Medicine Chapel has returned home.
After travelling to the New Taipei City Art Museum in Taiwan, it is now installed here — at ASA Architect Expo 2026 in Bangkok.
For me, art installations are different from architecture.Architecture, I make for others. Art, I make for myself.
This work began during a time when my wife was ill. The hospital became another kind of home.
Every visit had the same smell.
A smell no one wants to remember — but we do.
Medicine Chapel was not born from beauty.It was born from a need for stillness.In the middle of my own fear.
Not hers.
The fear was mine.
So this is not a space for healing the body.It is the space where I tried to heal myself.
Almost every day, someone in a wheelchair passes through.Some stop when they hear where the work came from.Some have picked up the herbs and brought them close.
I am grateful to ASA for inviting monks on opening day —
to chant, and to bless the space with water.
For me, that was not ceremony.
That was the moment the stillness became real. 📷 @yanyadech
Looking at Elephant Chapel today
at ASA Expo, I am taken back to the days at the Arsenale, Venice.I remember those days.
At that time,there was only me
and my four architects.We installed a work four times larger than this
in only five days.
With everything we had.
Real money.
Real labor.
Real sweat.
And above all, “ the dream ” we carried with us.
I told them then: whatever happens,
we will wake this elephant and make it stand. It must stand
in the middle of the Arsenale,
worthy of the invitation we had received. It must stand
for people to walk through it,
from the first day to the last.
During those days,
almost no one believed
that my four young architects
were the ones who built every part
with their own hands.
That day,
only four people
carried this dream.
Today,
Elephant Chapel
stands back home.
Architect Expo 2026 in Thailand
Since returning from Doha, I have continued thinking about the camel.
I went to see one again in Thailand.
Standing before it, my wife asked me, how do you see the camel?
I told her: I see the camel as a living creator. And I see myself as a human creator—still working with my hands, carrying old knowledge, while living in a digital …AI world.
Perhaps that is why, in the end, I feel the camel and I are not so different.
This wooden tower in Korat Zoo was created by transforming five old rice barns into a new life. Sometimes, creating something new does not begin by bringing in something new.
It may begin with “unlearning” -
letting go of the old belief that what is old has no value, or that architecture must only be made from new materials.
A place once used for harvest has become a place of gathering.
A place for the eyes to rest, a place to pause and listen to the wind,
and a place where humans and animals can coexist without speaking the same language.
The zoo staff told me that after 4 p.m., when the zoo closes and people have gone home, the animals slowly walk toward this tower and gather here.
This has continued for the past four years.
That is why I like to return to my old works. Not to look at the form of the building, but to see whether, after time has passed, it still performs its duty.
Do people use it?
Do animals use it?
Or has something grown beyond what we once imagined?
Sometimes architecture does not end on the day it is completed.
It begins after we have walked away.
In uncertain times, taking care of the mind becomes essential.To care for ourselves, and to extend that care to others, is where peace can begin.
At the end of 2025,I was invited to present Medicine Chapel— by @roanchingyueh curator,a reflection on fear, and how we live with it.
Fear has always been part of us.
But we can learn how to take care of the mind.For me, strength is not force.
It is calm. It is stillness.
The pavilion was built with teak leaves
a simple, fragile material, shaped into a space of quiet.Within and around it, we placed the scent of local herbs. Not as decoration, but as a way to care. Scent carries memory. It brings the mind back to a place of calm.
Wherever we are, local knowledge and local materials can gently guide us back to ourselves.
A monk was invited into the space,
not as religion, but as culture .Something we may understand, even if we are different.
Architecture, then, becomes more than an object.
It becomes a space for care.
And when the mind is calm,
fear begins to soften.
📷 @ntcart.museum
I feel truly honored to have been invited to join the Fireside Chat at the Hong Kong International Cultural Summit 2026
as part of the welcome dinner where Suraya Al-Hassan, Director of M+,
introduced me and shared the reason why I was invited to speak
She said that in a time when the world is facing uncertainty,
what we need
may not simply be architects
but humanitarians
those who think deeply about
the relationship between humans and nature and our responsibility within that relationship.
While I was in conversation on stage
with Shirley Surya, Curator of Design and Architecture at M+,the dialogue brought me back to the beginning of my work.
Elephant World did not begin with an idea of material but from a simple necessity that
“the elephant is hungry”.
