JOYS ARCHITECTS INCORPORATES THE ICONIC RAW CONCRETE SURFACE AND THE TERRAIN, WHICH ARE DEFINING CHARACTERS OF YELLOW SUBMARINE COFFEE TANK, INTO THE HOUSE EXTENSION TO CREATE AN ENCLOSED EXTERIOR WHILE MAINTAINING AN OPEN AND FLUID INTERIOR
EXPERIENCE THE NEW DIMENSION OF INTEGRATED CONSTRUCTION SERVICE, ALONG WITH THE CUTTING-EDGE AND ENVIRONMENTAL-FRIENDLY INNOVATIONS AT THE CPAC GREEN SOLUTION BOOTH
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CHOMCHON FUSINPAIBOON TAKES US TO EXPLORE ‘THE ROBOT BUILDING’ WHICH IS AN IMPORTANT MILESTONE FOR THE ’THIRD WORLD’ ARCHITECTURAL DESIGN TO CHALLENGE THE GLOBAL ARCHITECTURAL MOVEMENT BEFORE THE BUILDING IS TRANSFORMED
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INTRODUCING THE 3 ICONIC LAMPS FROM FLOS, AN ITALIAN LIGHTING BRAND FOUNDED IN 1960 BY DINO AND CESARE CASSINA. SURPASSING BASIC ILLUMINATION, FLOS EMBRACES TECHNOLOGY AND ARTISTIC DESIGN THROUGH COLLABORATIONS WITH WORLD-RENOWNED DESIGNERS Read More
LEARN SOMETHING NEW THROUGH A CONVERSATION WITH ‘HUMAN LIBRARIES’ IN ARCHITECT’23, WHICH FEATURES FOUR ARCHITECTURE PROFESSIONAL DISCIPLINES ALONGSIDE WITH VARIOUS INFLUENCERS FROM OTHER FIELDS
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SUPITCHA TOVIVICH, TAKE US TO A RENOVATED WALKWAY BETWEEN THUNGSONG RAILWAY STATION AND THUNGSONG CITY MUSEUM AT NAKHON SI THAMMARAT THAT TRANSFORMED THE IMAGE OF THE UNATTRACTIVE LOCAL TRAIN STATION INTO A VIBRANT PAVILION AND WALKWAY
THE NEW SEWING BUILDING OF LONG GOY, A CLOTHING BRAND FROM CHIANG MAI, DESIGNED BY SHER MAKER, CONVEYS A SENSE OF PLACE, WHICH IS THE SHARED ESSENCE OF BOTH BRAND AND THE ARCHITECT Read More
AFTER BECOMING FAMILIAR WITH WORKING IN ARCHITECTURE WELL, THE STUDIO ‘thingsmatter’ TAKES ON THE ROLE OF AN ARTIST, AND UTILIZES REBAR IN THEIR EXHIBITION TO COMMUNICATE ISSUES IN THE ARCHITECTURE AND CONSTRUCTION INDUSTRY
TEXT: NAPAT CHARITBUTRA
PHOTO: KETSIREE WONGWAN EXCEPT AS NOTED
(For Thai, press here)
Rebar, plywood, rubber, fasteners, and light are the elements which form a large installation currently occupying almost the entirety of 100 Tonson Foundation’s gallery. The piece exudes a different affect from what one might expect from a typical art exhibition. Savinee Buranasilapin and Tom Dannecker of thingsmatter spoke with art4d about their approach to materiality, and some of the other topics and ideas behind their work, Field Collapse.
“I’ve always felt that these fragments found on construction sites, like formwork, scaffolding, raw materials, and even the way that workers move through the project are incredibly beautiful and conceptual, in the sense that they can be considered both artifacts and happenings,” Savinee said about her view of the process of creating a work of architecture as a form of performance that occurs only temporarily before disappearing.
Tom responded, “In college, I was self-conscious that our design exercises weren’t going to be built. It felt like I was playing with dollhouses, compared to what my friends in other departments did. So I started putting most of my energy into the aesthetics of the process, rather than a make-believe finished product.”
