26 allzone Goes to Phi Phi

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.

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21 NABA: Nuova Accademia di Belli Arti Milano

The official reason for me to be in Italy during the first two weeks of May was to give a lecture at NABA: Nuova Accademia di Belli Arti Milano. It is a private, small, interesting design academy in Milan, in the area near Romolo station - quite nice. The school is located in the building compound where there is also an Italian language school. The school offers many interesting academic programs including exchange programs with design schools from all over the world. One of the most interesting features about the school is that all professors are part-time. They have a real design practice outside school. In this way, the students would gain a lot of benefits from professor's experience, worldview and connections. Here is the link--> www.naba.it

The school compound.

This is the exhibition of the students during Salone del Mobile in Milan (Milan Furniture Fair) 2007.

I was invited by Anna Barbara who is the director of Fashion & Textile program of the school. Actually Anna is an architect (also a very good friend of mine) who has been working on 'sense in architecture'. She just published a book "Invisible Architecture: Experiencing Places through the Sense of Smell" with Anthony Perliss by Skira Publishing House, in both English and Italian. Very interesting indeed. Domus Magazine (May 2007) just gave a very positive review on the book too.



The series of the lecture is called 'Mecoledi at NABA" (Wednesday at NABA. Every Wednesday they invite interesting people to give a lecture. I was there to give a lecture with Chi Ti Nan from Taiwan.


My lecture was on "Dressing the Environment". It was part of my research with the students in my Asian Architecture Class, "Fragile Wall", which is an investigation on non-permanent elements in Asian Architecture. In a way, textile or textile-like material is often used in this kind of creation of space / environment. It is not yet a very concrete theory on anything, it is more 'work-in-progress' investigation on the subject.

'Tung' decorations that signifies sacred space.

A life-extension ceremony in the north of Thailand, where sacred space is created through the grid of sacred ropes tied with a Buddha Image.


A Market in Taichung, Taiwan, with the movable textile roof - my favourite example!

A small tent for Prilgrim Buddhist Monks.

I also showed some of our design works, but some of you already knew.. so useless to show here.
Then Chi Ti-Nan gave a lecture on 'Micro-Urbanism'. It is his theory about urbanism in a small scale inspired also by the theory of Feng-Shui and I-Ching of Taoism applied with our contemporary city condition. He has been explored the theory through practice and workshops for some time. He has a very interesting website: http://www.microurbanism.net/

This is his Micro urbanism project in Istanbul. It is small square in the middle of downtown.

Chi's research on Nanging, China.


Our lecture ended in the heavy rains... Unbelievably heavy...At the end of the lecture I also met a Thai student who studying there. Very nice. But did not have a chance to talk much to him because people were waiting for us for a dinner. :(

Although altogether my lecture and Chi's lecture were a bit strange for those young Italian students, hope they got some idea/image of what is going on the other side of the world. Until next time. :)

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18 Yunnan: Lijiang - The Beautiful Rivers

My mother told me that all the Chinese always want to come to Lijiang once in their life, because of its famous beauty. (She is 100% Chinese born in Thailand, so we have some reasons to believe her.)







It is not so surprising that when some of the Chinese got richer (some of them is already a lot) they all head to Lijiang and transforท it into one of the most touristic cities in China (or in the universe). Especially after 1997 when Lijiang was announced to be UNESCO World Heritage, its fame got sky rocketing.





The small old city of Lijiang when we arrived on one evening was super crowded like a stadium when they have a big football match - very disappointing. It is very similar to Venice: very beautiful, very touristic. We had to wait until everything was closed down around 11 pm., when started to admire its real beauty - like Venice in winter.





The city of Lijiang is famous for its small rivers running around the city, where people used to live their life - bathing, washing, drinking. They have a common schedule of how to use the rivers, everybody has to use the rivers for the same thing at the same time. The city itself is situated on the hills between two mountains.





The cluster of the houses of in Lijiang are, of course, Chinese courtyard house typology, with some different decorations of Nanzi ethnic group who are the local. Some part of the old city became super touristic, while some part are still very quiet and people still live their more or less normal life with less disturbance from tourists. We also found a very cute guesthouse where I will surely stay if I visit Lijiang again.



Around Lijiang is also very beautiful natural scenery. We went to Jade Dragon Mountain (ภูเขามังกรหยก) and visited a Tibetian Buddhism Temple.



My students and a Tibetian little girl.



In the last morning there, we escaped from the charming old touristic city to see where the real people live in an open air market. Very nice and cute. Look at the simple rattan furniture!



A shop selling prefabriated doors and windows in the market.



The last thing got me impressed in Lijiang is the airport. It is not fancy or anything. But the airport has this smoking area as an outdoor space in the departure lounge. Even for a non-smoking person like me, compare to the smoking cage in Suvannabhumi airport, Lijiang Airport smoking space is a paradise. :)



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17 Yunnan: Dali - Xizhou

With this year's Asian Architecture Class Trip again, we headed for the Main Land China.
We did not aim to see the 'proper' China which is the north where the central government is situated. Rather, we went to Yunnan, the southern province next to Tibet, Burma, Laos, Vietnam, almost attached to Thailand.

