believe that there are many people collaborating behind a successful architecture. Amazing piece like Guggenheim Museum (at Bibao - my addition) would not have been realized without those who translated those sketchy sketches of Frank Gehry into construction drawings. (And we perhaps have to give a credit of Gehry office's janitors who had a marvelous insight being able to differentiate study models from trashes.)" It is translated from Thai text of: เราเชื่อว่าความสำเร็จของงานสถาปัตยกรรมสักชิ้นนั้นมีผู้อยู่เบื้องหลังมากมาย สถาปัตยกรรมอันน่าตื่นตาอย่าง Guggenhiem Museum คงไม่มีทางเป็นจริงได้ ถ้าขาดคนถ่ายทอดสเก็ตช์ อันขยุกขยิก ของ Frank Gehry ให้เป็นแบบก่อสร้าง (และเราอาจจะต้องให้เครดิตคนทำความสะอาดออฟฟิศที่มีญาณทัศนะวิเศษ สามารถแยกแยะได้ว่าอันไหนขยะ อันไหน study model). -_-"


The amazing thing for me is they also published this photo of our design process - very rare in design magazine like Wallpaper*. If you wanna read more of the text, please get this latest issue of Wallpaper* in any bookstores or newspaper stands near you. :)

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45 ISH in Frankfurt : go 'Green' without being so green

We have disappeared for a few months due to our extreme condition of in-between moving to a new office which has been always on delay for many months. Actually we have many things to update on the blog, but just did not have time.

Today we come back with a long-been-postponed-to-be-featured project, an exhibition design (again) in Frankfurt.





Last week of last December, our super beloved client, Khun Wichai of SANA (you can perhaps remember some of exhibitions we did for him in the past), called us for an urgent task: to design and build an exhibition of his products along with the other 3 companies' products to be sent to Frankfurt by the 2nd week of January (basically 3 weeks from then and if we deduct the New Year's holidays, we had few days of works only) -_-'

The exhibition was ISH 2009 in Frankfurt, Germany, supposedly the biggest international sanitary ware trade fair. The space given is about 3 x 12 m. An interesting condition given by Department of Export Promotion who was the main organizer from Thailand, was to use recycle or recyclable materials - I guess it was from the strict Eco-Friendly German. We began to search possible materials to be the structure / main display of the exhibition --> it has to be light, easy to assemble with no extra labour involved apart from the exhibitors. Within few days, we found, Xanita, a company produces honeycomb recycle paper board. It is very light, quite durable if used indoor only. The super nice thing is Xanita teamed with another company that can print and cut them very accurately with CNC machine. So we had endless possibility. Not to mention, the staffs of the company who were very enthusiasm and helpful - thanks to them!

We did many small prototypes of folding cutting papers to have the sheets standing themselves without any extra structures and finally came up with this type. With the zigzag form, inward and outward, the sheet could stand without any problems. Here is the prototype, experimenting with some lighting.

The clients, apart from SANA, were WATSON, ANA and VN, (all of them were the manufactures of sanitary ware in Thailand) liked the prototype, but asked to make it a bit more colorful. Tatan, my ex-student, who is an expert on Thai traditional architecture and decorative elements, gave us some helps on the proportion of the patterns and colors. So here is the final prototype.


We then sent the drawings / artworks to be in production. Within fews days only, we got the panels.


Then at our previous office, we assembled all the 28 panels with 3 people (us), it took only 2 hours.. not bad indeed.


The real panels looked pretty much similar to the prototype. :) As you can see from the comparison here.


The whole exhibition filled up our space on the ground floor completely, rather nice..



The very simple form of folding in and out create quite nice effects with lighting.



The details are very simple. You can see the honeycomb section of the paper here.


Finally the boards were shipped to Frankfurt on time - thanks god! The exhibition was during the last March. None of us went along, but heard from Khun Wichai that it went well.

This was one of our experiments with 'green' materials without being outspokenly green as a color or exposed materials of brownish paper. :)

Go Green, without being so 'green'!

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44 Green Packaging @ TCDC

Here we go: our latest work at TCDC, "Green Packaging" or "บรรจุภัณฑ์รักโลก" by Material Connexion Bangkok, during 21 April - 24 May, 2009. This small exhibition has rather complex process of production, however, finally we did it! Thanks to all the people involved indeed. :)







About three months ago, Wuttinan, a very good friend of mine, who is an interior & exhibition designer gave me call asking us to work on this exhibition design. He was working as a curator for this exhibition with Material Connexion Bangkok. Wutttinan gave us the ideas of packaging that is pretty much linked to consumption and waste. The more people consume, the more packaging they use, the more waste we have. Working with him throughout the process was great fun, since we always had interesting discussions, exchanging ideas, alternating design and so on. Very exciting indeed.




The exhibition will be also a travelling exhibition to all around the country where TCDC has their branches, mini TCDC, for about a year. So we are thinking of very simple and light materials for the exhition. We are interested in how local consumption products are usually displayed by hanging like this:


The exhibition contains mainly 3 parts: the first parts is the schocking facts about the how much package we consume which is mainly displayed on the outer skin of the exhibition. The skin is made of this plastic package type usually use for toys or small electronic parts. Given the durability, the cost and the heavy duty travelling display of the PVC plastic, we believe that our solution is pretty 'green' compares to other materials. We made the packaging with 4 shapes: circle, regtangular, cross and, of course, heart shape with paper containing different information and color.



It was also the first time we used Soy Ink to print all over 1800 cards by our small inkjet printer sponsored by Panorama Soy Ink through Material Connexion. Thanks to Net, our graphic designer who spent 5 full days doing this. :O Not to mention, that we had to cut, to make a hole and tire them all together in system. We were lucky to have many students of mine helping us to do this very labour intensive job!


Here is the process of making the plastic package from a sheet of plastic, then cut, and fold, another super labour intensive job!


The graphic design is also very important part of this exhibition. Wuttinan gave a brief of a graphic image of 'product': like in a supermarket where you are overwhelmed by all the products with different labels and packaging. Piyapong and Net, our graphic team solved the brief with very intelligent and cool system!


The second part is about the concept of "acting Green" ; REDUCE, REUSE & RECYCLE with various packaging materials. The information is displayed in the inner skin. We used the transparent plastic garbage bins as containers of objects such as PET bottles, metal cans, bottles, we want to display. (Since few years ago, a public bomb was placed in a garbage bin, all the public garbage bins in transparent plastic like this became a common object, pretty nice!) We wanted to convey the connection of consumption and garbage as well.



28 different columns made out of garbage bin contain different materials, some hanging, some standing. Of course, it was not simple at all. Tanakul, our main contractor did a very good job again. :)



The major part of the exhibition is to display 16 different alternative packaging materials from Material Connexion Bangkok.



The third part of the exhibition is 'Let's Vote', it gives a chance for visitors to consider different packaging materials how 'green' they are.



At the set up. Very simple but labour intensive indeed.


We are done! Exhausting but great fun!



We are proudly present! On the set up day and fix up day. :) (If you look closely you will see that we all are rather pale!)



If you are in Bangkok, this exhbition will be at TCDC until May 24, 2009. But if you are somewhere else in Thailand, it is coming to miniTCDC near you very soon!

By the way, besides those who collaborated with us, we have to deeply thanks Material Connexion Bangkok, who let us explore this fun and interesting design. Good work comes from good client!, we all know. :-)

(Thanks to Vee who took some very nice photo shots for us here!)

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