Ever since I was a child, I’ve always lived in Bangkok, and never moved anywhere. My parents were quite protective of me and didn’t let me go out that much. When I grew up, it turned out that the restraint from childhood has become some sort of a complex that urges me to walk around Bangkok as much as I can now that I’m an adult. I always find weekend city walks to be exciting and addictive. I like to keep on walking, sometimes with a destination in mind. At times, I would just wander aimlessly. The walk always leads me to unusual places and things, born out of unintentional clashes between humans and nature, all struggling to survive in the city that many both love and hate.
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Chatchavan Suwansawat is an architect and occasional writer. He wrote ‘Architect-Jer,’ the book that talks about the quintessential Thai characteristics through design objects created by people living in the city. He founded Everyday Architect & Design Studio where he works on architecture and its relation to his interest in Thai-ness.
CHATRI PRAKITNONTHAKAN, HUES DEVELOPMENT, AND SITTHA LERTPHAIBOONSIRI STRIVE TO FILL THE FORGOTTEN VALUE OF ‘THE ARCHITECTURE OF PEOPLE’S PARTY’ WITH THE SETARA, THE HOLIDAY HOUSE IN MAE-ON, CHIANG MAI
HAVING TRANSFORMED THE DEFUNCT RICE MILL INTO ‘MKM MUSEUM KÜPPERSMÜHLE’ IN 1999, HERZOG & DE MEURON HAS A HAND IN THE MUSEUM ONCE AGAIN WITH THE ADDITION OF THE EXHIBITION SPACE THAT ASPIRES TO KEEP A BALANCE BETWEEN OLD AND NEW
CITIZEN TEA CANTEEN OF NOWHERE, A HANDICRAFT SHOWROOM AND A KOPI-STYLE TEA ROOM BY SARAN YEN PANYA THAT STARTED WITH AN AIM TO CONNECT BUSINESS OF DESIGN WITH THE COMMUNITY AND BRING BACK TRADITIONAL THAI-CHINESE CULTURE
TAWAN WATTUYA DOCUMENTS STORIES OF INDIVIDUALS WHO QUESTION THE SYSTEMS BUT ARE FORGOTTEN IN THE EXHIBITION KEEP IN THE DARK, EXHIBITED AT THE ART CENTRE, SILPAKORN UNIVERSITY AND CURATED BY KRITSADA DUCHSADEEVANICH
LEARN ABOUT THE PRODUCTS FROM SCG D’COR, AN ALTERNATIVE BRAND OF FAÇADE DECORATION MATERIALS FROM SCG WHICH OFFERS CONSUMERS A DIVERSE RANGE OF MATERIALS WITH COMPREHENSIVE FUNCTIONAL ATTRIBUTES
IN ORDER TO REACH THE INTERNATIONAL STANDARDS, YONGYUTT CHAIPROMPRASITH, CEO OF SCOPE CO., LTD. COLLABORATES WITH KOHN PEDERSEN FOX (KPF) AND THOMAS-JUUL HANSEN IN DESIGNING SCOPE LANGSUAN
TEXT: JINTAWACH TASANAVITES PHOTO: KETSIREE WONGWAN EXCEPT AS NOTED
Most people’s goal in life is to live a luxurious life but what exactly is luxury? Luxury as a concept has always seemed inherently rooted in materialism. Over the centuries of living space design, luxury has been precious, rare, innovative, opulently extravagant, or even starkly minimalist. No matter what, luxury has always involved the owning of beautiful, often superfluous, things. However, it is seen recently that the perspective to luxury designs, especially in the space for living, has slowly but gradually changed in the past centuries. Referring richness solely on expensive items can be seen as a predated idea of luxury. There is a movement away from the human desire for excess necessities and opulence towards the term ‘luxury essentialism’. This modern take on luxury has stripped down its heavy emphasis on materialism to giving more focus on the immaterial and satisfying the essentials and functionalities to living a fulfilled human life, with aim of achieving physical and mental wellness to be its priority instead. It would be naive to think that the desire for materialism is ending, of course, it isn’t, but there is a growing sense in this generation for balance and prioritization. There’s a shift from viewing luxury from just visual and high-priced tags to surrounding oneself in carefully tailored craftsmanships and design that serves a specific purpose to every aspect of human activities. This core essence is the vision and idea behind SCOPE Langsuan.
Yongyutt Chaipromprasith
Despite the over-flowing supplies of condominiums and apartments in Bangkok, among this highly competitive market catering to all parts of the economy, there’s still a gap of apposite quality that seems to be missing and SCOPE Langsuan aims to be one of the first projects to ever fill that gap. The visionary behind SCOPE Langsuan, Mr. Yongyutt Chaipromprasith, CEO of SCOPE Co., Ltd, said, “We crafted this project for potential homeowners that share with us the definition of ‘luxury’ and giving attention to living space is of great significance to them among all other aspects of their life that they want to invest in. They have seen a lot and they have diverse experiences. I believe that for them, living in a carefully crafted home is the key fundamental of life. We coined the term ‘The International Premium’ to specify this group of owners.” This statement holds to the age of globalization where people’s access to the endless flow of information has shaped their standards to be somewhat ‘internationalized’. Before making purchases nowadays, most people would dive deep online to make sure they have a complete grasp of what they are going to buy to make sure they truly understand what is considered finest. They are not comparing what they’re buying with just the products in their countries but to the whole world. And most of the time, these people’s craving for knowledge and experiences often lead them to all parts of the world to have a hands-on appreciation of what they are investing in. As such, ‘The International Premium’ is a new luxury segment that offers a global standard between the balance of quality, rationale, functions, convenience, and aesthetic experience that can fulfill the practical and emotional needs of these homeowners.
