blogzone-allzone

57 Body Borders: Anything Can Break by Pinaree Sanpitak

2011-11-01T14:58:00.005+07:00

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.

56 New Taipei City Musuem of Art

2011-10-27T17:48:00.005+07:00

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!

55 Singapore Colorful Songlines

2011-05-14T00:00:00.000+07:00

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.

54 The Heroine : SEJIMA-san せじまさんおめでとう！

2011-03-08T18:25:00.029+07:00

At the first encounter, I was extremely attracted as well as stunned by this image. As a just-graduated architect, I was not able to understand - the space seemed to fill fully with a cloud of steams, humid and a bit warm..... Looking at the image, I was feeling somehow a bit difficult of breathe, at the same time very drawn to get closer. Everything seemed to be rather surreal.

It happened in the summer of 1993, an exhibition space in Aoyama of Tokyo, I was at the prize ceremony of 'Architecture of the Year' by JIA (Japan Institute of Architects). The building, House in a Forest, was awarded the best architecture of the year.

With all my knowledge of architecture by then, the planning of the house was very unconventional - the ring space surrounds the central space which is no function, while the 'rooms' are plugged around the ring out to the forest. It was the first time that I saw such an organization of the space in relation to the programs.It was the first time I got to know her - Kazuyo Sejima. Quite a knock!

The view from the ring to the central space:

The house somehow (strangely) blends in the forest...:

At the time, I was in Tokyo under the fellowship of Bunka-Cho (Ministry of Culture). My mentor, Professor Nobuo Hozumi of Waseda University, always said that the next century (the 21st century) would be a century of woman architect - he is really a wise man in the 21 st century two woman architects received Pritzker Prize. Professor Hozumi, therefore, insisted that I had to visit Sejima-san's office right after the event. Of course I went.

I was not so sure where it was, but the office was basically just a small room, filled with models and documents, wherever my eyes could lay on. Sejima-san arrived late with hurry. She apologized. She explained what she was doing by then with little words, I did not understand much. Her architecture seemed to be so far away from my understanding of what architecture was... but her being very quiet, soft but at the same time very strong determination inside was very charming. Not to mention her dressing style - super cool!

Again I was stunned by her person no less than her works. She gave me this book which I have been treasured until now:

The small book that collects all her works from 1987-1994 which she used for her exhibition to cover the overall floor surface leaving only the path to walk through:

After the visit, I had a chance to see all the works until then. They all were strange and against many things I used to believe about architecture. I got addicted -_-" to her works.

My favourite was the Pachinko Parlor here. Very strange usage of materials and colors. (Some years after, I was driving around Ibaraki-ken, trying to find this building... It was on a minor road in a suburb of a small town. The building stood by the roadside with its eccentric sensibility).

This was her study of apartment unit typology. With the longtitudinal organization of the space.. it was a not-very typical way to arrange:

Her early house:

Another house:

A small shop:

The very first big building of her, Woman Dormitory in Kumamoto:

The dormitory where everybody has very small sleeping space and forced by space to be out in the common area all the time. The common space was arranged as it was an interior artificial street scape - the materials are very extreme with all kind of reflective and metal.

I believe she was also in this photo herself - right in the reflection.

After trying to understand her works, I became her follower, a fan... I was also fortunate enough to have a chance to get to meet her several times in different occasions... She always perplexed me..

In 1996 I was back to Japan briefly, and found the issue of Kenchiku Bunka Magazine (literally translation is Architecture Culture) which was the special issue on Sejima. (I also love the graphic of the issue very much.)

By then, here IMAS project in Gifu was still under construction - the model was very cute.

Also she was designing her world-famous Gifu Housing:

The diagrams of the units - a typical diagram of housing that finally used by all:

Tokyo Expo (unbuilt project)

A police box in the suburb of Tokyo. (At some point in my life, I was Sejima-san's works hunter. I went to find the police box and found quite disappointed of how it was transformed) .

The exhibition of her works:

Her entry of Yokohama Port Terminal Competition 1995:

Her little furniture:

Later she collaborate with Nishizawa Ryue, they covered AXIS magazine in 2000:

The making hands:

By then they were already very famous both in Japan and aboard. Again I was also fortunate to visit some of her private houses with her and had several chances to see her in my school once in a while when I was doing my Ph.D. in Todai.

Through these years, as a loyal fan, I have been following her works and publications -- museums, houses, biennale of architecture 2010 - she never fails to surprise me, Sejima-san.

The latest magazine I received from Japan was CASA Brutus special issue on SANAA (thanks to Jump ^_^) :

The duo were photographed in Rolex Learning Center, she is always cool.

The interview to the two of them.

The magazine explains in detail of their works:

And what they are doing now, and will come up soon:

Also there are some images of the office in Tokyo-- not much different from the first time I visited 17 years ago, just bigger. (Actually her office has been like this no matter where she moved!)

Recently I just owned a "Cat" (neko), a new piece of her design:

Looking forward to finally owning some 'rabbits' here in the near future!

Being a good and stunning architect as she is with any genders is already very difficult. Being a woman architect in Japan is perhaps a bit more. I have been following her developments for almost two decades, I bow. She is really a heroine who always ROCKS :)

せじまさん本当におめでとうございます！

53 Million Bottles Temple (วัดล้านขวด)

2010-10-31T22:58:00.009+07:00

On the way back from Ubon Rachathani after setting up HJS exhibition, on our van ride, we had a chance to stop by a small town called Khun Han (อ.ขุนหาญ) in Sri Saket Province (จ.ศรีษะเกษ) to see a temple we had been long to see for several years - Million Bottles Temple.

Most of the buildings of the temple are built mainly with recycled bottles. :o
According to one of the construction guys we met at the temple, it began more than 10 years ago that the head of the monks had this idea to use the bottles instead of bricks, because they had not much money to buy the common construction materials. The monks, therefore, asked for a donation of used bottles of all kinds - the main one was the beer bottles which was very fine tuned with the Thai's drinking habit. -_-"

The main building on the pond:

All the walls, the floors and the roofs are made by bottles of different colors and sizes. Not only they dont need to paint the surface, the air in those bottles acts as insulation of the building -- genius!

Look at the floor --> the bottom of the bottles are used instead of the tiles. The balustrade is perfectly made with the lining up bottles.. cool indeed.

When we got inside one of these buildings we were even more impressed by the interior wall on the back of the Buddha.

The whole mural patterns and decorations are made out of the caps of those bottles, in different colors and sizes, of course, instead of small pieces of color glass commonly used in any Thai Buddhist temples. Cheap, intelligent and beautiful solution

The walls have several patterns, upon the creativity of the masonry who made it!

After the method got famous, they began to build all the monk cells with the same technique and material.

And also the other buildings such as a multi purpose hall are built in the same fashion. Look at the curvy roof with the diamond pattern, the guy who built it told us that they were fighting over which pattern to use and he won!

The crematorium and the main gate of the temple are also built in this style.

So they invented several patterns of different colors and sizes of the bottles.

Sometimes, they combine together the caps and the bottles. -_-"

Some fancy columns decorated by those caps. (We can still see which brands are they)!

Another amazing item is the floor, they developed a special terrazzo made out of small pieces of glass from the bottles. So the terrazzo is more sparkle than usual!

As an architect, we bow to those who put all their attempts in experimenting with building the temple. There are thousands ideas that we could not come up surely from a drafting board or our CAD or 3D model screen. Local wisdom wins here. :)

52 HJS exhibition @ The Capital of Lotus!

2010-08-08T15:54:00.023+07:00

OKMD (The Office of Knowledge Management & Development) of Thailand was established with the intention to transform the country into a knowledge-based society. Several sub organizations were set up to follow 'knowledge' in different sections. TCDC (one of our beloved clients) is one among them. The latest move of OKMD is the project to transform boring public libraries in the province to become more active and accessible by people of all kinds. The project is literally called 'Edible Knowledge Project' (โครงการศูนย์ความรู้กินได้). They set up a first prototype of the library of the future at Ubon Rachathani, a most east province of the country, bordering with Laos.

We were asked to design a very small exhibition for the gallery of the library for the launch of the project on last 24th July.

The exhibition is tailored-made as an outcome of extensive research of the local problems that they have been loosing competitiveness of their products and service without knowing exactly the reasons.

It is an attempt to give a tool for the local to understand how the world is changing through the lenses of knowledge and data so that you could come up with business strength. 'Hed Jung Sii Der, Jung Sii Me Okas" (เฮ็ดจัดสิเด้อ จังสิมีโอกาส) the name of the exhibition in Northeastern dialect, literally means 'do it like this, then you get a change'. The main content is about opportunities of products and services of a new group of the world population so called 'young 50' who have different lifestyle from those 50+ in the past.

The exhibition is rather difficult for us since there is not really an object to display, not key visual that could be striking. We began with the idea of 'searching around to find opportunity in an environment'. The image we had in mind was those of a forest, where ever you look around, it looks the same, but not exactly the same. If you want to find something, you really have to search for it. These are our conceptual models.

Then we got very much inspired by the local tradition of silk. The city is named 'Ubon Rachathani' - the capital of Lotus flower. They have a silk pattern called Lotus pattern here.

The we were trying to make it more 3-dimensional patterns.

We used a very simple and basic materials of EVA (the one we tried to use in Architects'06 exhibition, but did not succeed.) Besides using it for the most common sandals, it is so cheap and so simple that it is available almost every classroom for kid' s art projects. We wanted to use the very common materials in a different approach from what the locals are accustom with. Here is our first 1-1 mock-up of the wall made in the local silk lotus pattern:

We used different colors on each side, so seeing from one side, it will be totally one color, the other side will be totally another depend on your 'point of view'.

Then we searched for more EVA and found several colors available... too nice to resist.

The walls are to house all the information about the 'young 50' who will play a powerful buyers in our globe in the near future. The walls are curvy so that they are more stable. And also we try to create an environment that visitors will always be 'held' in this small exhibition without seeing clearly outside, the curvy walls form the directions and sequences of the exhibition.

Our 1:20 model:

The 2nd 1-1 mock-up. The EVA stripes are basically woven into the very slim steel frames..

The gradient effects of colors that we wanted!

The overall graphic of the exhibition is lead by Amnaj Suriyawongkul and Chatnarong Jinsupatada.

Some of the information is in the form of movie clips, so we had to provide also some LCD displays. Thanks to Buravich, our super contractor of the exhibition for helping us a lot on those small details.

Few weeks ago, we all went to Ubon Rachathani for the set up.

Testing the information panels.

