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!)

43 The Red and the Rest: Bangkok Urban Space & Politics

Although middle of April is the hottest of the hot Bangkok, it is not as hot as our political turmoil now......

After the day of ASEAN Summit in Pattaya was completely destroyed, what else would be left for us as a citizen of the country? Either your prefer the red shirts or the yellow ones, even you don't prefer any of them, it is the day all Thai people have LOST so much almost beyond repair. Everyone is Lost. Without any internal political conflicts, every country is already in a deep trouble with the worst-than-ever global recession. Instead of trying to get through the recession with little damage as possible, our politicians keep adding more obstacles......is this really what you called 'democracy'?

(image from www.nationmultimedia.com)

Last Thursday, the red shirts riot began with occupying the main junction of Bangkok, Victory Monument, easily. It caused a super traffic jam for the whole Bangkok metropolitan - you can argue that Bangkok is already super traffic, but imagine it was five times more because of the junction was blocked. Many people were stuck on the streets for hours and hours after their long working days.

(image from www.nationmultimedia.com)

(image from www.nationmultimedia.com)

(image from www.nationmultimedia.com)

(image from www.nationmultimedia.com)

The day after, some of the red shirts went on, trying to do the same, blocking the traffic, at another important intersection of Bangkok financial district, Sathorn-Narathiwas Rachanakarin. However, the mob was thrown away from the intersection right away by the white collar office workers around. Here is the report from The Nation.


Why are these two places  so different, although they are both the main traffic junctions of Bangkok?

Big street and political protest are two main characteristics of modern urban space - Marshall Berman explains this issue in depth in his 'All that is solid melts into airs'.  Big street allows people to express their identity and political opinions. It has been a stage for all political protest. However, if we look closely, most of the political-stage big streets are mostly a kind of symbolic one. Take an example of our Rachadamnerd Boulevard, a big street in Bangkok built by the end of 19th century after Haussman Boulevard in Paris, similar to many other modern cities in the world. It is always a place to express political opinion throughout the history of our democracy. Its symbolism, its scale, its context, altogether are perfect for the event. Here is Rachadamnerd Boulevard.


What about Victory Monument and Sathorn?

One important aspect about these streets is an actual 'owner' of the place. Along Rachadamnern Boulevard, the buildings are pretty much occupied by very quiet business.. nobody really walks along the street (apart from tourists, homeless and some ambiguous businessmen/women). Looking at Victory Monument, it is surely the biggest traffic junctions in Bangkok, where people from all directions passing by to connect their buses. (It is said that you can go anywhere in the country by the minibuses lines around here.) Although hundreds thousands people go through the junction everyday, nobody really 'owns' the space........they are just passers by.

(image from www.nationmultimedia.com)

While at Sathorn-Narathiwas intersection, it is rather different. The intersection is surrounded by high-rise office buildings. Everyday thousands office workers basically 'live' their lives around the area - buying breakfast, having lunch, shopping and hanging out after work- they really belong to the space, they have their own 'place'. Moreover, the pedestrian bridges crossing over the four sides of the intersection create a very strategic location for the office workers to be above the red-shirt mob trying to block the traffic on the street. The mob inevitably became an exposed target from all the ordinary office workers shouting at them from the pedestrian bridges. You can see clearly how the space is owned by the office workers and how they kicked the mob away from these clips: A, B, C, D, E. They were trying very hard to protect their own 'space', their 'place' from the unlawful acts. Imagine these office workers who work hard to get through their months paying bills, trying to overcome all the economic problems days and nights. They are no different from a taxi driver, a construction worker, a farmer in the way they also struggle to lead their lives - as we all do... I perfectly understood and imagined myself doing exactly the same thing, if such an incident happens in front of my office.

The incident of Sathorn office workers kicking away the red-shirt mob became a very heroic news among the middle-class Bangkokians. Right after the incident, the clips above were posed in youtube, all the internet-connected population of the country forwarded the links. In this desperate moment when working-hard middle class like us can't do anything much with the crisis, the only little example like this give us some hints that perhaps we still have 'our own space' in this country.

