PROUD OFFICE
Tag: Renovation
URBAN JOY PLAYGROUND
TEXT: NATHATAI TANGCHADAKORN
PHOTO COURTESY OF ANANDA DEVELOPMENT
(For Thai, press here)
When an urban futsal field, renovated by ANANDA and partners in collaboration with the Bangkok Metropolitan Administration, was adorned with vivid graphics, the space transformed into a dynamic canvas of art.
The beauty of this series of photographs’ closely mirrors the simplicity of minimalist photography. Yet, each color on the field carries its own message. Designed as a public art space for urbanites, the design team embedded each section with meaning and inspiration—not merely visuals. For instance, the use of blue evokes openness and freshness, symbolizing the concept of ‘Inspire & Urban,’ while red, representing ‘Power & Energy,’ ignites enthusiasm.
The meanings embedded in these patterns are further complemented by the lines marked to define the field’s operational boundaries. Some of these lines signify the field’s midpoint, while others distinguish its outer limits. Players crossing these outer boundaries will find themselves out of play, according to the game’s rules. Whether for aesthetics or functionality, these elements blend seamlessly into a graphic masterpiece that has resulted in a perfectly functional futsal field, a piece of public art, and a communal space for the local community to engage in activities and social gatherings, enriching the neighborhood’s options for fitness and interactions.
PHOTO ESSAY : THE ARCHITECTURE OF DEMOLITION
TEXT & PHOTO: AKAI CHEW
(For Thai, press here)
Singapore is a city in constant change. Buildings are built and redeveloped at a fast pace. A 30-year-old building is seen as ripe for redevelopment. In Singapore, demolition and construction are everywhere. Like a magician throwing a piece of cloth upwards and vanishing when the cloth drops, when the scaffold drops, the building is no longer there. Since 2015, the pace of demolition has escalated to outrageous proportions. Currently, four of the top 10 tallest redeveloped buildings in the world are in Singapore.
In the 1960s, Singapore used urban development to catalyze the new country’s economy. New skyscrapers signaled a new era. Today, some of these buildings have been demolished.
Demolition and construction in Singapore are almost as much architecture as an actual building. In the past few decades, redevelopment and loss of the natural and built environment have been seen and accepted with apathy and as a necessity to Singapore’s economic growth and urbanization; it was progressing as Singapore rose to become a better city. In Singapore, the contemporary is the history of 10 years later.
As our post-independence era architecture gets slowly erased and replaced, it opens further questions on the outrageous.
I thought about vintage photographs showing Singapore in the 19th century. We look to the past in fascination, and we think to ourselves how much the city has changed since then. Maybe in Singapore, this past might just be 10 or 20 years ago.
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Akai Chew is a Singapore-based artist whose background in architecture, urban planning, and architectural heritage informs his contemporary art practice. As an artist, he works primarily with photography and site-specific installations. Akai studied architecture and built environments at the University of Tasmania in Australia. He has exhibited extensively in Singapore, Bandung, New Delhi, Hobart, and Launceston.
THE PYRAMID OF TIRANA
MVRDV GOT RID OF THE OLD IMAGE OF A MUSEUM DEDICATED TO THE COMMUNIST DICTATOR TO BE A TECHNOLOGY-FOCUSED LEARNING CENTER FOR THE ALBANIAN YOUTH
FORMICA SHOWROOM
ART4D BROUGHT YOU TO THE SHOWROOM OF FORMICA, A LEADING INNOVATOR IN THE LAMINATE AND FINISHING MATERIAL. THAT’S ITH TRANSFORMED THE OLD STORAGE SPACE INTO A CONTEMPORARY SHOWROOM FEATURING ACTUAL PRODUCTS IN USE
THE TREASURY MUSEUM KHON KAEN
PLAN ARCHITECT, ALONG WITH GLA DESIGN STUDIO AND PLAN MOTIF TRANSFORMED THE OLD BUILDING OF THE BANK OF THAILAND’S NORTHEASTERN REGION OFFICE INTO AN APPROACHABLE LEARNING SPACE IN KHONKAEN’S DOWNTOWN
NOT JUST LIBRARY
Photo: Golden Pin Design Award
A LIBRARY THAT KEPT THE ORIGINAL BUILDING STRUCTURE AND THE EXPERIENCE OF JAPANESE PUBLIC BATHHOUSES, CREATING THE SPACES FOR READING, MEETING AND THE PUBLIC PLACE TO INTERACT AND EXCHANGE IDEAS, EMBODYING THE CONCEPT OF ‘NOT JUST LIBRARY’
OOP HOUSE
OOP HOUSE, THE RENOVATION PROJECT IN EKKAMAI BY THE PARTNER, PRUITSATORN SAKULTHAI AND RUAMPORN THAVORNATHIWAS, IS DELIGHTING WITH DYNAMIC EFFECTS OF LIGHT AND SHADOW THROUGH THE DELICATE DESIGN OF VOIDS
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ANUBAN SAMUTSAKHON SCHOOL
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.
BAAN TROK TUA NGORK
A 90 YEARS SHOPHOUSE THAT STU/D/O ARCHITECTS PARTIALLY REPLACES THE STRUCTURE AND ADJUSTS THE SPACE TO MAKE IT FUNCTIONAL WHILE ENCAPSULATING A SENSE OF NOSTALGIA THROUGH ITS TRACE WITHIN
TEXT: PRATCHAYAPOL LERTWICHA
PHOTO: STU/D/O ARCHITECTS AND KUKKONG THIRATHOMRONGKIAT
(For Thai, press here)
When a person reaches the age of 90, they undeniably become designated as a senior citizen. Yet for Baan Trok Tua Ngork, a building with over 90 years of history located in Trok Tua Ngork alley in Bangkok’s Pom Prap Sattru Phai district, the journey to its 100-year milestone is the start of a new, exciting chapter.