Ready to weave...

Although we had a lot of workers from the contractor, we all wanted to 'weave' them with our hands too, a lot of fun indeed.

Final touch of all the small details, Purich is the king in this realm.

After one full day, we completed the set up. :)

Here it is:

We tried to film the scene of the exhibition because it is almost impossible to take a photo and understand the sequence.

However if you want to see more images, please visit our website. :) And if you have a chance to pass by the Capital of Lotus, please visit the just face-life public library, it is not later than this coming October, you will see the exhibition too. Enjoy!

51 Thai Yo - 太陽 - ไทยโย

2010-04-14T17:22:00.021+07:00

Few days ago, we just dismantled our first exhibition & exhibition design at Bangkok Art & Culture Center - BACC - (the only and recently opened contemporary art museum in Bangkok).

The exhibition, organized by Ministry of Culture and Bangkok University Creative Center (BUCC), aims to emphasize on cultural exchanges between Japan & Thailand via the works of Thai artists and designers which somehow are related to Japanese culture

The difficulty of this exhibition is to display both art and design items in the gallery space which is mainly designed for 'Modern Art'. How to put them together? Moreover, as usual, the budget and schedule are very tight -_-". We come up with the structure to define the space for design items, while leaving the art pieces in the space of the gallery in between the structure.

The main image of the exhibition is this small houses altogether composing a picture of 'a village' - could be Japanese or Thai. Each house is to house small design objects upon category. Originally we wanted to use a super common, generic tent structure used in any temporary situation here in Thailand. However, to rent for more than one month during our exhibition periods (4 March - 8 April) the tent is not cheaper than custom made one with a very light metal structure. So we did design several sizes of the houses upon the objects inside.

The rows of the houses create a kind of 'urban' space in between, where all the major art pieces are displayed.

Since the budget is extremely tight, we had to come up with a very cheap materials for the house walls. We finally end up with simple long white paper sheets which is less than 10 Bhat per sq.m. including the installing cost. Also white paper has a strong root in Japanese architecture. However the space wrapped with white paper with a very simple and light tectonic as we do here is very different from the way Japanese would do. Perhaps this is a very Thai tectonic... :)

We did some experiments at all(zone) with the generic rental tent structure.

At night, the look from outside is not bad. But unfortunately the gallery space is not that dark (the 8th floor is the space with a lot of uncontrollable natural lights -_-"). So the effect did not really happen at the actual exhibition. Also at the beginning we wanted to weave the paper sheets to give more strength, but the process was too long and the paper itself got wrinkled.

We got Tanakul Workgroup, our super contractor, to do this urgent and low budget work again. Thanks to them. During the set up, to have the structures without papers are not bad too.... next time then.

Besides the super workers from Tanakul, we had to supervise and help installing a lot during those 3-4 days. Thanks to Purich and his friends Ohm, Ken and Pik for helping us too.

After the exhibition was more or less completed, someone died. :o

On the opening day, the exhibition was promoted around Pathumwan intersection where BACC is located. The overall graphic design of the exhibition is the works of Practical Studio.

At the opening party, apart from Minister of Culture, and all the big guys in the ministry, we had a very famous super classic singer, Suthep Wongkamheng and a very famous contemporary singer Pod Modern Dog, singing some Japanese & Thai songs (they work in Japan) with our 'paper houses' as a background.

At the entrance of the exhibition.

The first house of 4,000 manga books by Thai cartoonists.

The overall ambient of the exhibition.

The space out of the houses is for the art pieces. All the art pieces are handle by Supernormal Studio. It was the first time we worked with them, and they are great!

At the entrance of each house, visitors have to get through the sheets of paper, the same experience as getting through Noren (暖簾) in front of an entrance in Japan. The height of the noren define the way the interior space is displayed from outside the house.

The design objects displayed inside the 'paper houses'. The side 'doors' connecting the houses are to lead the visitors from one house to another transversally.

The installation of wHY architecture & Kulapat Yantrasast. The 2LDK in Japanese apartment system.

The installation of Kris Manopimok, a lighting designer of LD 49. He also helped us a lot for the overall lighting design of this exhibition.

The art pieces of Navin Ravanchaikul and Yuri Kensaku.

The dress from banana leaf as an art work of Chakkrit Chimnok.

The latest collection of a fashion designer 'Thirst' brand. They established this brand specifically for Japanese market. Pretty cool indeed.

Actually all(zone) also displayed our work in the exhibition too, but this will be another post then.

We had a great fun and were extremely tired of the exhibition, however, we met a lot of interesting people. Thanks to the key player BUCC for the overall exhibition too. :) Until next time.

50 Materials from Nature Exhibition of Materials Connexion Bangkok

2010-03-01T23:55:00.024+07:00

Last month , we have set up our 2nd exhibition at TCDC, "Materials from Nature", with our beloved clients, Materials Connexion BKK. The exhibition will be running until the beginning of April 2010 at TCDC, then will be traveling around the country to miniTCDC.

This time, although we got the same team from "Green Packaging": Wuttinan the curator, Chatnarong & Piyapong the graphic, Purich the supporter as well as Tanakul the contractor, the process of designing and building was quite challenging.. we have learned a lot about our country & society from a rather anthropological viewpoint! Being an architect / a designer is always a great fun!

The idea began with using local natural materials as a main part of the exhibition, to emphasize also on the possibilities of the materials around us.

We made a search and found this small group of farmers in Bang Pahan, Ayuthaya, who work on weaving crafts. So we went there to see what they can do. The proudest item of them is this fan, which they can weave into patterns of alphabets. :O

Another place we went (later) and found an incredible thing is Panasnikom, Chonburi, where the have the biggest woven baskets in the world -_-"

We started with this idea to make a hexagon module which could be assembled in several forms.

But they could not make it strong. So we found some examples of what could be our next exploration -- this flat basket or กระด้ง which is very strong structurally because they rim is made out of thick bamboo. Moreover, they can make it exactly the same size because they use a plastic bucket as a mold. The other interesting piece is this small basket with hexagon pattern which we usually use it for steaming food. The combination of the two began.

This is our first trial. We actually did try several patterns, size and colors.

Also we did explored several ways to assemble these rings together in a strong and proper shapes to exhibit our cool materials. This is the final module.

The final model of 1:25 scale.

Since the module is rather complex in the geometry, we had to assemble them ourselves at all(zone)'s headquarters.

After a complex setup test at all(zone), we moved the almost completed exhibition to TCDC. The setup there took only few hours! a big step forward from our previous exhibition.

The graphic is mainly done by our graphic Chatnarong (net) he explained about the graphic of this exhibition in his blog.

There are several types of Materials from Nature in this exhibition. They are catagorized by colors.

It has been a great fun and energy-taking exhibition in trying to work with local craftsmen/farmers. We learned that in Ayuthaya where agriculture is somehow still very strong, basket woven business is not very market-oriented established. They are still doing it more like a hobby that makes money in their spare time. Standard is a very difficult concept for them. While in Chonburi where people are more commercial oriented, they can work upon a business logic better. Although the latter one does not sound so romantic, in the global competitive market, we have to go with the standard. This is perhaps the only way to value add our local natural materials into 'product'.

At the end, thanks to Materials Connexion BKK and TCDC in trying to understand our 'a bit strange approach' of working. I think we share the same goal of making OTOP products more enhancing and more standard. :)

In the postscript of the exhibition it is written:
The bamboo structure of the exhibition “Materials from Nature” was made by villagers in the district of Bang Pahan in Ayutthaya and the district of Panatnikhom in Chonburi. It demonstrates a strong dedication of TCDC and Material Connexion® Bangkok to encourage Thai people to tap into limitless potential of materials and local crafts, which are part of the rich intellectual capital of the country. ----> Yes, We share!

49 all(zone) new(zone): The Headquarters

2009-12-31T00:19:00.027+07:00

At the last day of the year, it is rather common to flashback of all what have happened during the year about to be gone by. For us, it is really a transformation year of many things. However, the biggest deal of the year is this:

Our new office we just moved in last September (while there were still many construction workers working along with us in the building!) It is a very long project.. a long story to tell. But at this sentimental moment that finally within this year it is more or less 'completed', we are more than happy to share with all of you!

It all has begun in the middle of 2007, my sisters bought a small townhouse-shophouse in Sukhumvit 49. While the design process was going on around the New Year of 2008 for the renovation, the neighbor came to us and offered to sell another one.... my sisters then, bought this one too (the offer was too good to resist). So we have two slices of shophouse in stead of one. The construction began around mid-2008 because our beloved contractor was busy finishing Pim's Guesthouse & Studio! We dismantled all the walls on both sides. Here is the photo for the building with the wall and without:

By the way, we also performed a ceremony to start the construction recommended by a Feng Shui Master. Because the year of 2008 was not really perfect to begin a construction, he said it would not be completed easily so we needed to do this ceremony to lighten the bad effects ---> now we learned that he was right, the project has been really difficult with a lot of problems -_-"

Basically we also took almost everything off in the interior space. The shophouse typology in Thailand is quite rigid. The interior space usually is rather dark with natural light coming from one side, because on the back is a service part. We hate that kind of space - so what we wanted is to make the space bright and lighted with as many openings as possible.

Therefore, if we get natural light with a lot of openings, the heat and the rains in such our extreme tropical climate requires more complex solutions. We have some references from my research on 'fragile tectonic' or 'fragile wall' project (I have been doing this project with my students since 2007) of contemporary vernacular architecture around us.

We then, fell in love with the local concrete blocks which is very easy to make, can be designed in several shapes and forms. This could be perfect as a building skin for sunshades. It could also work in substitute of metal bars to protect the building from thieves breaking in - we had this experience once in the previous office, not so fun at all. Also the skin could be an external curtain for our privacy -thinking of how expensive the curtain would be for such big windows!

We began with the existing typologies of these concrete blocks. Then some of them we designed and had them made especially for us. The idea was also developed with Stefi-ID Lab - thanks for pulling us this far. :)

These are the very first schemes we did. Several patterns, several colors. :) We enjoyed greatly choosing /designing the pattern of the blocks.

And finally here is the design. We added the steel structure on the facade to hold the new concrete block skin, also the space between the openings and the skin is a kind of balcony, where the plants could be placed, people can come out for smoking, or become a service space on the back for condensing units, drying cloths and so on. We believe that this kind of 'in-between space' is very crucial for urban living like this, we can also call it 'breathing space'.

