05 the 1st day workshop @ phi phi island: 27 july 2007

On Arrival
Finally we all go to Phi Phi Island for the workshop (27 July - 2 August). Actually we still have few more lessons we had before we go to the island that we should documentate on the blog, but we are now still very excited from the trip and the workshop. So let's get through it before we forget the details!

We started our trip on Friday 27 July...Some of us flew in the morning to Krabi, some (including myself) arrived Krabi in the evening, while the rest took a night bus from Bangkok and arrived the next day in the morning...

The day was not much. We went to have dinner on the street venders next to Krabi river where it used to be a ferry pier. We had some local 'Kanom Jean' - some kind of Thai noodle with curry source in southern style, extremely good indeed.

On the street vender area, we found this intelligent solution for the canvas canopy of a noodle shop - to keep it from the very strong winds by the bottles of water! Simple but intelligent.


Then another vender, he served hot and cold dessert in a cup that big enough to be a bowl...something in between. Besides, the desserts are very good there too. :)

04 Green Architecture? How green is the green?

The class begins with the movie: An Inconvenient Truth. Well, for me, it is a good excuse to watch the movie, because I would never imagine that my physical ability to stand the movie in a theater or watching DVD alone at home without falling asleep!

We discuss a lot after the movie with all the students. Well, we all agree that Al Gore found something very nice to do after his presidency and the truth he shows us is breath-taking. However, he is a politician, still. The way the movie presents the 'truth' somehow is very political - we are not saying that politics should be out of our issues, since we all live in politics, whether we like it or not - but the approach makes the 'serious issues' Gore wants to communicate to the audience weaken somehow.

Also, once after some miniutes of presenting 'the incovenient truth', Gore always goes back to his family history, which I personally find it very boring, and did not add much to the main topic of the movie.

The most memorable scene in the movie is about a poor polar bear swimming and finally drowning into the melting ice in the north pole area.. it is very emotional scene. The students also comment that after seeing the film we know that the world is getting hot, the global warming is now, but then, what we can do pratically is not clear. So my next assignment for the students is: One practical proposal to make the global warming cool (down). :)

The next discussion is about green architecture or sustainable architecture. The terms are quite widely used and became very popular in the recent years. (I am not an expert on the subject at all. ) However, we understand that green architecture or sustainable architecture is a concept of a building that concerned the environment especially ecology system, not to harm the environment or harm the least...

One of the popular approach in this environmentally friendly architecture that can be sold very well in Thailand is 'energy efficiency' or 'energy saving' in architecture. :O However, we end up buying 'hi-tech' and fancy materials and equipments from abroad.. We are not sure here if it is really sustainable in our context here in Thailand and especially in Baan Leam Tong. Already in Baan Leam Tong school, they built this solarcell electrical generator system that get broken very often that finally it does not work any longer and became a kind of weird statue in the middle of the school. According to our environmental architect consultant, Atch Sreshthaputra (a very good friend of mine and also a professor in our school) the solarcell system requires very high maintenance, and usually does not work in a very remote area. :(

So the approach I give some examples to the students is the one that focus more on an 'intelligent' way to use local materials in 'sustainable' way - sustainable economically, socially and also culturally. :)

Aunpama Kundoo is one of our heroine here. She is an Indian architect who builds a lot of very interesting experiments - how to use little concrete in her construction because concrete is not environmentally friendly materials at all. She gave a lecture in Chiangmai at ARCASIA meeting 2005 on the subject too, very interesting.

For example this vault structure is built by using a self-support structure of small terracotta flower vases putting togeter.


The concrete floor that use also terracotta bowls as a mold and supporting structure that finally left in the floor, to use little concrete but the strength of the structure is the same.


Another very exciting project of Anupama Kundoo is this Fire House. The structure is firstly built by raw earth bricks , laying in the shape of a round structure. Then She burns it all , like a big terracotta untensil. ;O very impressive.


In Thailand, we also have an interesting example of this kind. Unfortunately, it is another 'Architecture Without Architect'...again. It is a small temple in Srisaket Province, called วัดล้านขวด or literaly translation is Million-Bottle Temple. The buildings in the temple are built from empty bottles of beer! (What an anti- Buddhism act! - some students comment)



Well, perhaps it is too difficult to make people stop drinking, so drinking that also makes merit for building the temple is not too bad, perhaps.

There are several color of bottles, that means they use several brands of beer to build those building, a student who is perhaps an expert on beer or beer bottle gives an observation. :)

Another obeservation we find here is that, perhaps the bottle is very good heat insulation for the interior speace as well... what a genuis!


Somehow, we arrive also to one of our favourite architects, mr Shigeru Ban. He might not be catagorized into this so-called sustainable architect. But many things he did with paper tube and bamboo, are in fact very little harm to the environment, especially in a disaster condition.