The two biographical narratives share a common theme: a focus on the work-in-progress, the period when the designer’s engagement is at its highest intensity, compared to the completed work. This interest has evolved over time, culminating in the work at 100 Tonson Foundation.
thingsmatter’s commitment to process-as-product results in the improbable use of five tons of rebar to support only itself. “In conventional construction, materials like this would need to be economically optimized. Here, we have the luxury of using them in a very inefficient way, to evoke a feeling. We want visitors to slow down, and move mindfully through the slightly disorienting spaces we’ve created.”
The structure begins immediately at the gallery’s entrance. Narrow passages through the rebar give the feeling of walking through a forest. Visitors are led up into a skylight—the exhibition’s only light source—before descending toward the empty space at the back of the gallery. This space hosts a series of workshops and talks over the show’s six-month duration, but most of the time, it simply allows enough viewing distance to read the installation as an object, rather than an interior. From this vantage point, visitors can watch others moving through the forest of rebar. “We want to engage the movements of people moving through the structure as an element of the installation,” thingsmatter explained.
Why rebar? It’s a material that typically does its work from behind the curtain (because it’s meant to be covered by concrete). This time around, the rebar takes the lead in communicating about issues in the architecture and construction industry, including issues of economic and cultural hierarchy, both real and perceived.
“Within a design collaborative, who has the more important job, the one who chooses shapes, or the one who draws construction details? The one who calculates costs, or the one who talks to clients? Then there’s a big group of people doing different aspects of the actual building work. In order to happen, any project needs all of these roles”, Tom explained.
The stakeholders all rely on one another, and each component has its own set of roles and responsibilities that are critical to the conception, existence, and overall operation of architecture. thingsmatter hopes that by displaying the work in progress as a finished installation, viewers will contemplate issues of authorship.
art4d and thingsmatter also discussed the issue of creating a work in a new context.
Field Collapse is not thingsmatter’s first installation. The duo has consistently created ambiguous works that can be interpreted as a wide range of things (sculpture, for example) other than architecture. Ligature, a bamboo and steel construction from 2018, is one such project. Currently located at Jim Thompson Farm in Nakhon Ratchasima province, it was previously displayed in front of the Bangkok Art Culture Center, and initially built as a stage pavilion for ASA Expo 2018. One can see the skeleton of Field Collapse in Caged Flower, another work exhibited for ASA Expo, which experimented with the unusual structural and atmospheric qualities of rebar. But Field Collapse stands out among thingsmatter’s works, in that it was created for a bona fide art institution: 100 Tonson Foundation.
Caged Flower, 2017 | Photo courtesy of thingsmatter
“We’ve always created works with elements of ambiguity. Our image in the architectural community is quite artsy, but once we set foot inside the gallery space, we’re considered outsiders,” Savinee explains. thingsmatter developed the project for 100 Tonson Foundation in response to an open call for art projects last year.
“As much as we’ve enjoyed the ambiguity of our position, we’re happy to have our work validated as art,” Savinee said, referring to the authority that art institutions have in establishing cultural value. The installation is partly a response to the connotations of the art gallery context. The challenges of executing the project weren’t just the typical architectural and logistical issues of dealing with the space, but finding a way to address the cultural connotations of the “white cube.”
Another aspect of the exhibition that distinguishes it from previous works by thingsmatter is the way it directs viewers’ interactions with the working drawings.
“We were thinking about how to use the small room next to the main gallery, to display secondary artifacts related to the main work,” Savinee recalled. “If we spread 100 pages of construction drawings on the table, viewers would read them as banal instructions” Tom added. “We wanted to transform them into something that captures the feeling of the design and construction process, rather than details” Layering many pages of working drawings into palimpsests, enlarged and mounted on the wall, is a method of capturing architectural process as art. A structural analysis diagram is likewise elevated by being printed and framed as fine art, with other versions printed onto scarfs, sold as gift-shop merchandise.