Through these years of our country's political conflicts, I had never taken any side. The country won't simply gain democracy through violence and money. Education is perhaps the only tangible but time-taking process, but the impatient Thai could not accept and wait for that. In this precise moment the world became by far too complex, the information/internet technology widens even more the gap between the urban and the rural, between those who have access to information of the global arena and who don't. This is perhaps the actual effects of the so-called globalization.

Since early this year, when this government began to run the country, I could see little light at the end of the tunnel. At least, finally we have leaders who look like what leader should be - not a bandit, not a businessman or a mobster. It might not be a perfect one, but now, in this extreme economic crisis moment, we NEED a government! We CANNOT afford not to have a government, not even for a few months!

However, finally, we, hard-working good citizens of the country, are always the one who get the most damage regardless of the winner. Isn't the country as a whole is also our 'space', our 'place'? How come we let all these occupying our space, our place, our lives?

Read a comment on The Nation HERE. We, the Thai, are all loser now!

42 It is raining in a metal box..

We began the new year 2009 post with our old project. :) It is a project waiting in line to be posted already for some months. Just the other stories are more related to the 'now'. However, finally we are very happy to be able to post this one on our blog since we like it very much (as usual).

For the last year Tokyo Designer's Week (during October every year), there was a very small competition to design an exhibition in a container, which was a venue for everyone in a park. The winnners were awarded a free space and a very little budget to realize the exhibition there during Tokyo Designer's Week. Plus a wide range of publicity was guranteed.

We did not aim to win the competition, (and we did not win) but the design condition was challenging for our brains....... Imagine if we won and had to go there to set up everything with very little money... must have been a little hellish...:O (I lived in Tokyo for three and a half years, perhaps I knew too much to be optimistic).



Here is our entry "it is raining in a metal box", upon the requirement - only one A3 sheet.

Our idea is very simple. It comes from the condition that if we really had to go there to set up the exhibition with very little money supported from the organizer. Ok, surely we had to spend the travelling expenses and living expenses from our own pockets.. but then, still, with 60,000 yen in Tokyo, you could barely buy some cardboard to cover the interior space of the container. We, therefore, thought of something very light (as usual) very cheap (as always) and very easy to bring from Bangkok..

This is our starting point - metal paper clips and small piece of magnet. The magnet acts as glue to keep paper clips attached with the surface of the container which is, of course, made of metal.


We did several experiments and finally came up with this hanging paper clips...


They really look like lines of rain dropping..


So we proposed to create the whole space of the container buy this hanging paper clips.. Since they are very light and easy to handle, to shape space in any configuration would be very easy. We can even change the space everyday.


This is what we wrote:

RAINS: Bangkok under heavy rains is Bangkok we love the most.. the rains that pouring down from the sky so heavily that blur all the surrounding into a mystery scene. We want to bring the scene with us.

LIGHT: We come from a place where life is ephemeral, construction is light, tectonic is fragile and space is fluid. We want to creat a short-life environment without leaving any traces of our presence after we are gone.

Our space is created by thousands pieces of a tiny magnet sticked on the metal surface on the container, then a hundred thousands paper clips are chained together and sticked with the magnets.

RECYCLE: The container will not be holed. The magnets are as well as the paper clips can be reused after the event. Since the period of the exhibition is rather short. We want to use the materials that most economical.

EXHIBITION: The raining space withint the container will not only serve as a backdrop for the display of our works, but also conveys our belife in designing built enviroment. Our previous works will be simply shown on small postcards hanging from the paper clip rains.. ready to be taken as an o-miyake. We want you to take them with you.

With some lightings, the space looks pretty mysterious.. and really I think it looks as if it is raining in the box, well, the container.




From outside..

We calculated roughly, the cost of the exhibition would be about 20,000 yen for the materials brought from Bangkok, and then perhaps 10,000 yen more for the lighting.. Not bad in our economic crisis, isn't it.

Well, we surely will try to find a chance to realize this idea very soon.