The ground floor is a common entrance and parking. The 2nd, 3rd & 4th floors are office space. We use the 4th floor as our office and hope to rent the 2nd & 3rd floor to those who love to be around us. :) The three floors are designed in a way that it can be a normal office or live-in studio/office. The 5th floor is my apartment with small open patio --> well I pay the rent to my sisters, of course. The roof top is also a big terrace! The planning got influenced also by our Feng Shui Master - well actually he helped us to settle a lot of issues, we were a bit tricky that we chose to believe only some parts we like (please dont tell him). -_-"

You can see that we really planned to color the skin. Because we believe that Bangkok is full colorful buildings, we want to be one of them. But then when we first did color them, we couldn't stand to be in the interior space because the super strong sunlight was basically colored and made it hard to live in the space. :( Although we liked it very much, we had to change our mind with the color.

Here is the present color --> grey scale mode.

Here we go: the building in its context. Not bad, isn't it? :)

On the back of the building, looking from S&P restaurant next door.

The very front of the building, you can see this view only from KANOM bakery, also our neighbor.

The beloved facade! We learned a lot really from working on this building. First, to do a renovation of a building, as an architect, you have to charge the fee double! Because of all complicated matters. Then, no contractor would like to do a renovation. :O We had to wait until our beloved contractor, Terdsak and his team for a long long time. The last, doing a renovation is very costly! -_-"

The stair hall:

At the breathing space (our little balcony). With the steel structure all the floor and the side walls are cover with wire mesh steel.. so it is very transparent. Some say that the space is a bit scary, but after a while we got used to and love the space. We usually go out to get some air during a break, talking on a phone outside, smoking of course.

Also the light and shadow casting on the shape of the blocks changing all day long.

Some people are curious about safety. We are actually the most nervous sub-species of homo sapiens when it gets to safety in a building. :) This is a fire exit stair behind the concrete block skin going all the way from the 5th floor, down to the ground.

The interior space at night. We work happily after. :)

If you want to see more, you can reach our newly launched website. Or if you want to come to visit us, here is our location on google map - you can see that we are in one of the most crowded area of good restaurants in town! Or if you like it so much and want to be with us in the building. Let's talk then. :)

48 New Kids on the Block: Thai Parliament House Competition

2009-12-06T00:23:00.016+07:00

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 !

47 Selinunte, Sicily: the Greeks were so cool!

2009-10-27T17:45:00.013+07:00

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?

46 all(zone) goes wallpaper :)

2009-09-28T21:49:00.009+07:00

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. :)

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

2009-07-08T00:32:00.017+07:00

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'!

44 Green Packaging @ TCDC

2009-04-25T17:26:00.029+07:00

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

2009-04-12T00:22:00.028+07:00

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..

2009-01-29T23:13:00.010+07:00

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.

41 Pim's Guesthouse & Ceramic Studio

2008-12-31T14:22:00.010+07:00

Pim is a good friend of mine. She is a designer, mostly working with clay that then becomes ceramic. We ran fun design workshops together in the past few years sucn as "the place and the plate" and "consumption R us". Pim also teaches at the same school as I do, in Industrial Design Department.

Around mid 2007, Pim asked me if I wanted to help her to transform an almost abandoned 50-year old wooden house of her husband's family into a guesthouse and a gathering space for her friend from the church. Although I was sure that it would not be an easy job, because of Pim and the fun of working with her always, I said yes right away. The result was very satisfied and the experience of working with her through almost 18 months was very nice and fun. :-)

This was an eary stage of dismantling the house. Basically the house has two parts: the 2 storey is the main house where Pim's husband lived when he was a child, the 1 storey was a maid quarter and a kitchen, this part we transformed it into a pavillion for all kind of gathering activities.

The pavillion. We took off all the walls, give some light through the roof..adjusting the ground around to meet the pavillion's activities. The main house was completely dismantled, only the columns remained - however they needed to be reinforced with steel structure. The roof was totally renewed with a new steel structure. We also added the under roof room as a storage. This is the main hall of the second floor.

We kept all the walls, doors and windows, trying to reuse them as much as possible - thanks to our super high skill carpenters who could keep most of the existing parts in a very good condition. After the existing color was peeled off, we all fell in love with the 'wabi-sabi' look of the surface. Pim also loves the idea to keep it like that...

These are the walls that we like very much..

Pim and mo.

The real owner of the house, Mo. He is pleased when people visit his house. :-)

Our veranda space on the second floor, we can't help to sit on the ground and lay down on the floor.. look at Mo.

While the main house was almost completed, Pim was looking at the remainers of walls and windows everyday and got this idea to use the remainers to building her ceramic studio in the back of her garden. There were a lot of wood.. it would be a pity to thrown them away or keep them with0ut knowing exactly what to do.

We ran a small workshop with Pim to design her studio for one afternoon. :-) Great fun.

We made a model of all windows and doors...Recomposed them into a facade of the studio...

It was very simple rectangular building.. but we had a great fun working on it.

Finally.. this is how it looks (thanks to Pom for such a nice photo).

Windows and door recomposed..

Interior space..

This is where Pim works and spends most of her good time. :-)

Pim and her studio..

Well it is a very small project. But we are very happy working on it and very happy with the result! This confirms that good work comes with also good client :-)

40 Venice Biennale of Architecture 2008

2008-11-23T19:01:00.032+07:00

After I run a workshop at NABA, the next day we headed Venice for Venice Biennale: the 11th International Architecture Exhibition. This year the director is Aaron Betsky who gave a very interesting theme to the exhibition, "Out There: Architecture Beyond Building". Actually the exhibition ran during Sept 14 - Nov 23, already finished last weekend.

For those who are not familiar with the Biennale, the biennale exhibition (both art and architecture) could be divided roughly into 3 parts, upon the location. The first part is called Arsenale, the old buildings of rope factory of the Italian Navy are transformed into a super long exhibition space. The second part is called Giradini, or the garden, where pavilions of different countries are located. The last section is those exhibitions and national pavilions scattering around the city. Usually it would take at least 2-3 days to complete the show. But I have never spent more than 2 days (basically 2 afternoons) browsing through it, because after some hours, I would get overdosed of either art or architecture....:O

We began with the Arsenale where many big name architects were, altogether more than 50 architects put there works over there. This one was the first one at the entrance of the Arsenale: Hall of Fragments by David Rockwell with Jones/Kroloff. There were many screens showing different famous movies at the lower part of the exhibition, while on the big screen, computer generated moving images were projected to created perpectual changing space. Personally I am not into this kind of installion.. (too intangible for me), however this one was not bad actually.

This one was Zaha Hadid and Patrik Schumacher's Lotus Design. I actually like this furniture more than the usual buildings of Zaha and the gang. :-)

Gehry's work was this seem-to-be a mock up of one of his buildings, but claded with clay. The texture of the cracks was really nice and gave a different look to Gehry's signature form.

This one is called Graphic Tapesteries of Thonik. Gigantic carpets were hung from very high roof of Arsenale building, the space was very strong and interesting.

This one, I don't understand much the content, but visually it was quite nice. The technique was also quite simple: plastic tubes and lighting from below. It was the work of Penezic & Rogina Architect, "Who's Afraid of the Big Bad Wolf in the Digital Age?".

Another visually nice one was the exhbition of Guallart Architect, "Hyperhabitat". It looked very digital, like in a Sci-Fi movie. :-) Everthing was reduced into two dimensional surface... digital?

This one was one of those whose approach was more into digital generated form, the work of Matthew Ritchie & Arnda/Lasch, Evening Line. The space was cover by the pattern (seemed to be digially generated) both on the surfaces of the wall and the floor and the mass made out of crambled two-dimensional cut surface..

This one was a bit analog interaction, not bad actually..It was formation(RE)formation: Normad Garden by Barkow Leibinger Architects. All the alumium pipes could be moved into another hole on the floor. So you could rearrange the path if you want to get through the 'garden'.

This one was the one we were actually looking forward to seeing, after reading many reviews from everywhere before going there. The section of Uneternal City in the Arsenale housed 12 exhibition on urban design including this one of MAD architect. This movable China Town of 1 km high, has been very controversial... To me, it was almost a joke... To see it in the real life did not help to change my mind. In the country where trillions people have no proper home like China, maybe there are something else to do.. I don't know.

At the almost every end of Arsenale session, Chinese section was located in the very factory-like space.. with a smell of oil .. The exhition was very simple, some photographs of common rooms where people really live in China, placed on the simple tables with very common fluorescent lamps. It gave you the atmosphere of very tough physical environment of China.. which perhaps it actually is.

Just in the garden next to the room, there were two small Chinese pavilions, one was made out of simple concrete blocks, the other which is this one, was made out of paper boxes and paper tubes of drawing papers used in architecture office. It was not bad at all, but by the time (late October) when we arrived, the pavilion was already on the vague of collapsing... :O it was almost dangerous to get inside, however, we did so.

Actually there were many other exhibitions in the Arsenale.. too many.. after a few hours, we were already overdosed, and could not stand to hear the word "architecture" anymore - hahhahah. One thing I realized here was: when architects try to be too artistic (or playing artist), it hardly works. :O --- Viva Architecture! (still).

The next afternoon, after being a normal tourist in Venice on Sunday super good weather morning, we were back again at the second venue of the Biennale: the Giardini.

The most striking exhibition in the national pavilion this year for us was Japan. The exhibition was called Extreme Nature: Landscape of Ambiguos Space, by Junya Ishigami, a young & upcoming architect. Around the existing Japan Pavilion, there were many of these 'green houses', very slender steel structure and glass walls, with many plants inside... the idea of architecture & nature. The green houses actually look very similar to Junya Ishigami's latest work.. He also worked on this project with Hideki Oba , a botanist and Taro Igarashi was a commissioner. It was actually a very interesting approach to look at nature.. somehow you feel that the plants are threatened to be inside these boxes, at the same time you have this feeling that it was a kind of nature that it was framed & tamed - perhaps very Japanese approach. I just hope with my simple mind that the plants were carefully selected and they would stand such an environment of the super sleek green house.

Look at the effects of light and reflection.. It is along the line of Sejima and Nishizawa, but perhaps sweeter, with all the plants.

The details of everything was very faminine - the little cushions on the steps were cover with white lace..

The interior space was even more impressive.. . on the first glance, everything was completely white, floor, wall , ceiling...

Then you began to notice that there were pencil drawings on almost every square inch of the wall...hand drawings , of course..it gave you really a little chill on the spine..

The close up: all the drawings were the ideas of how architecture and nature co-exist...very cute and cartoonist.. we all love it!