From a family home to a chili paste factory, an office, and at one point in time, a built structure with a majority of space left unused, Baan Trok Tua Ngork has stood the test of time, having been lived in by people from different generations. Today, after having Stu/D/O Architects at the helm of the renovation, the home has been given new life as a venue with rental spaces ideal for exhibitions, activities, and other potential functions.
Baan Trok Tua Ngork is a five-story building made up of five units of shophouse. At the back of the building sits a trapezoidal-shaped courtyard whose widest size measures up to 5 meters. Behind the area is a small building that was once used as accommodations for workers. The building’s front was originally four stories high before the rooftop floor was converted into the top floor and used as the room where ancestral rites were performed.
“Baan Trok Tua Ngork was initially the home of a family of Chinese immigrants who settled down in Thailand,” Apichart Srirojanapinyo, architect of Stu/D/O Architects, explained the building’s history. “It was originally a multigenerational home where five extended families lived together. It was also used as a chili paste shop and production base, as well as an insurance company’s office, which were also businesses run by family members. As time passed, the space became too small to accommodate everyone. Each family began to move out, leaving the building empty except for the time of ancestor worships, when relatives gathered in the room on the top floor to pay respect to deceased family members and ancestors.
The ancestor room before renovation
The ancestor room after renovation
After seeing the building neglected for a great many years, the fourth-generation members of the family were seeking ways to bring it back to life. The initial thought was to build a café, a restaurant, and a small hotel. Everyone debated the idea and eventually agreed on renting out the spaces with the demand for additional system works to be done to prepare the building for future expansion.
Converting an old building into rental spaces didn’t sound like a difficult task, given that they would be developing a layout with empty spaces for people to use for whatever purposes they desired. As it turned out, the new program was the most challenging task for the design team. For the rental spaces to be used for different kinds of activities, the building would have to be able to hold the weight of hundreds of people. This means that any extra functionalities added to the building in the future would burden its structural framework with more weight.
“One of the first ideas we came up with was incorporating reinforced concrete into the structure of the building,” explained Chanasit Cholasuek, another architect at Stu/D/O Architects. “We experimented on many designs of reinforced structures, from the one that blended every structural component together to the one that emphasized the distinct contrast between the old and new frameworks. The end result was relatively decent, but we felt that the procedure would end up removing the true spirit of the building.”
When the idea of using reinforced structures to merge the new and old structural elements didn’t work out as planned, Stu/D/O Architects and the engineering team brainstormed for alternative solutions before arriving at the method that delivered the intended final outcome. They took down the building’s first floor so that less weight would be put on the existing base. The first floor was then rebuilt on a new foundation with new foundation piles. “We excavated the entire first level of the building so that the rest of the building could support more weight because the weight of the first floor was removed,” Apichart revealed. “Then we incorporated a new first-floor structure into the existing building fabric, as well as new structural components for the elevator shaft and a new set of stairs.”
What would be inevitable when the old and new structures coexisted was the varied degrees of consolidation. To mitigate that, the design leaves calculated spaces between the points where the old and new structures merged. Not only that, the architect designed the glass walls of the central court next to the original building to overlap with the walls adjacent to the new building. These walls contain a red gradient that matches the tone of the tiles on the first floor. Should the first floor structure ever consolidate, the gradient detail of the glass wall will help hide it from being visible from the outside.
The façade is one of the aspects of the building’s design that the architects chose to keep as many of the original attributes as possible. The added component is the transparent glass walls on the first floor, which promote connectivity between the building’s first floor and the outside world. The architecture team opted to eliminate the walls that separated each area in order to unite the spaces, with the new wood borders on the floor indicating the locations of the original walls. Each unit’s stairs and railing were also dismantled. The treads are then employed as floor panels in the area where the old staircase was placed, adding to the list of traces from the old building’s memories. Numerous original structural details have also been carefully kept, such as the incised corners of the columns, concrete beams, and floor tiles, all of which demonstrate the taste and craftsmanship skills of builders in the past.
The inner court might be considered the building’s heart. While the court isn’t particularly large (the widest side is five meters, while the narrowest side is only three meters), when the light cast’s through it, along with the mirrors and glass panels cladding the rooms, these elements collectively make the court appear more spacious—an impressive improvement over the previous dimly lit space that didn’t have any use, rather than being the surplus space at the back of the building.
The main court before renovation
The new court also serves as a communal space, with users having visible access to what’s going on within the building through the translucent glass walls of the rooms. Old, colorful door and window frames border the glass panels, showing their original positions before being replaced by the new glass features. Tempered laminated glass panels are weight-bearing, allowing window and door frames to be securely mounted to them. Doors and windows that once let in natural light and air have been transformed into a nostalgic detail that transports visitors back to the building’s yesteryear.
Aside from the endeavor to encapsulate a sense of nostalgia, Stu/D/O Architects included new amenities to help increase functional convenience and a better and safer user experience, such as an elevator and a new fire exit, both built to synchronize with the building’s internal circulation. The construction of the translucent roof on the fourth story transforms the rooftop area into a well-shaded terrace that is great for lounging even while it’s raining. An additional walkway is built to connect the existing elevator core to the new one on the fifth floor.
Despite its recent official opening, Baan Trok Tua Ngork has already hosted a variety of events, including the art exhibition Ghost 2565: Live Without Dead Time, Baan Soho, an experimental space run by Soho House prior to the official opening of the clubhouse, and LOUIS VUITTON’s private dinner. Today, a new chapter of Baan Trok Tua Ngork has begun as the building welcomes new people and visitors to create new stories that will leave more traces to be inherited through time. Just like how those scratches on wooden windows or stains caused by incense papers that were burned during ancestral worships have now become an inherent part of the house.