Field Collapse can be interpreted as a work of either architecture or art. The viewer’s authority to perceive and classify the status of this particular creation may be superior to that of art institutions. Field Collapse is an unusual art exhibition, particularly in how it works with the volume of the gallery space and the way it closely interacts with viewers more than most art pieces would allow; in its unapologetic display of material truth, and the diversity of the activities that have occurred over the past several months. Field Collapse is a clear example of a rather novel scenario in which two architects are given full control of a gallery space.
Field Collapse by thingsmatter is now showing at the 100 Tonson Foundation until May 28, 2023. Thu-Fri 10am-6pm and Sat-Sun 11am-7pm
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RAD STUDIOS INCORPORATES ‘TIN CANS’ AS A PRIMARY INSPIRATION IN THE DESIGN TO ADDRESS THE LIMITATIONS OF THE LAND AND UNSIGHTLY SURROUNDING ENVIRONMENT WHILE PROVIDING A PLEASANT VISUAL EXPERIENCE FOR THE RESIDENTS
TEXT: KORRAKOT LORDKAM
PHOTO: SOFOGRAPHY
(For Thai, press here)
A clean, white house stands out among the complicated web of side streets and alleyways of a residential neighborhood in the Thung Song Hong sub-district of Bangkok’s Lak Si district. On the same large parcel of land is a group of older-looking houses, indicating that the property is a residential complex housing a large family with multigenerational members. Instead of moving away, the owner decided to build a new house with the same perimeter as his family home due to a personal connection he has with this piece of land. The context of such a decision presented several challenges, including the limited space and run-down condition of the surrounding environment because of a lack of maintenance, resulting in stark differences between the old and new structures, making it more difficult to curate a pleasurable living experience.
Tiny Tin House is named after the owner’s nickname and the design concept that Pawan Ritipong, architect of RAD studios, came up with. Pawan, the project’s architect, compares the location and arrival of the new house to a tin can, which he finds to have appealing visuals and functions as a form of container.
“We were looking for a variety of different things to see what could hold a wide range of functions within a relatively small space. One image that came to mind was a tin can used as a food container. When you open a can, the content that is stored inside often turns out to be much larger than we expected when we only see the outside of the can. That piqued my interest, and it became the main inspiration for the project’s design concept because it has so many different elements that can be used and played with in architecture.
According to Pawan, the small 10×13-meter plot of land became the first challenge of the design as they searched for ways to fit different functional spaces required by the new family into such a confinement while still maintaining the quality equivalent to that of a large house. In this sense, a ‘tin can’ serves as the concept that influences the physical appearance and interior functional program of the house. The physical characteristics of an enclosed ‘can’ are treated as the architectural identity of the house, which also corresponds to how the design deals with the unsightly surrounding environment. However, due to its residential nature, the house must strike a balance between being open to the environment and being enclosed in order to obstruct unpleasant things. As the architect explained, opening up and connecting the living spaces to certain parts of the outside environment while blocking access to the unappealing view for some parts of the house was a major contextual challenge that impacted the overall design.
“From the very small land to the not-so-pleasant-looking environment, the context had a significant impact. But we saw them as challenges to work out and create something decent out of. I would say that these challenges inspired us to consider how we could design a house with a certain level of enclosure while still providing the best possible quality of living, in the same way that a house built on a larger piece of land or in a better location and context would.”
The curved exterior wall of the living area that helps block the unsightly view.
Originally, this three-story home with 350 sq.m. of total functional space was intended to have a boxy, clean-looking shape, and an open layout free of any protruding components or decorative elements. To create a distinct visual, the sharp and minimal geometric form was simplified by incorporating the physical characteristics of a ‘can’ with the house’s entrance. The access point to the house was gouged out into a concave structure that recessed deep inside and underneath the upper section of the house, which still retains the box-like shape.