The next favourite one was the pavilion of Belgium. The concept of the pavilion this year was to celebrate a hundred years of Belgian's participation to the Biennale (if I am not wrong). It was called 1907.... After the Party. The existing pavilion was covered by a scaffolding structure & metal panels..

This is the entrance space.. you have to get through the scaffolding structure.. quite nice.

This is the space in between the exisiting building and the new structure of the scaffolding.. it became a small garden (although some trees were dying)

Every single square inch of the ground was covered by the little paper confetti.. it must have been tons of them, it signified that it was "after the party of the anniversary" :-) it was quite fun walking through the floor like this.. people really enjoyed, I notice.

Another favourite one is the pavilion of Poland - it was awarded the best national pavilion this year - as far as I know. It was called Hotel Polonia - they put big beds in the middle of the space.. But the most interesting part of the pavilion was called : The After Life of Building, on the wall of the space. There were photographs of some super new and sleek buildings in Poland (which is very fast growing economy too), next to each sleek photograph, there was another photo of "the after life" of that particular building, make with super neat retouch techniques. The after life is somehow very pessimistic.. the future is not that bright.. Library turns into shopping mall, church turns into amusment park, office building turns into framehouse and etc..... Very impressive indeed.

Look closely at each building... :O

The hyper modern sleek city turn into a junk yard....

The other pavilion that is really 'beyond building' is the one of Czech Republic and Slovak Republic, called "Sideways". It was basciall a big space with 10s refridgerators.. On each fridge, some descriptions about the owners of the fridge with his/her context, forexample, a unversity student, age 20, single room dorm, and etc. Then you could open the fridge to see what kind of food kept inside.. it was very fun to look at how and where people live through their fridge. This made me think a lot of my fridge which is basically always almost empty :O

Isaeli Pavilion was not so impressive, however, a piece was nice.. I don't know exactly what it is - seems to be someting generated by sound.. byt the surface is very nice.

Greek Pavilion was also about soundscape of the city, where you could activate several kind of sounds in many hanging headphones.. however, I think, the visual effect of this fiber obtic tubes with light was very nice and perhaps too strong that you tend to forget about the sound..

Russian Pavilion was also crazy.. you could see hundreds of buildings by many fancy architects which are about to pop up in Russian landscape... Very impressive indeed.

In the main pavilion of Italy, which is so big that the exhibition that is not mainly Italian architects, there were two sections of the exhibition "the Master" (no explanation needed), and "Experimental Architecture". For the masters, it was more for the excitement of seeing some real drawings/paintings of Zaha Hadid and Madelon Vriesendorp (who made all the illustrations of Delirious New York of Rem Koolhaas). Another interesting one was the installation of Ai Wei Wei, a Chinese Artist in collaboration with Herzog & De Meuron (they were working together since the Bird's Nest stadium).

I was more into 'Experimental Architecture'. However, many of them conducted events during the first week of the show, and now only very static exhibition was there. One of the example of these was the exhibition ot Interaction Design Lab: they were doing great events during the first weeks, and the exhibition space was only an immitation of their office space which shows the working process.

The other one worth mention is this exhibition of Alejandro Aravena, a Chilean architect..(he won the prize of the young architect this year at the Biennale too). He works mainly with poor people in Chile. Here you don't see much because of the very abstract models, but you can see more from Dezeen.

There were almost a hundred exhibition more in Italian Pavilion.. but too many to mention.. really - again I was overdosed.

The pavilion which is always to most beautiful building (but impossible to put any exhibition because the building is too strong and good) is the Nordic Pavilion by Sverre Fehn, a old master of Norwegian Modern architecture...

To see the building, it was already enough.. no need to see the exhibition (in fact I never remembered any exhibition displayed here in the building although I have been to the Biennale both art & architecture for several times already).

The roof structure was also very nice.. the way the natural light gets through..

Another nice building is Venezuelian Pavilian by Carlo Scarpa, the Venice master...(atually this time we saw quite some of Scarpa's works too..)

Many other pavilions are also very nice and good design (you could write a book out of them) such as Finland's by Alvar Aalto, Australia's by Glen Murcutt and so on...

There were only three outside-the-main-venue exhibitions I saw. This first one was a small building next to Giardini by an group of Italian architects, A12. Unfortunately by the time I arrived it was already close. But the effect of the mirror cladded wall reflecting Venice's waterscape was very nice.

Hong Kong Pavilion got a good location, just right on the opposite building of the entrance of the Arsenale..there was this very small home with bicycle.. very cute and the tower of metal leaves... quite interesting. (next to it was Taiwan Pavilion, but I was too late to get it).

The very first and the very last pavilion we saw was the Scottish one.. Since it was right in front of the train station. :) very smart move.. It seemed to be very popular among kids (as well as homeless people at night). :D

The over experience of this Venice Biennale of Architecture was quite nice....One thing I learned is that if you do an exhibition among the other millions, don't try to do it too complex and over-content (most architects tend to say too much, because, certainly, they think a lot about their works otherwise there would not be at the Biennale). People don't have much time, and nerve to try to get into a very complex content.. (Maybe it is only myself) But to be very honest.. Going to Venice Biennale (either art or architecture) is always a very nice but super exhausting experience... However, if I have a chance, I would go again, again, again and again.. :-)

39 NABA Design Workshop: Fragile Wall

2008-10-29T23:35:00.037+07:00

During 20-24 October, 2008 (basically last week), I was invited to run a workshop for NABA Design Program. (Actually I wrote once about NABA last year when I was invited to give a lecture there, here is the LINK). This time was the workshop week for the whole NABA Design Program from the 1st year to the 3rd year, therefore 10 workshops were run at the same time. Super chaotic, super fun. Thanks to Stefano Mirti & Rachel Ficken for making all happen. :-) Also thanks to my TA, Valeria Portinari, without her, my communication in Italian would not go far.

My workshop is for the first year students, 23 of them together. The title of the workshop is "Fragile Wall". The brief is very simple: the students have to build 'a wall' that can define space out of A3/A4 sheets of ordinary office paper without extra structure. Basically the wall has to stand itself, with little help of glue and steple only.

This is our room No. 1 where we spent basically the whole week working there. The students divided into 6 groups upon their own wills. They were always there, working hard, at least 6 hours a day for the whole week! Good job guys!

GROUP 1 : Michele Bianconcini, Istvan Bojte, Graziano Carbone & Matteo Canzio

The began with the tower and developed into a long unit form that can attach each other both horizontally and vertically.

Each unit is folded from a sheet of A3 paper diagonally, very complex folding method was also purely developed themselves. Each layer, the unit is slightly different because of the structural requirement.

The working process was very good, because they learned about the problems of the structure little by little and tried to solve them one by one. Here they found out that when the wall reached a certain level, it began to collapse. So the structure at the base had to be reinforced. The also developed the form of this reinforcing elements both structurally and aestheticly.

This is the final wall with the lights..you can see the lights through the diagonal folds..

On the other side of the wall. Very nice indeed.

At the same time, this Group 1 had the other idea that they did not want to drop. So they ended up working in parallel on the other wall. They began with a triangle section unit, which was folded from a square sheet of paper. The idea is to use the unit as if it is a brick...

When the wall reached a certain level, it began to fail, so they curved and fixed it on the floor.

The final wall looks pretty much like a lace wall, very beautiful with the light on.

This is how it divides space...Pretty much impressive for the first year students with their first work of design in their life!

GROUP 2 : Robin Schineider, Davide Cabrini, Riccardo Carminati & Luciano Bensussan.

They began with various ideas of cylinder, cone, tower... but finally they realized that those would not be so stable. So they restarted again with the simple unit of linear folded sheets that form a square and then a grid system..

They just kept cutting the top part of each layer before adding up another one..The system of each layer is rather regular, while the way they superimpose them is rather random. I think this is very interesting too.

On thursday afternoon, less than 24 hours before the final, when the wall reached a certain height, it collapsed. Robin was almost crying.. But at least they learned that they way the did the base was not properly done: too thin paper and too random the system they assembled the units.

So with some encouragement, they restarted again from zero with the complete understanding of the nature of their structure. Finally before Friday 24th, noon, they reached 140 cm height.. bravissimo!

This is how it looks at the final photo shots. Not bad at all. :-) You finally made it.

GROUP 3: Alice Barki, Elis Bonini & Giuseppe Abrescia

They began with a serie of square unit form, but did not like it and shifted to explore more the interlocking technique.

It is finally developed into a david star shape unit composed with two triangle sections together.

Then they began to pile the units together without any glue or staple. It was the moment of realization that although the unit is very simple, the way to put on layer on another required a deep understanding of a complex geometry.. But they did not give up, they kept trying and making more units.

Then when they began to pile the units on the floor, the problems were more visible: since each layer has to shift from the lower one 1/3 always, they wall was leaning out and could not stay... they were trying and trying.. but never gave up. Super strong group spirit indeed. (although you can see that Giuseppe was a bit desperated here :)...)

Finally with some discussions with their classmates from other groups, they were able to find the proper solution. (an ideal design studio learning indeed) Although it was a bit against their principle not to use glue or staple.. to make that high wall, it is too risky, I suggested. Basically they attached three units into one with staple, so they are stronger and allowed to be piled up in different way.

Finally they made about 600 units, 1200 triangle sections... :O and this was how they put the units up together.

The finaly wall, somthing really to be proud of!

Very nice lighting effect too.

GROUP 4: Carla Brandimarti, Alma Bercolo, Nirmala Caldana & Maria Airoldi

The group of 4 super girls ;-). They began with the very simple unit of the fold to make a game (I don't know how to call this in English, but you should understand easily from the pictures).

The first problem was how to put them over, they found out shortly. Then they just put one layer on the top of another..

They have this idea to color the outer wing of each unit by the hole maker for office file.. and then put a translucent color paper on the other side. So that when light gets through these holes, they would be colored. Well, it was a bit too much work, making these holes..I believe. :-)

They just kept folding and piling the units up.. higher and higher.. there were few moments that the wall collapsed, but they just redid again.. and again..

You can see how high it is .... they are very good indeed.

The actually made two walls, so they could lean a bit on each other... This is with the light...very nice too.

GROUP 5: Alejandro Angelica, Gaia Bottari, Cinzia Bruzzo & Sabrina Benhassen

The group developed this idea from triangle unit form from the very beginning.

Finally they found the way to connect them 3-dimensionally - basically it is two layers of triangle units connected upside down, each unit is folded in the middle so that it could stand... it became a very nice wall.. so they began to fold, fold and fold... so many units.

