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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56 New Taipei City Musuem of Art

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! Continue Reading

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

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. :)

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