A small foyer with a shoe cabinet welcomes visitors when they enter the house. The main living area is located above the foyer and is one of the functional spaces where the ‘can’ concept is most visible. The foyer’s spatial characteristics as a circular hall include a double-volume ceiling with a stairway in the center leading up to the second floor. Despite its small size, the foyer was designed with the goal of incorporating as much openness and spaciousness as possible into the living spaces. Following the main concept, the living room consists of a pantry where the owners spend the majority of their time and a large opening, where one side is designed to bring greater spaciousness and connectivity between outdoor and indoor space. The corner also connects to the large enough in-between space between the structure and the adjacent house, while the unpleasant surroundings are kept at bay and prevented from disturbing the curated perspective. The pantry is designed to have its own moderate-sized opening in a position that does not interfere with the space’s visual access to the outside environment.
The parts of the beam structure make their way into the circular foyer as the design’s gimmick and attempt to create the area into a ‘perfect circle’.
The laundry room’s turquoise color vivifies this particular part of the white home.
The two bedrooms and a study located along the double-space foyer that continues from the lower floor create a more private living quarter on the second floor. Because the owner spends most of his time in the study, extra space and openness are added to the layout. The double-space concept is reintroduced in a specific portion of the functional program, resulting in the room’s layout being quite long and narrow. A curtain wall is used on one side of the room to allow for more natural light and to make the space feel less confined. Certainly, the location of this massive opening corresponds with the outside environment, which is more open and visually appealing than other sides of the house that face neighboring built structures.
The third floor of the functional program is dedicated to the master bedroom of the owners, who are a couple starting a new family. One of the bathroom’s walls is designed with an extra-large window to provide access to the outside view. The floor’s remaining functional space is transformed into a circular rooftop or another ‘can’ storing the family’s recreational space. The rooftop provides not only functional benefits but also aesthetic merits that are consistent with the design concept from which the house’s architecture and functional spaces are realized.
Simplicity and openness remain the core of the house’s interior architecture. Partitions and walkways, for example, can play with the playful qualities of curved lines and arches to make some parts of the space more interesting and fun. There are also a few areas where graphic design and material gimmicks are hidden behind the minimal appearance. Nonetheless, the house’s refined lines, like its architectural identity, remain its most distinguishing feature. It’s safe to say that the architecture of the house was designed with extreme respect for form, lines, and cohesive visual elements.
An emphasis on creating cohesive visual elements in architectural design could be a method of bringing the artistic elements found in paintings or two-dimensional artworks to architecture, where the beauty or intensity of a work is crafted from the unity of artistic compositions. It’s reflected in one of Pawan’s explanations about the serpentine but corresponding lines of the staircase in the main foyer, as well as the effects caused by the refined presences of light and shadow on the architectural form and exterior surfaces of the building. “We approached the design as a very two-dimensional creation, with each section developed separately before everything was put together,” Pawan clarified. Tiny Tin House, with its thoughtful simplicity and openness, exemplifies a design that prioritizes visual elements just as much as the quality of space and living experiences, as everything works together to deliver a complete big picture.
CONTEXT STUDIO OFFERS A NEW IMAGE OF PUBLIC SCHOOLS BY TRANSFORMING THE SPACE TO BE SUITABLE FOR LEARNING EXPERIENCES FOR BOTH STUDENTS AND TEACHERS THROUGH THE ‘OCEAN’ DESIGN CONCEPT
TEXT: PICHAPOHN SINGNIMITTRAKUL
PHOTO: DOF SKY|GROUND
(For Thai, press here)
It is not often that we see a public school invest in architectural design and decoration with the intention that these built environments will help improve the children’s learning ability and playing experiences, not to mention doing it at the level of a good private school. But the Samutsakorn Public School, also known as Anuban Samutsakhon School, shows how important it is to put money toward improving the school’s architecture and functional spaces. The improvement has stunned many parents and passersby, even having them wonder if this is actually a space inside a Thai public school.
Badintra Balankura of Context Studio, the project’s architect, talked about a conversation he had with the school’s director: “When the school’s director called us, I was surprised. Because, to me and many others, it is unusual to see a public school invest money towards its architecture. I personally have never seen anything like this. After having a serious conversation with the director, I discovered that the province’s governor was partially responsible for this renovation because he wanted to see the public schools in the province have top-notch learning environments that would enhance both the children’s experience and the province’s image and reputation. The director also agreed with the idea of designing functional spaces that would serve as a tool to help prepare the children for life outside of school. The design is also intended to instill a sense of pride in the students and alumni.”