The wall grew higher, higher and higher...

As usual, when it reached a certain height, the wall began to bend.. they tried to fix the base of the wall, still it was too weak and finally was on the floor. This was very nice learning experience..

They began again with a double layer of paper to make the units on the base..the found the problems and finally the solutions...

This is how the wall finally looks.. very nice..lighting effects too. They named the wall "Butterfly Effects".

Different lights...

GROUP 6: Emanuela Abbruzza, Luca Arosio, Giulia Arlant & Paola Aversa

The group began with a stripe sheet that curved by stick penetraing between two..

Then they realized that the stick was too complicated an unnecessary, while piling up the layers.. on the top of each other.

So they restarted with a new way to curve and put them together. Basically their unit has no fix form, just a fix rule that the stripes have to be curved also in several layers looking from the top view.

This fix rule but lose form allowed them to work freely... I really like the structure - very simple, very intuitive. They also wanted to put some color papers...

Each layer stay on the top of the lower one by cutting a bit the lower one to make it stay fixed. They seemed to enjoy workin pretty much too..

Here they are.. finally the wall has this free-form quality... very interesting indeed.

When it got some lights on.. the shadows are also interesting..

Finally they all made a presentation at the main auditorium of the school with all the design students from all classes and many professors - the first presentation in their design student life.... not bad at all.

In the evening.. after everybody left.. they walls were still there.. in the room. :-) The result of our one-week hard working.. Thanks a lot also for all the students for working this hard. As a first project of their design school, I was very impressed. :-) Also wish you the best strength for the next three years.

Actually there were also many interesting projects of the other workshops, you can check them out from NABA Design homepage.

For some days, NABA used images from our workshop as the first page of the school website:

The students were very happy. :-) congratulations guys!

38 all(zone) in Specchio

2008-10-08T23:36:00.004+07:00

Last week of August, Specchio, a monthly Friday supplement on design, creativity & innovation of La Stampa - one of the most influential newspapers in Italy - was on The Newest Asian Architecture and City. Here is the cover of the magazine.

Among 16 architects from 4 cities (Tokyo, Beijing, Seoul and Bangkok), one page each, all(zone) is selected to be one of them. :-) Here is our page. Of course, we are very happy.

(Just a little bit curious that our portrait is as big as our work! Thanks a lot for Beau who did the shooting for us, if you want to see more of our portrait shot by Beau here is the LINK.)

The other three architects from Bangkok/Thailand in this issue are EAST Architects, Aroon Puritat (whom I wrote in this blog last year here) and Pakorn Mahapant, a long time friend of mine (from junior high school who happened to be an architect as well..) His work is also very nice. This is his page: a spa in SALA Resort in Phuket.

Besides featuring our work, I was asked to write a short essay on Bangkok's architecture and city. Thanks a lot for the invitation from Lucia Tozzi who was in charge of the issue. :-) The cover story page is an image of Bangkok taken by myself last year, when I happened to be in the parking lot of Pantip Plaza, the front side and the back side of Bangkok could be seen as a collage here...

Although very short, we are very happy to be part of the nice magazine/production. Hope to see more works of other young architects from Thailand and other Asian countries again very soon.... (Young man goes East..) :-)

37 Cyprus on PhiPhi ( an Island on an Island)

2008-09-11T23:07:00.014+07:00

Last July we were back again to Phi Phi Island. This time was to work on the construction site with my students. (If you want to follow our progress on the project, HERE it is.)

On the last day of the trip, the free day for all, instead of swimming in the deep blue sea on the extra white sand beach, we, architects, were working on a competition!

Well, don't think that we are that serious or nerdy kind of people.. in fact it is rather the opposite. :-) There was a super strong reason why we were doing this competition in such a seaside paradise of Phi Phi island. The competition is organized by Cyprus Architecture Associtation, in occassion of Cyprus' participation to Venice Biennale of Architecture this year. (For those who are not familiar with Cyprus, it is an island in Mediteranean Sea, between Greece and Turkey --> more info HERE). A part of Cyprus' participation to Venice Biennale of Architecture this year is this competition, asking for a architectural idea for Cyprus as a touristic island of the mediteranean under the theme "In Cyprus–relax as Architects - Reinterpret"

Since we were in the extreme relaxation mood, and of course, we all are an architect, we had to do this particular competition, everything matched perfectly! Here we were working on the beach, a new experience of design... by the sea, with the winds and sands.. not bad at all. With our laptops & wi-fi, we discovered that working on the beach is not really a bad a idea. We set our portable office there for one day.

Not really a bad place to work at all... no? After working we also went swimming... What a life!

Our schematic design on the beach! Lovely, isn't it?

By the beach we were discussing and thinking about the competition, there was a wedding ceremony of a Westerner couple at Zevola Resort... which was very inspiring for us.

As you might have seen already from the result that we did not win the competition. However, we love our entries pretty much because we were super enjoying working on the beach and we love the very simple but cute ideas of ours. :-) So we would like to share them with you.

Our first proposal is called "How Deep is Your Love", of course it is from the super famous song of Bee Gees. Here is our plate:

Imagine Cyprus as an Island of Love.. When you arrive Cyprus from an airplane, the first image you see is hundreds of small heart-shape islands around the main island. It may sounds literal, well it does sound very literal, but in the world of relaxation, who cares about being intellectual, we think...It could be an image that Cyprus could sell themselves very well alll over the world, as the Island of Love.

The different size heart-shape islands are actually extensions of the beach surface of Cyprus on the rocky shores. The construction is very simple, they are merely a raft structure...a platform on the water next to the shore.

Different kinds of activities related to LOVE and relaxation could be housed there at the floating structures such as a wedding.... Imagine a wedding "at the bottom of my heart"...:-)

Private beach surface relaxation..

Or the small heart-shape island welcome also elderly.. who come for their XXth anniversary.. isn't it so romantic? :-)

The second idea we got was also very simple. It is called Cyprus Cafe' but we gave a nickname to it as "Sway with me, Stay with me".. (Again this one is from the song, "Sway", I know the version of Dean Martin, an old one, and a newer version from Michael Buble.) The lyrics are very super romantic:

When marimba rhythms start to play
Dance with me, make me sway
Like a lazy ocean hugs the shore
Hold me close, sway me more

Like a flower bending in the breeze
Bend with me, sway with ease
When we dance you have a way with me
Stay with me, sway with me

Other dancers may be on the floor
Dear, but my eyes will see only you
Only you have that magic technique
When we sway I go weak

I can hear the sounds of violins
Long before it begins
Make me thrill as only you know how
Sway me smooth, sway me now....
...........................

The main reason we use the word 'sway' is because we think of a little sway act as a supreme ideal of relaxation.. Again, imagine you are on the beach, in a hammock, a little sway here and there, with the sun, the sand , the winds, not to mention the sounds of the waves..a good book, and good foods... in life you would not need more.

Our idea is to have this a hammock cafe', a place where you can do a little relaxing sway, anywhere in Cyprus. (Actually, I got this idea of hammock cafe' in a rural area of Vietnam where people go to a coffee shop where they have many hammocks hung around for the customers..) But how to hang a hammock anywhere in Cyprus is not an easy task too. So we invented this simple device to help placing hammocks anywhere in Cyprus. It is a plastic tank with a form of six legs (I am sure there is a word for this shape in English.. but I don't know). With the form you can have a stable anchor in any ground condition. The plastic is so light that you can carry very easily, but when you want to it to become an anchor, just put some water in. ...... so simple, so light... (light techtonic is always our theme..)

Here we go: the set up of our hammock cafe' in different situation of Cyprus. On the beach...

In a beautiful open field..

Or even in an acheological site...well, we know that this one is a bit outragous.. but it would be nice to be in a very relaxing mood in an archeological site too..

Our first experiment of all(zone) portable office worked pretty well on Phi Phi Island (the theme of Cyprus went very well with the setting too). Although we did not win the competition, we are very happy to make them already. Hope you like them too. :-)

36 Hong Kong: the super surface

2008-07-27T16:50:00.007+07:00

Last month, I had a chance to be in Hong Kong for a few days with my family - purely fat (a lot of superb Chinese foods) & fun (a lot of shoppings), well nowhere else can offer you the two as much as Hong Kong does? :-O

Although this is not my first time in Hong Kong, I just noticed some cute aspects of the city. The cutest one to me is the all-over-cover-with-tiles surface. Starting from my first glance at a subway station here. Look at the super surface cover with red mosaic. A deep bow. :-)

My next stop is this small resturant in Kowloon (the other island of Hong Kong), called Mido Cafe' on Temple Street. It has been running since the 60s, and more or less the interior is still the same since then. Somehow it has this little flavor of being in the moive 2046 - of course not the furturism part of the train with Kimura Takuya. The surface of the walls is covered with several kinds of tiles.. various shapes, forms and colors... very cute indeed. The corner detail with vertical light blue tiles is very nice. Really love it. Not to mention that the food is cheap and good!

My interest in the super tile surface was brought to the peak when arrived to Repluse Bay. It is actually an up scale residential with small beaches, very nice scenery. This particular beach has a lifeguard clubhouse built in traditional Chinese style decorating in very Barouque manner. There are two gigantic statues of Kwun Yum and Tin Hau, the protectors of fishermen. Also there is this picturesque garden with many statues of Chinese symbols - I have really no idea what they are and mean.

Every surface I could lay my eyes on is covered with small mosaic tiles... regardless of shape, form and color of the surface. Very impressive.

Even the very figurative statues, they are all covered with the tiles...

Not to mention the dragon...

Super modern Chinese to me... the surface is durable, no-fading colors, easy to clean.. what a practical mind........ VIVA CINA!

By the way, I have to thank Green a cute landscape architect, our Sora's good friend, who was a magnificant guide in Hong Kong - Thanks a lot ja.

35 allzone goes Bangkok Post

2008-06-12T23:26:00.007+07:00

The project of Baan Leam Tong International Community Resource Center at the northest tip of Phi Phi Island in the south of Thailand is just published the whole page in Bangkok Post two days ago (10 June, 2008)! It is the project that we have been working with my students in Chulalongkorn University since last year. Of course, we all are very happy!

If you regularly read our blog, you might have remembered that last year, allzone all went to Phi Phi island to support the workshop of design the building --->here is the ARCHIVE. After about a year, the project began its construction along with fund raising process supported by Regent International School. Next months, we will go back again to physically working on the building site of the project with my students.

Also if you want to learn more about the development of this project here is the LINK to the blog of the project.

