58 Watery Living

Water has great influences in our way of life since the beginning of time here in the region. Floods, flooding are nothing new. Just recently we forgot how to live with it.

 Sumet Jumsai, a prominent architect of Thailand, writes a controversial book 'Naga: Cultural Origins in Siam and West Pacific' on how water shapes the so-called amphibian lives of people in the region. Although some parts of the book are slightly too fancy about water, it is rather inspiring.

Toyo Ito, a prominent architect, has made a very interesting observation on how we, people in Bangkok, live with water, from his boat ride trip:
 “I recall a boat ride I once took on a canal in Bangkok and the impression made on me by the sight of people living on the water’s edge. The people had adapted successfully to their watery environment......... The people dwell like fish, their bodies steeped in water......... The water flowing about those people was overwhelming, and the space that enveloped them was extraordinarily humid.”

:Ito, Toyo, “The Transparent Urban Forest”, The Japan Architect, 1995-3 (Programming), Tokyo: Shinkenchiku-sha, 1995.

From 2011 floods, it seems that, really, we have forgotten completely how to "dwell" with water as Ito describes. 

In 2010, floods damaged many cities in Thailand. Bangkok was somehow safe. However, we were quite alarming with the damage and danger caused by the water. Many architects and designers got together by TCDC discussing about floods and how designers could be part of the flood reliefs or preparations. As a result of the meeting, with Pim Sudhikam and Terdsak Techakijkachorn of Chulalongkorn University, we organized a summer workshop on "Watery Living" during June - August 2011, just right before floodings...

The workshop was not aiming to 'invent' a new way to deal with floods, rather to study how the local have been dealing with floods & flooding in the past centuries. Perhaps, perhaps, we can help to improve something, using our design skills.

We chose a small village at the junction of two small rivers in Ayutthaya,  Hua Wiang as a case study. Ayuthaya is a giant plane where usually receives floods every year. (When it was a capital of Siam during the 14th-18th century, the strongest weapon of the city when enemies surrounded the city was flooding). By then common people were living mainly on floating houses. The village used to be a small market with several floating houses along the river junction. But in the mid-20th century, floating houses were prohibited because of its nomadic nature as well as the arrival of engine boats which made strong waves. So they were moved and fixed on ground. In Hua Wiang, many houses can still be traced back to the original typology of floating house. However, because of the floods, the-fixed-on-firm-ground houses are developed to deal perfectly with their annual floods.

This is the general view of the village on the rivers.

Most of the houses are elevated super high from the ground, around 4-6 meters depending on the area.. the overall is quite strange because you can walk through under all the houses.

You can see that some houses are lifted very high from the ground and the shore. The villagers have lifted the houses several times in the past 2 decades because the level of the floods keeps raising up. (The method to lift the house is also super interesting, we will talk about it later in the future post).

During the dry season, people would walk under the houses with short cuts from one to another - a dry walking network. Well, of course, during the floods, they use boats - different network is formed. 

Since some houses are lifted so high that some elderly who don't want to walk up and down from the ground level to the main level of the house 20 times a day invented "a mezzanine living platform" between the two levels for dry season only. During the floods, the platform is under water. They simply move the stuff up high.

You can see a small living room with a fan, a cushion, a mat and small person items. A lounge.

With the similar concept of the in-between platform, some houses along the river are built with several platforms with different levels.

The interior space with many levels, the space is rather complex and interesting. They can organize their lives according to the water level, move their stuff up and down. At the same time, it is not too far from the 'ground'. Since the house can be reached via different ground levels or water level.

The veranda space of a house is much lower, closer to the water level, while the main house is rather high up.

One of the house is a beauty salon of the village. The lady with glasses is the owner of the salon. Her salon is really high (level).

Because of the flooding nature, everything here is rather light and movable: all the furniture and utensils. Everything is ready to be relocated in case of floods --- living light. Even some parts of the walls, the floors are movable and adjustable.

The plants are all in pots ready to be moved up and down upon season. What a light life! ^_^ Not to mention some of the electrical wires attached with outlets or light bubs that can be rolled up when water arrives... ----> genius indeed.

 With the bamboo structure, they can plant vegetables above ground. At least when the flood is not too high, they can still have some stocks of vegetables.

The best invention so far is the super high plant tanks. They use the pre-fabricated concrete rings (usually used for water storage) stacked up to become a high plant tank, so that during the floods, they still have fresh herbs (such as hot pepper, basil, lemongrass and etc. - very crucial for local cooking).

Not only the houses are lifted so high, the spirit house is also elevated so high from the real ground to meet with the water fluid ground during the floods.

Learning from the village, we were brought back to where we perhaps used to be - living lightly with water. It may sound rather romantic, however, seeing all these, I believe we can improve our modern city, modern life to blend more with water with very simple methods. This year 2012, hopefully, we will be able to handle more. Since water is all around. -_-"


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55 Singapore Colorful Songlines

Singapore is a soulless place..

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

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

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

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



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


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


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


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


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


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


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

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

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

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

53 Million Bottles Temple (วัดล้านขวด)

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. :)
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52 HJS exhibition @ The Capital of Lotus!

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!

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