The school’s location, which is only 200 meters from the mouth of the Tha Chin River.
The final few sentences about creating a space that would help prepare the children for the real world became the essence of the design concept, which compares the experience to a ship’s embarkation into the ocean. The concept also corresponds with the province’s prominent fishery industry and the school’s location, which is only 200 meters from the mouth of the Tha Chin River, situated almost directly on the gulf. The river and water thus plays an important role in the design. The renovation includes the multipurpose classroom, the hall beneath the elevated floor of the building, and the faculty office.
“The multifunctional classroom, or what the teachers refer to as the ‘presentation room,’ which has been carefully scheduled for the children from different classes to take turns using, depending on the subjects they’re learning, has to be the highlight of this project. We designed the surfaces of the walls and ceiling to have acoustic properties with functions that are more suitable for presentations with projectors and activities that require verbal communication and interactions. When we associated the design to the concept of water, the ceiling ended up looking like waves; quite intimidating-looking waves (laugh), though, because we wanted them to be able to absorb noise effectively,” explained Badintra about the design concept of the first section of the spatial program.
It wasn’t easy to design and build the ceiling to resemble intimidating-looking waves while still delivering the intended functions. The recurring spans between the waves required the design team to use Rhino software to work out the form of the ceiling. Sixteen variations were created, each with waves of varying lengths and enough repetitive spans to help reduce echoes. The CNC machine was used to create molds from the sixteen digital files. The molds were then used to cast the fiber glass tissue modules, which were then assembled into the undulating ceiling.
The multifunctional classroom’s floor and walls are made of a light-colored wood substitute to create a warm and welcoming atmosphere for the students. The wood finish reveals groove details, adding a fun dynamic to the room, which would otherwise be just a rectangular classroom with a plain surface. The grooves also contribute to the sound-absorbing property of the room, one of its primary functional requirements.
The faculty’s office, which also includes the director’s office and a meeting room, is designed to use the same material and color tone as the presentation room, with wood as the main material. The design of the building, which mimics the bottom of a large ship, incorporates elements of water and rivers. A highly skilled group of local ship builders constructed the ceiling, and the process itself was a cooperative effort that brought the province’s officials, the school, and the neighborhood together and strengthened community ties. The hall under the raised floor of the building is the area where the children play and engage in various activities. The ceiling is meant to look like the hollow cockpit of a ship. The curved and hollow features of the columns reduce the rigidity of other elements while lowering the risk of injury to the children as they run around the area. The renovated floor is constructed out of terrazzo that is partially made of glass scraps and gravels, allowing the children to see an example of an environmentally conscious effort through design.
“We’ve renovated a number of areas, and the school is planning to continue renovating other zones as well. The end result will undoubtedly distinguish the school from other public schools in Thailand. I admire everyone involved for recognizing the significance of spaces in children’s learning experiences, in addition to the curriculum. It would be amazing if other public schools could spare their budget to improve their spaces and facilities in the same way that Anuban Samutsakhon School has.”
The ideas, concepts, and points of view that Badintra shared with us about the project, as well as how they differentiate Anuban Samutsakhon School from other public schools in such a positive and impressive way, made us realize how building a good school or influencing children to become accomplished people involves so many factors that go beyond issues such as budget and curriculum. These things involve adults’ visions and their willingness and ability to look at what today’s children want to learn. It is the responsibility of grownups, particularly teachers, to closely observe the children’s needs and interests. While architecture is not the only solution that contributes to a child’s good upbringing, its ability to create an environment that is conducive to children’s learning experiences and allows them to exercise and express their imagination will undoubtedly help motivate and foster their creativity, positive awareness, and interest in ways that are unquestionably superior to being forced to sit in a boxy classroom all day.