34 The Four Salvaged Boxes of wHY Architecture

2008-05-24T22:29:00.016+07:00

This year for the annual exposition of architecture of The Association of Siamese Architects (ASA), Architect'08, I helped to organized International Forum, inviting many architects from aboard to give a lecture. One of the architects I invited is Kulapat Yantrasast of wHY Architecture from LA.

Kulapat is a very good friend of mine and my 'Sempai' (in Japanese means a senior): we went to the same schools both Chulalongkorn Universtiy and The University of Tokyo, although we never exactly crossed each other in both places. We got to worked together in 1996 when we did a lot of academic events together, Bangkok in Two Weeks workshop and the series of Toyo Ito events.

After finishing his Ph.D. from The University of Tokyo, he worked for Tadao Ando for several years. He was responsible for all the works of Ando outside Japan, including the art museum in Fortworth, Texas and Armani Theater in Milan. Four years ago, he set up his own office in Los Angeles called wHY Architecture, with his partner, Yo Hakomori. Last year, wHY Architecture just completed a major work, Grand Rapid Art Museum in Michigan, which is the first art museum in the world to receive LEED certificate.

This is the Grand Rapid Art Museum.

This is another work of Kulapat as a solo architect, a small house in Osaka.

Apart from giving a lecture, Kulapat proposed an exhibition to come along with him to be at Architect'08 Exposition. The exhibition 4 Salaged Boxes is about the works of wHY Architecture, and mainly the Grand Rapid Museum. It is composed of 4 boxes that could be closed, sent, and opened as a travelling exhibition. In each box, it contains a lot of information, models, medias and so on. Very rich and exciting. You can find more details about the exhibition at its website.

We, allzone, helped to cooridinate the installation, led by our Sorawit who went for two weeks to the US. to packed the exhibition from the first preview at Grand Rapid Art Museum. Also we got a (physically) strong team of 7 students of mine, helping to install very complex and delicate exhibition. Thanks a lot guys!

Here Kulapat is giving a brief on the preparation day at allzone headquater before the installation at Architect'08 venue at Challenger Hall, Muangthong Thani.

At the venue, the first box arrives...

Opening one of the boxes..

At the site, Sorawit was in chagred all along with Megan Lin from wHY Architecture. Kulapat was also with us.

Sorawit and Megan were fixing one of millions details..

There were also many small study models.... The kids were also good at fixing them.

Namkhang was in charge of our well being, F&B. :-) We also had very good time, a little party here and there during the installation.

You might have thought that they (Sorawit, Namkhang and Megan) were seriously discussing some details of the exhibition, in fact, NINTENDO DS was the case.. it was during our short break moment.

There we go.. The exhibition was very successful. A lot of people visited. We were very happy for Kulapat :-) indeed.

The exhibition remained at Architect'08 event during 29 April - 4 May. Then it was moved to TCDC (Thailand Creative & Design Center). Thanks to TCDC for the support, especially Khun Kittirattana and all his team - you were great!

Again, our team installed everything at TCDC. This time was much quicker since we have learned. :-) Pan and Namkhang (and I) mostly just watched, while our 7 strong men were working hard.

This is how it looks at TCDC. It is much better because of a very nice lighting system they have there.

Also we have to give the whole credit for the lighting to my beloved Kohai (junior) Kris Manopimok of LD49, who helped setting up the whole lighting at TCDC. He is very professional indeed.

At TCDC Kulapat also gave a lecture, more or less similar to the one he did at Architect'08 International Forum. Apart from showing his works with wHY Architecture, another interesting issue he raised is the idea of being Thai. He uses an anlogy of architecture and food, wondering that how come Thai food is well-known all over the world, but not Thai architecture. Aslo he pointed out that Thai food is such a cross breeding of Indian and Chinese ones.

To follow his points about architecture in Thailand, after the lecture, Kulapat proposed a discuss / Q/A session, which he was acting as a moderator. Along with Noppadon from Design Lab and Kittiratana of TCDC, I was invited to be one of Kulapat's interviewees. It was fun..I hope we have shared some views on design and architecture situation in Thailand so far.

It was another successful event, a lot of people were there. I really hope Kulapat would be a very good example and inspiration for our kids in design schools here. The exhibition at TCDC is during 8 May - 8 June. So if you have not yet seen it, you still have some time left. Be hurry before it will be shipped to India next month. :-)

33 Bird's Condo (คอนโดนกนางแอ่น)

2008-04-04T01:10:00.021+07:00

Last February, because of a family matter, I had to go down south of Thailand, Nakorn Sri Thammarat where the hometown of my father is. Every year, my family goes to make a small ceremony for our grand parents at the main temple of the city - Wat Prasrirattana Mahatat. But originally my father is from a small town, 20 km.s from the city, called Pak Phanang. It used to be one of the most prosperous places in Thailand, because of rice cultivation.

I did not visit Pak Phanang for more than 10 years. This time I had a chance to be there for one afternoon to visit some relatives. Surprisingly the whole city is completely transformed into a city of 'Bird's Condo' (Bird's Condominium). :O Here are some of the 'condos'.

For those who are not used to Chinese cusine, bird's nest soup is a delicacy in Chinese cuisine. A few species of swift, the cave swifts, are renowned for building the saliva nests used to produce the unique texture of this soup. The edible bird's nests are among the most expensive animal products consumed by humans. The nests have been traditionally used in Chinese cooking for over 400 years, most often as bird's nest soup. (Thanks to the information and images of bird's nest from www.wikipedia.com).

This is the soup and the dry bird's nest before cooking.

The bird's nest package selling in a shop. You can see from the price tag how expensive it is. A bowl of Bird Nest Soup would cost US$10 to $100 in Chinatown Bangkok. A kilogram of white nest can cost up to $2,000, and a kilogram of “red blood” nest can cost up to $US 10,000.

There is another modern version of bird's nest consumption. Brand's health products offer several kinds of ready-to-eat bird's nest in a small bottle. It is one of the most successful health products in Thailand. People would associate with a traditional Chinese medicine.

Here is the nest with the swifts.

Usually the swifts would make their nests in the high cave, oftenly on remote islands, which is very dangerous to harvest. To get the right to harvest bird's nest is very competitive. The overall system of harvesting the bird's nest is extremely complicated and required even a bunch of security guards to keep the nest from theives. The nest is so expensive that sometimes it is called 'the titanium of the sea'. :O

Since in the past 20 years, the consumption of the bird's nest has gone sky rocketing. There are 'artificial' bird's caves or bird's houses attracting the swifts to live there... In the case of Pak Phanang, where I visited, according to my cousin who is the local there, some years ago, swifts began to live in an old house in the town, finally the the owner left the house for the swifts and collected the nests as their main income - of course, they became rich. Since then, people in Pak Phanang believe that their town is perhaps the place where the swifts like, many of them invested in building or transforming their house into the bird's condo. As you can see here, the few lower floors are where people live, while the upper, the birds do.

Usually the birds do not like too much sunlight, so there is almost no openning on the wall of the buildings... The birds would get in from above.

I tried to get inside one of the condos to take some pictures, but it was prohibited. Because the birds are very sensitive to strangers, they might move their whole inhabitant if they smell strangers... But according to my cousin, again, inside these buildings are very dark and humid, like a high cave. The whole 5-6 storey space are more or less empty without any floor, there are some wooden structure similar to scaffolding system where the birds could lay their nests on. The sound is also very important element to attract the swifts, usually they would install an sound system that supposed to call the birds in.

Some of them look like an apartment housing. :O Imagine.. the whole city is full of these buildings....

This gigantic one, very rough, very Ando's like.

There are various forms and styles of these bird's condo. Some are very simple, some are highly decorative.

This one is next to Pak Phanang river and market. Very decorative one.

The left image is the one I like the most. It is very simple and clean building, with small ornaments of three flying horses at the corner. The right image shows the very simple details of small holes for ventilations of the condo by very common blue plastic pipe.

Another one across the river of Pak Phanang.. they are all over the place...

At the market, I found this shop, a kind of bird's nest center. On the glass wall, it is written that this Pak Phanang Bird's Nest shop buys and sells bird's nest, offers a design and build service of bird's condo, installs the sound system and everything related to bird's nest business. A little remark here that the overall atmosphere and decoration of the shop is pretty much similar to a gold shop... perhaps the bird's nest is even more expensive than gold. :O

According to my cousin, the local, again, there are around 200-300 bird's condo around the town of Pak Phanang. The building costs between 2-3 millions Bahts (60,000-10,000 $US) to 10-15 millions Bahts (300,000-500,000 $US). However, only 10% of them are inhabited by the swifts. The rest are trying hard to attrack the birds... Maybe this is the time when architects should step in --> how to transform the uninhabitated bird's condo into something else. How can we imagine that Chinese cusine delicacy would cause such a problem? Shall we do a workshop? :)

32 The Valentine's Day @ all(zone)

2008-02-14T18:01:00.008+07:00

For the Valentine's Season this week, we allzoners, celebrated the week of love by setting up a small installation at our storefront - next to one of the world most renown traffic jam spots of Bangkok.

We got a generous support from Speedy Print printing really a lot of copy of the Valentine Card for us. Now, perhaps, many of you already received the cards we sent out since last week as our Love Greetings :)

After sending thousands of them to you all, we still have many thousands of them left. The installation began here with our little experiments.

Luckily, Doy (Thandon, one of our close gang) who just got back from working in Hong Kong and came by to visit us, also helped a lot with the experiment here. Thanks a lot ka Doy.

After several tries and errors we were able to set up a folding paper wall installtion for the thousands left over cards. The curvy form makes it stay without any additional structure... :) This is how it looks from outside.

From the inside, our meeting room...You can see it is quite curvy in all directions... Looks like Gehry's building :D

The effects of the light getting through the panel is quite nice.. We are thinking about developing it into a skin of a building - another fragile tectonic scheme.

A little rose in a little vase as a symbol of our LOVE.

Yes..... love me, love my works... or you can even... hate me, but love my works! Happy the Valentine's to all.

31 Ettore Sottsass and THE VALENTINE

2008-01-31T20:50:00.002+07:00

Interview with Ettore Sottsass
Matteo Pastore asks Ettore Sottsass about his life through travelling the world.