The geography of Yunnan is mostly mountains with very fertilized land. People are several ethic groups including some of the hill tribes. They do agriculture on steps along the hills - very beautiful landscape all around. The most impressive thing to me is that, all the buildings, either big or small, rural or city, flat or mountain landscape, are built upon the same typology of Chinese Courtyard House. The typology of a house here is more or less the same as in Beijing, more than a thousand kilometers away. It seems to me that the successful 'centralized' system of Chinese culture works on every level.





Dali, the center of the old Nan Chao Empire (อาณาจักรน่านเจ้า) - a very might Empire long before the arrival of the Chinese central government, was our first stop. The city is situated in between gigantic mountains and a gigantic lake that created a super fertilized land. The new city is not so much different from any other Chinese going-to-be metropolis with super high-rise and traffic jam. While the old city is small and very cute. The main area of the old city is planned in grid system with the main axis of North/South where all the shops and important tourists spots are. To please tourists, mostly the Chinese themselves, the old city is decorated with super lighting at night - very Chinese indeed.





Dali's morning market. Life of the real people there are still very quite and peaceful.



Another super spot of Dali is the Buddhism Chong Sheng Monastery with the three pagodas (you will see its picture from every book of Chinese History of Architecture). It was built during Tang Period, around ca. 850. Another point I noticed here in Yunnan is that, there are still a lot religious places around. It is very different from Beijing or Shanghai where I hardly see any Buddhism temple or small shrine or any superstition signs or traces.... This Chong Sheng Temple seems to be still active as a religious institution too.



I also found a very nice book on History of Chinese Architecture here in Dali small bookstore. The book is a lifetime research of Prof. Liang Ssu-ch'eng - the first leading Chinese Architectural Historian - since beginning of the 20th century. He did a lot of measure works and drawings. Very impressive indeed.



On the way from Dali to Lijiang, we stopped at a small village called Xizhou where we got a recommendation from P'Natee of Ong-Art Architects about a very nice house. It was not so clear to our guide where exactly the house was. So she took us to a wrong one with tourist activities of performance and selling teas. But we were so stubborn. With very vague faxed images of the house, we forced our guide to asked the real real local... Finally we found the house - Chao Family House. It is a three-courtyard house in the village compound. We had to walk along a very labyrinth path to get there.





At the house, we did a small measure work on the proportion of the house and its courtyards.



From the side linear corridor, we could see the rhythm of the space of dark and light that signifies the public (courtyard = light) and the private (room = dark). Very nice light and space. Too bad that we did not have too much time to spend there... Next time then.



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16 Supanburi

Few weeks ago, some of allzoners went to Supanburi - a province around 100 km. from Bangkok. It is very pleasant area, where people still live with their water ways and rice paddy.





We did a small merit by releasing some little fish into the river.



The temple we went has this very nice monastry building with the skin of thai decorative pattern metal bar.




Another interesting fact we found is that Supanburi is perhaps the center of the contemporary folk music dancers. Look at the shops!



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13 Andon Ryokan Tokyo

This trip to Tokyo, I stayed at a small, boutique, but very cheap ryokan (in comparison with the money you pay and what you get) : Andon Ryokan.
Situated in a very quiet residential neighborhood, where the real people in Tokyo live, on the East side of the city - two station away from Ueno Station on Subway Hibiya line.
It is designed by Masayuki Irie- Professor of Graduate Architecture Research Department, Science and Engineering, Waseda University and awarded as a selected work of 2005 by Journal of Architecture and Building Science Architectyral Institute of Japan. It is not very fancy building, but everything is thought through.

Usually in a ryokan (a traditional inn) in Japan (those who experienced would know) you have to share a bath, a toilet and so on - for those who are not used to, it is quite strange and inconvenient. If you budget is tight, it is even worse because a cheap ryokan is quite sad, and smelly, not to mention cleanliness.

This one is by far the best I have ever experienced in Japan (after living there several years) within 4,000 yen per night range: modern in design and facilities but still carries some ryokan spirits.
The ryokan even offers you a collections of DVD movies and DVD player in each room.
Moreover, the staffs are friendly and could speak enough English to communicate with guests - quite rare in any ryokan.

The glass facade lit up by night through the windows of those small rooms...







The corridor with the lighting only at the floor where you have to take off and put in your shoes. This confirm my theory about Japanese space that usually it is lit up only at necessary spots to disquise the very tiny size of any room - when you don't see the whole clearly, you don't know how big it is actually.



At the each end of the corridor, there is a window where light get through with some 'Japanese' decorations.





The room is very small (aroud 5 tatami mat), only 1.8 m wide, and 4.5 m. long. But strange enough, you would not feel that so small. Every square centimeter is designed with very careful thought.



To me, the most interesting thing is that although the room is very tiny and really next to each other, you would not hear the noise from your neighbors at all. It must be the super insulation in between the thin partitions of the room that run along the structure.



The small entrance lobby where they serve breakfast upon your request, very pleasant space.





I know, by now you are curious. Here is the website of the ryokan: http://www.andon.co.jp/home/index.html
Enjoy Tokyo!

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