Thomas Juul-Hansen
And of course, living is and will always be about the location, and Langsuan is the perfect location to complete this vision. Langsuan remains one of the most expensive residential locations not just because it is at the center of Bangkok city where every activity and amenity is not only conveniently connected and easily accessible but also because it is a rare location where a sense of peace and tranquility can be offered, despite being in the highly congested inner part of town, that can serves to each homeowner’s emotional wellbeing. Most importantly, SCOPE Langsuan sits on one of the very few freehold properties that are considered highly sought-after and scarce in this specific area with its front door only 140 meters away from the city’s public metro line.
Thomas Juul-Hansen
“With this distinctively wonderful piece of land, we wanted to make a truly iconic building to be at a global stage.”, Mr. Yongyutt stated. “To do so, we need an international team that can complete our vision and that’s the reason why I chose to work with Kohn Pedersen Fox (KPF) and Thomas-Juul Hansen.” KPF sits as this project’s architectural design consultant and is one of the world’s most admired architectural design firms known for city-defining landmarks and innovative design seen all over the Western and most recently, Eastern cityscape. Together with Thomas Juul-Hansen, a renowned interior designer known for his understated style of luxury design who is behind some of the most inspired luxury interiors and apartments worldwide such as the ONE57-building which has the highest selling price of an apartment in New York. With the ambitious vision paired with a team of specialized experts, SCOPE Langsuan is setting itself up to be an exciting luxury architectural addition, not just in Thailand, but at a worldwide scale.
LEGO HOUSE, DESIGNED BY BIG, CONCEPTUALIZES THE LEGO BRICKS THROUGHOUT THE BUILDING FROM THE EXTERIOR TO THE EXHIBITION SPACE WHERE SUNGUARD® EXTRA SELECTIVE SNX 60/28 GLASS WAS INSTALLED TO DRAW NATURAL LIGHT INTO THE SPACE, REVEALING THE IMPRESSIVE DETAILS OF LEGO
LEGO is a part of many people’s childhood. LEGO’s modular system that can be endlessly assembled has, at times, turned into small works of architecture where different pieces are joined together with boundless freedom. The wonderful nature of LEGO pieces plays a monumental part in the conceptualization of the LEGO House. The design team of BIG materialises the building that looks as if it were made out of real LEGO pieces.
Situated in Billund, Denmark where LEGO originated, the museum is intended to help turn the city into the country’s future youth hub. The LEGO house serves as the city’s landmark and symbol with over 12,000-square meter functional space that tells stories of every aspect of the iconic toy. The physical attributes of LEGO find their ways to the building’s architecture, which is designed to look like an assembly of massive, white LEGO pieces, arranged and superimposed into an incredibly distinctive work of architecture.
From the outside, looking at the building from an eye level, users are able to see the white building appears in the proportion similar to LEGO pieces. Parts of the building are designed to have both rigid white walls and massive glass walls that facilitate a visual connection between the interiors and outside environment. From the top, the rooftops of all buildings are in different colors with the tones similar to those of LEGO pieces. The areas accommodate outdoor spaces such as playgrounds while colors are used to differentiate various learning zones of the museum’s functional program. The interior program comprises a cafe, restaurant, souvenir shop, exhibition rooms, learning and playing areas, all existing in a hierarchy of thoughtfully curated learning experiences with colors playing a significant part in identifying and defining spaces.
The main hall exhibits a large LEGO tree, surrounded by a stairway and natural light casted from the skylight, nicely brightening the entire space. Another highlight of the program is the exhibition room where special collections of LEGO are shown. The room is designed to have eight, circular skylights, symbolising a LEGO piece’s signature attributes. This particular detail can be clearly seen from the top view. The design uses SunGuard® Extra Selective SNX 60/28 glass that can bring in 60% natural light while filtering and allowing only 28% heat from the sunrays to come into the interiors. The material keeps the interior space beautifully lit, spacious, and cool while providing the right amount of light for the exhibition.
Glass is an integral part of several components of the design, from the walls to railing, for the program’s intention to provide the openness and spaciousness while still maintaining the much needed safety for the majority of users who are children. The material’s transparency also facilitates different parts of the interior spaces to enable the overall learning experiences.
WHO Studio Path / The name is a play on words between the word ‘path’ in English and the Thai word ‘พัฒน์’. They are pronounced similarly but the meaning of the Thai word is ‘development’.
WHAT Our studio’s design direction aims to fulfil the clients’ needs and demands. We don’t limit our approach but we develop our design based primarily on each project’s context.
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