Thursday February 3rd 2000, Milan

In December we were invited in Thailand to take part in a workshop titled “City of Water”; we were one of many groups from all over the world. The aim of the workshop was to make projects along the river.In the first week at Chulalongkorn University in Bangkok we developed the projects from the original idea to the construction with the help from the students of the faculty.After this we left Bangkok on the boats leading North along the Chao Phraya river; five days and four stops where, every evening, we built a kind of city made up of our installations. “Moving Architecture, a special issue of art4d will be a sum-up of “City of Water” but enriched with different contributions. Your experience seemed to us perfect for this particular issue…

E.S.: but did you do this for yourselves or for an audience?

It was thought for an audience, always different according to the situation. For example the first evening we arrived in Ayuthaya quite late and we were alone…

E.S.: you know, my experiences are naturally of a completely different kind. I mean, I travelled, I looked around and I tried to eat well, if possible. One day I was in the square in Bangkok and I was gazing at the market, which is one of the most beautiful things in the world – full of orchids, roses, fruits I didn’t even know the name of – and we hear ratatatatrr… and we see that all the people from the stalls slowly start to pack up their things and to go away… at a certain point I asked one of these guys “what is happening here?” and he says “there is a state coup”. So we ran to the hotel, where we were blocked in for two days because of the state coup, and then the Generals reached an agreement with the others. What I want to say is that I have always had experiences from the outside towards me, I never took part, as you have done, physically to modify or understand the place better.

And the experience of Metaphors? That is to synthetically build in places…

E.S.: ..yes, yes, that one I did in Spain but not in such a far away and exotic place. Those days I would never even have thought of doing things like this.
It has passed to you…

They seem comparable experiences. You went to the desert and what did you think about doing? The airport for ants.

E.S.: yes of course, that’s why I asked what you did. I can never understand these operations, in general, in contemporary art without –how to say– a title, without a scope. Because my metaphors were called Metaphors, they had a title; I mean the one of the animals was to say that contemporary production produces for us a load of things which we don’t need – as the ants don’t need a motorway for the ants, or we don’t need a TV for moths. They always had some kind of ethical or political starting point, or whatever you want to call it.

In our case the starting point, with some kind of freedom, was for all the groups the theme of water and the river. The common ground was the confrontation with the landscape around us and the people we met along the way; investigating the sensibility of people, of very different situations – at some point we also experienced situations on the verge of folklore.

E.S.: I think it is very important that you experienced this situation especially for yourselves. For you, because you have experimented this nomadism; I mean, the truck that arrived in places at night, by day, dismantle in an unknown place – I think it’s an experience that gives existence a structure, to you especially.

I will tell you a story, on this river (Chao Phraya): one day they took us to have lunch in a restaurant on the river shore with one of those long boats with the long engine behind. It was awfully hot and heat for me is like a drug, it excites me. They brought us a kind of boiling hot samovar, boiling water with fish inside it, vapours, wine or alcohol. I don’t know what it was, but instead of bringing cold stuff with ice, like the Americans would have done, they brought steaming stuff. I was so happy to have eaten boiling hot stuff, with lots of spice; in a state of total ecstasy to the point that on the way back, on the boat down the river, I said to Barbara [Radice – one of his lifetime girlfriends] “I want to commit suicide right now!”. She says “why?” – “because I will never be as happy as this moment”.

I want to say that the contact with the surrounding world – with this novelty of strong heat, the exoticness of the tropical landscape, the unexpected food, the silences, the noises, the different smells and scents – made me feel, through a form of yoga, abandoning every conceptualism, for a moment in a state of total ecstasy, bliss. Nothing really mattered and everything mattered in the same moment. It was a non-conceptual event, a completely physical event, like yoga, through which you reach a state of total blessing.

All the experiences I’ve had in general in the Far East are experiences of this kind, that is experiences of ecstasy. Already the unexpected, unusual, environment, like Indian architecture or this picture of Ayuthaya – they are so unexpected and strong that all the idea we have of architecture, when you get there, it falls apart in many pieces and it leaves another one. You end up with an Architecture that has an origin of, how to say… of spiritual exaltation.

So when I read that you wanted to do this journey I really thought that, more than a conceptual experience, you wanted to have a kind of more physical experience; because these places are physically different from ours: the scents, the food, the heats, the waters.

30 Golden Mountain Temple Fair : งานวัดภูเขาทอง

2007-12-27T21:16:00.001+07:00

Last month (November 2007) allzoners went to a temple fair. It was the most famous temple fair in Bangkok at Wat Sakate or Golden Mountain Temple. Usually it would be around Loy Kra Tong Festival in late November. It has been a long time since the last time I visited a temple fair, perhaps more than 10 years...quite excited.

It was a Friday night... extremely crowded that I thought I would be stuck there forever... since there were moments that we could not move at all within the crowd!

Thanks to Narin, Siwat and Tom, my students who guided as around there.. Narin lives nearby, so he went to the fair everyday - man, you were so addictted. Here he is enjoying the food, walking around the fair.

I was impressed by the amount and the kind of goods there sold at the fair... as well as the way they were displayed. Not to mention the colors , my goodness...

My favourite plastic shoes - the goods of the 21st century!

Some unknown substance, supposedly it is an artificial earth which could be use to plant things...:O super artificially colorful.

The light was also another striking feature.. always fluorescent... - very strong indeed.

The most impressive feature to me was all these little game tents sep up by light panels of textiles, with several textures and colors. :) super light architecture. The color combination is very Thai to me too.

Also a wall made out of colorful balloons! isn't it very cool?

Well, next year.. we will all go again, but perhaps not on Friday. :)

29 million tiles away: เพชรล้านแผ่น

2007-11-14T00:48:00.001+07:00

Million Tiles Away is the latest experimental project of all(zone). Two months ago I was contacted from Worapan (a long time architect friend) and asked to pariticipate in the invitation to design a project for Diamond Roofing Tiles Company which is launching a new product, Jearanai Tile. It is a tile that is diamond shape - similar to traditional Thai roof tile, but bigger, with rather light weight.

The company invited 10 architects from several background and generations, from very old in their 70s, and the youngest is us in our 30s and 20s. :) They name us as 'Ultra Modern Architect'. We don't really know what is means, and feel as if we are almost the Ultra Man :O.

Because the tiles are rather lightweight and the size of each is quite big (80 cm. wide) we want to explore them not only as a roofing material but a wall as well. That means, it is the main building material of the project and we have to use it A LOT. This is why we have to use "million" of them - "Million Tiles Away". The building is just to create a shading space with very open ventilation responding to the tropical climate without any need of air-conditioning system. Very light architecture, almost without a wall.

This is what we write as an official concept published in the booklet of the event:

เพขรล้านแผ่น (million tiles away) เป็นอาคารต้นแบบ (prototype) ที่อ้างอิงกับสถาปัตยกรรมพื้นถิ่น ซื่งมีลักษณะเป็นโถงโล่ง ผสมกับศาลา ซึ่งสามารถปรับเปลี่ยนพื้นที่การใช้สอยได้ตามความต้องการ เป็นการตอบสนองต่อสังคมร่วมสมัยที่เปลี่ยนแปลงอย่างรวดเร็ว และยังสามารถปรับเปลี่ยนสีสรร และลวดลายของกระเบื้องหลังคา เพื่อให้สือสารถึงประโยชน์ใช้สอยที่ต่างกันด้วย ตัวอาคารเป็นอาคารเปิดโล่ง ไม่ติดเครื่องปรับอากาศ โดยใช้กระเบือ้งเจียรไนเป็นทั้งหลังคาและผนัง เนื่องจากกระเบื้องเจียรไนตราเพขร เป็นกระเบื้องมุงหลังคาที่มีน้ำหนักเบา นอกจากใช้ในการมุงหลังคาแล้ว สามารถนำมาใช้กับผนังของอาคารได้ เป็นผนังขนิดผนังเบา ซื่งเหมาะสมกับกับลักษณะภูมิอากาศโดยทั่วไปชองเขตร้อนชื้นอย่างประเทศไทย โดยนำแผ่นกระเบื่้องมาเรียงกันตามขนาดแปที่ต่างจากมาตฐาน และ ตัดกระเบื้องออกบางส่วนเป็นขนาดต่างๆ กัน เพื่อให้เกิดช่องแสงบนผนังได้ อาคารต้นแบบนี้สามารถนำไปประยุกต์ใช้ได้ในพื้นที่ต่างๆ กัน ต่างวาระ ต่างเวลา

" Million Tiles Away is a building prototype refers to vernacular Thai Architecture – the open hall and sala. It is flexible enough to adapt with different functions that reflex our ever-changing contemporary world. The exterior tiles’ pattern of the building could be also changed to communicate different programs of the building. The building requires no air-conditioning system because of its ‘open’ nature which allows natural ventilation. Jeeranai Tiles are used for both the roof and the wall. Because of it light-weight nature, Jeeranai tils, could be simply adapted as a wall of the building that responses to the tropical climate. The tiles are assembled as a wall with small cut on the tiles to create small voids for the light to get through. The prototype can be applied to anywhere, anytime, any event."

We make small cuts on each tile that use as wall covering to get lights and ventilations through. The light effect is similar to traditional Thai temple - rather dark space that is lit up by small openning on the walls. We also change the overlapping space between each tile on the wall to get gradual sizes of the little holes.

The technical drawings of the project. The main structure could be a rigid frame made our of metal that could be also assembled in pre-fabricated system. It should be simple and easy to build.

We try to come up with how to be 'Ultra Modern' . The idea could be developed from being Modern (standardization, mechanization, universality) to being Postmodern (contexualism, identity, communication) .. that being 'Ultra Modern' could be the attempt to established some kind of 'identity' within a standard system. We think of a product such as Swatch or Converse that have several variations in one form.