Last year when he gave a lecture in Thailand, I had a chance to have dinner with him. He told us that nowadays, whenever disaster happens, they call him. Well, it is not a bad job at all... when someone really needs an architect. ;) Here are disaster recuse project he did in Turkey and Africa.

Well, a lot of foods for thoughts for today. :) The students are already 'full'. :)

03 Comtemporary Vernacular Architecture

The following lesson after the notebook is about Vernacular Architecture.
What is vernacular architecture? How is it different from traditional architecture?
We got a brief and sounding definition from wikipedia (the super encyclopedia):

Vernacular Architecture is a term used to categorize methods of construction which use locally available resources to address local needs. Vernacular architecture tends to evolve over time to reflect the environmental, cultural and historical context in which it exists. It has often been dismissed as crude and unrefined, but also has proponents who highlight its importance in current design. (Holm, Ivar (2006). Ideas and Beliefs in Architecture and Industrial design: How attitudes, orientations, and underlying assumptions shape the built environment. Oslo School of Architecture and Design.) In contrast to planned architecture by architects, the building knowledge in vernacular architecture is often transported by local traditions and is thus more - but not only - based on knowledge achieved by trial and error and often handed down through the generations rather than calculated on knowledge of geometry and physics. This of course does not exclude architects from using vernacular architecture in their designs or being firmly based in their regional vernacular architecture.

This is the first example came into my mind: the iglu of Eskimo.


The idea of vernacular architecture became an interest among architects with modern ideology by Bernard Rudofsky's 1964 book Architecture Without Architects: a short introduction to non-pedigreed architecture, based on his MoMA exhibition. It gives a new aspect to architecture after the era of the Modern Masters.

The term vernacular is derived from the Latin vernaculus - a slave quarter at the back of the master's garden - In terms of language, vernacular refers to language use particular to a time, place or group. In architecture it refers to that type of architecture which is indigenous to a specific time or place (not imported or copied from elsewhere). It is most often used to apply to residential buildings. (http://dictionary.reference.com/browse/vernacular, http://dictionary.cambridge.org/define.asp?key=88049&dict=CALD, http://www.m-w.com/dictionary/vernacular)

The local church in Norway. Very nice Vernacular Architecture.

A fisherman village in the south of Thailand.


The term is not to be confused with so-called "traditional" architecture, though there are links between the two. Vernacular architecture may, through time, be adopted and refined into culturally accepted solutions, but only through repetition may it become "traditional." Traditional architecture can also include temples and palaces, for example, which would not be included usually in the rubric of "vernacular." In Japan, for example, not all pre-modern architecture is "vernacular," which would usually refer only to rural buildings and structures. In the US, vernacular architecture might refer to a so-called craftsman bungalow, fashionable in the nineteenth century, even though the bungalow as an architectural form did not originate in the US. "Vernacular" might even refer to a building like the 1848 Duncan House in Cooksville, Wisconsin. All in all, the use of the term "vernacular" can be quite ambiguous.

On this ambiguity, we had a long discussion in the class.
Of course, very simple huts and houses in the country side could be catagorized into Vernacular Architecture. But is shophouses we see around us everywhere in Thailand vernacular architecture? But it has an air-con? Is technology like air-con considered imported? Hin (sila) one of the students gives his opinion that air-con is quite an available common modern technology that we could almost consider it a material like wood..so perhaps our shophouses around could be considered also Contemporary Vernacular Architecture.

This approach would go in the same line with the term commercial vernacular as Robert Venturi and Denis Scott Brown use in their book 'Learning From Las Vegas' which refers to the 20th century American suburb commercial architecture. (The book is one of the most important books of the 20th century architecture theory). Rem Koolhass's Delirious New York is also in the same family of thoughts. His 'culture of congestion' is to describe architecture and urbanism of the 20th century city emerging without 'great' architects, but with the dreams and desires of capitalism.



The discussion on Vernacular Architecture made us think a lot about all. I finished the lecture by showing a house I visited 5 years ago at On-nuch garage slum - the biggest garbage disposal area in Bangkok. The house is built from carefully selected garbage and left over - metal boxes for snacks. The details are well thought, so well thought that we as an architect are amazed. The owner / builder of the house is a man of his 40s, who never built anything in his life before.... An excellent example of Contemporary Vernacular Architecture?

The house was still under construction 5 years ago when I visited.

The detail of the opening of the house.


The roof tiles are made of the metal boxes cut into small pieces too.


The columns are reinforce concrete molded by the metal bins, without removing the mold afterward! Very interesting...


We are thinking a lot about our Contemporary Vernacular Architecture.