สถาปัตยกรรมสมัยใหม่ (Modern Architecture) เป็นสถาปัตยกรรมที่มีแบบแผนชัดเจน ในเรื่องของภาษา ประโยชน์ใช้สอย และสถาปนิกเป็นผู้กำหนดทุกสิ่งทุกอย่างในสถาปัตยกรรม โดยผู้ใช้อาคารมีบทบาทเพียงน้อยนิด ในขณะที่สถาปัตยกรรมหลังสมัยใหม่ (Post Modern Architecture) เพิ่มเติมในเรื่องของการสื่อสารและบริบทรอบๆ สถาปัตยกรรม เพื่อให้ผู้ใช้สถาปัตยกรรมมีส่วนร่วมกับสถาปัตยกรรมมากขึ้น สถาปัตยกรรมร่วมสมัยที่อยู่ในสังคม ที่เปลี่ยนแปลงอย่างรวดเร็วของโลกาภิวัฒน์ ที่ผู้คนแสวงหาลักษณะเฉพาะตัว ในระบบที่สร้างแบบแผนที่เหมือนๆ กัน น่าเป็นสถาปัตยกรรมที่เปิดโอกาสให้ผู้ใช้สถาปัตยกรรมได้มีส่วนร่วม ในการปรับเปลี่ยนส่วนต่างๆ ของอาคาร ไม่ว่าจะเป็นประโยชน์ใช้สอย หรือรูปลักษณ๋ของอาคาร โดยสถาปนิก เป็นผู้กำหนดเค้าโครงระบบอาคารและทางเลือก เพื่อให้เกิดการปรับเปลี่ยนที่เหมาะสมกับสถานการณ์หนึ่งๆ ได้อย่างเหมาะสมที่สุดเช่นเดียวกันกับ ผลิตภัณท์ร่วมสมัยรอบตัว นอกจากนี้สถาปัตยกรรมในบริบทของโลกร่วมสมัย เช่นนี้ ควรจะคำนึงถึงปัญหาของโลกร่วมสมัย เช่นปัญหาการขาดแคลนพลังงาน ปัญหาโลกร้อน สถาปัตยกรรมที่นำเสนอในแนวทางนี้อาจจะถูกเรียกได้ว่าเป็น สถาปัตยกรรมเหนือสมัยใหม่ (Ultra Modern)

The building is a prototype that can be transformed into several functions - temple, auditorium, exhibition hall, fashion catwalk and etc.

With different fuctions, the color and the pattern of the roof tiles could be changed upon its function or preference of the owner. Also because the product offers several colors, we want to use them all! Here are some possible senarios of the project in Thai context:

Thai Pavillion @ Expo

A building for our Military government (คมช.)

A modern temple

A building to congratulation our beloved King, 80th years old birthday. Of couse yellow is the auspicious color of the event because he was born on Monday.

A catwalk shelter for Fashion Week. (Unfortunately we no longer have Bangkok Fashion City).

Red Cross Shelter.

Some possible interior in different senarios.

We also have to submit the model of the project and several presentation plates. Thanks to Zing and Benz (my students who already became semi-allzoners). They spend their Fall break working on the model and the plates. Good job guys!

The 'Diamond' model :)

Today the company organized an event to officially launch the product. We presented our project along with the other 9 architects. Great fun. Really hope that someone like it so that we could have a chance to get it built :O.

28 allzone @ Bangkok Design Festival

2007-10-31T23:05:00.001+07:00

Octorber became a crazy month here in Bangkok, especially if you are a designer. Beginning this year, Bangkok Design Festival, is a series of design events to create a kind of regular happening in Bangkok.. (like those in Milan's Salone del Mobile, London's 100% Design and so on) The key person here is Pratarn Teeratada of art4d magazine.

The events are several... on all design aspects from very commercial (Bangkok International Gift Fare - BIG) to very experiement (Consumptions R Us design workshop on health y consumption)

Among the events, allzone organized a small cute event at our allzone convention space.. allzone film session. T offered his beloved movie En Constuccion, a Spanish movie about a process of construction site that create people lives around... very nice and interesting...

T and Pirak, apart from being the technicians of the film session, they are the real energy of this Bangkok Design Festival main events.

Before filming....we tested the projector.

Of course, a lot of foods and drinks...

There were 7-8 guests besides our friends.. they were very nice and kind. Although we are 'professional' designers, we didn't know much about how to organize a perfect film show.. there were a lot of 'unprofessional' things.. But the guest were patient and enjoyed somehow...

Apart from the film session, in MINIMART project of art4d at Central World Plaza, which is a small shop where designers could send their products to be sold especiall during the week of Bangkok Design Festival, allzone made a small suitcase tag written " Good Design is Not Learned, It is realized" (we don't remember where we got this from, but it sounds cool) :) Because we are all world travellers, the tag would be very essential to our life..

Another thing at MINIMART is this 'superlover' limited edition T-shirt. Some years ago before allzone was set up, we worked as a group called 'superlover' (with Aum and T). Of course, we love the name so much. Unfortunately, many people misunderstood our business - they would ask if we make movies, magazine for adults :O. However, we love the concept of being 'superlover' because we love a lot... we make the simple T-shirt with cute phases "contemporary lover" (for generation Y lover), "hate me, love my works" (this one is for workaholic lover like us) and "love is more" (for radical modernist lover who certainly love the fat guy with a big cigar, Mies Van de Rohe).

Allzoners posted in superlover T-shirt.

Actually I personally did the other two events with Bangkok Design Festival: How to...Soup Exhibition and Consumption 'R Us workshop.

Finally Bangkok Design Festival is over... life is back to normal. Well sometimes it is not bad to be in peaceful moments...

27 Rirkrit's House in Chiangmai

2007-09-12T20:15:00.001+07:00

It was last Wednesday afternoon that Stefano and I had a chance to visit the newly built house of Rirkrit Tiravanija in Chiangmai through a very kind invitation of Aroon Puritat (a long time friend of mine and the architect of the house). For those who are not familiar with the name of Rirkrit, he is perhaps the most internationlly renown Thai artist. His works are very interesting and have a lot to do with architecture. As an architect, I am always amazed and impressed with the way he uses architecture as a tool to reflect and criticize...The first time I experienced his work was in 1997 at Museum of Modern Art (MoMA) in New York where he built a 1:2 model of the Glass House of Philip Johnson in the courtyard of MoMA which was also designed by Johnson himself. The dwarf Glass House was made to be a playroom of children.

Our excuse to visit Rirkrit's house here was also to interview him and feature the house for Abitare Magazine (one of the most interesting design magazines in Italy).
The interview took place in the kitchen with Aroon, very informal and relaxing atmosphere.

We also moved around the house to talk about the house, his works, his opinion about art, architecture and ..the world.

Rirkrit told us that the idea of the house is to have very simple concrete building, elevated from the ground - the least touch. The exisiting site has a lot of trees, they did not want to cut any of them. So the building is inserted in the site in a zigzaging manner among the trees around. The main space is this big, simple, rough but very strong courtyard of the house where the main activities (the kitchen, the library and the entrance). The veranda running around the courtyard, connecting everything around together is very crucial part here... Altogether, the space is very relaxing but strong... I believe that it is the first real 'contemporary' Thai house.

The entrance of the house is very nice.. rather high and rough concrete block wall inserted between the trees lead us to the main court yard of the house..

Because the idea of the building is really to have an actual contact with the site, especially the existing trees, the construction process is very important. The house began with some models and very rough drawings - without construction drawings. Aroon, the architects, spent more than two years on the site everyday supervising and designing along with the construction. Both Rirkrit and Aroon developed a very interestingly good relationship with the contractor who is from a far village of Chiangmai and his ten workers. You could feel from the existence of the house which carries some kind of spirit or touch of human - the one that you rarely find nowadays especially those buildings that come out from 'render farms'.

The other courtyard on the other side of the kitchen, on the left is the entrance of the house, on the right is the gardener's room.

The studio is another impressive space. A big volume with glass walls on two sides. What you see from inside is trees and tress around.

The kitchen. Rirkrit said that for him, kitchen is perhaps the most important part of the house along with the bathroom. His early works (also up until now) always deal with food and cooking.

From the kitchen, there is a stair leading to the upper level. For me here is the most impressive space... where you are surrounded by the trees. Rirkrit uses this space as his working space..

The upper level has also a small guest bedroom. Apart from that, there is only the flat roof of the lower level, which become a passage taking you around the house.

Some might be curious, if the flat slab concrete roof would be leaking. Rirkrit said, "well, if it leaks, let it leak. We will fix it, meanwhile we can always use a bucket". Aroon, the architect, even used prefabricated concrete slab to make it. He just told the contractor to put some more steel and poured another layer of concrete on the top.

The walls in between the bamboo confirm the idea of inserting the building among the trees.

The concrete walls...

So far, it is perhaps the most impressive house I have ever seen in Thailand. Very strong, very rich, very touching.. As an architect, I thank to Rirkrit, a client who is brave and cool enough to build such a house. Also as an architect, I thank Aroon, who proves that to be a good architect you don't need to be fancy, but you have to be patient, persistant, brave and strong. :) a deep bow of respect and congratulations.

If you wan to see the drawings of the house (it was done afterward, of course), get an issue of art4d, September 2007. Enjoy!

26 allzone Goes to Phi Phi

2007-08-07T23:54:00.001+07:00

It was perhaps our first trip altogether: allzone goes to Phi Phi Island.

The story is: early this year, I was contacted from Far Diow Foundation to design a small building in Baan Leam Tong School on Phi Phi Island. It is a learning center and small guestrooms for NGO staffs and tourists (who are willing to stay in the school and get mingled with the local more than a normal tourist). So the school can earn some money from the guestrooms. Also the learning center will offer professional trainings serving tourist industry for the villagers and the school students who cannot go for higher education in the main land.

First I thought to design this building within allzone office. But after discussing with Far Diow, we agreed that to involve my students would be more interesting because of more activities. The locals (especially kids) would have also a chance to expose to more 'normal' people, not only the tourists. (In this area of Phi Phi Island, most of the tourists are fancy tourists in 4-5 star resort hotel. Although the villagers are living next to these hotels, the contact is almost zero somehow). Although it is a lot more complex to do the project with my students, I also believe that it would be a good chance for my students to be in a real situation with several layers of problems. So the project is organized as a Design-Build Workshop Class for INDA (International Program in Design & Architecture) students. Some of the students from Thai program also wanted to participate as their Individual Study - altogether 24 of them. We had several lessons of lectures and discussions for about 2 months before going to Phi Phi Island during last 27 July-2 August. You can see our class documentation at Phi Phi Design Workshop Blog.

Anyway, at the end, allzone will have to be in charge for the more professional side of the project (which the students are not able to handle properly), I involved allzoners from the very beginning. I was in the workshop as a workshop leader/teacher, Nat was invited critic, Sora+Pan+Namkhang are my Teaching Assistants. :) Besides enjoying the sea, we all worked very hard!

The sea at Leam Tong private beach.

During the student presentations...:)

Nat also helped a lot during the workshop...

Sora, the TA..always stylish.

Pan was testing the one-to-one scale model of my students.. he looks like school kid rather than a university student.. :O But of course, he was popular among the school and students and my students!

Namkhang at the beach and in the class room during the presentation session - very serious taking note.

Enjoying the foods and the drinks (of course)...

Working working and working...

All the details of the workshop is HERE. Let's see how it would come out at the end. Hope the building will be a nice one. In the next two months we have to develope the 6 schematic designs and choose one to be built.