Architecture, therefore,
was not planned in advance but slowly emerged through learning
and living together.
The three buildings were not created as objects but to fill a gap of understanding
and to make visible the relationship between humans and elephants
that has existed for more than 400 years-a way of living where humans and elephants grow, work, and depend on each other as one
This is not something new but something that has always been there
only that we have not seen it.
And later, elephant dung bricks
were introduced to extend the architecture not as a new material
but as a result of coexistence
In this process, many things I thought I already knew had to be “unlearned”
so that I could “ relearn”
how to live together again
This conversation, therefore,is not about giving answers
but about asking in a world like this
“ how can we remain human
and live together”
Unlearning / Relearning / Coexistence
I am honored to have been invited to join a Fireside Chat with Shirley Surya at the Hong Kong Cultural Summit 2026 on March 22.
Before the conversation began, we spoke briefly. It brought me back to the beginning of the project-when nothing was clear, and everything had to be learned along the way.
The three buildings were not built at the same time. They were built one by one.Because of that, I stayed longer. I kept returning. I got to know the community more.Until today, I still go back. For me, the project is not finished.
This conversation is about unlearning what we think we know,
and relearning what has always been there, but we did not see.
In 2026, the question is simple:
how do we live together and with whom?
We may not need new answers.
We may need to learn how to see again.
And we believe we can coexist.
The Walk @wonderfruit is a path made of twisted rebar, bending back and forth, without handrails. It began with a single sentence from Khun Pete Phornprapha, the founder -He said,
“If someone falls, it would be funny. No one would get hurt. There is grass below, and it is not high.”
And then he said,“Just do it.”
From that simple courage, The Walk was born.
Since 2020 until today, it has been part of an art and music festival. Every year it changes color. It moves. It shifts its form. It never stays the same.
And until now, no one has fallen from The Walk.People of all ages come to climb it, to test their balance, to play.
This year, 2026, I return to The Walk once again.
Perhaps this time, we will see it differently , not only as a structure,
but as something that has grown together with Wonderfruit
and with the people who walk on it.
The Elephant Museum has no walls.
The whole Kuy village is the museum.
I have returned here many times.
For me, my job does not end when construction is finished.What matters is how people use it, and how life continues around it.
Some things here are different from the first day I designed it.That is normal. Places grow.
What makes me happy is seeing children come to learn.Seeing them walk through the village, not just through a building.
When you sit with a Kuy grandmother and she teaches you to spin silk ,that is part of the museum.When monks and villagers care for elephants together ,that is part of the museum.
When a baby elephant is weighed before seeing the veterinarian , that is also part of the museum.
Now there is an elephant hospital here.There is care. There is responsibility. There is knowledge being passed on.
The Kuy people have lived with elephants for more than 400 years.
This is not an exhibition.It is a way of life. It’s a culture ..that we have to protect.
My role as an architect is simple.
To create space that allows this culture to continue.
That is all.
When I first arrived in the Kuy village, I thought I was there to design buildings for elephants. Later, I understood that I was there to learn from a culture.
At the beginning, I approached the project as an architect , thinking about structure, materials, and space.
Later , I realized that the center of this work was not architecture.
It was culture. What I found there did not need invention.It needed recognition.
Elephant World was not built only with concrete and brick.It was built with relationships.
Administrations may change.Policies may shift.But culture remains.
The elephants remain.The people remain.
For me, the real foundation of this project is not its buildings ,
it is the knowledge carried in everyday life.
At first glance, the courtyard may appear unmanicured -even unused.
Yet this is not neglect. It is intention.
For more than 400 years, the Kuy mahouts have lived under the same roof as their elephants. Their relationship is not occupational, but familial - a life shared in faith, labor, and memory.
This courtyard hosts sacred ceremonies such as the Elephant Kathin and communal merit-making rituals. But it is not designed only for events.
Together with the community, we chose not to cut the grass unnecessarily. On ordinary days , without audience, without activity,elephants walk in freely, graze, and rest here.
What may seem untidy to human eyes
is comfort and dignity for them.
Architecture, here, is not a stage.
It is shared ground.
Culture is not something we display.
It is something we protect.
Cultural Courtyard - Elephant World
The Artisans, Ayutthaya -the woman restaurant , was conceived in the years just before COVID. By the time the building was completed, the world had already entered a period of uncertainty. The economy everywhere was struggling.
Some of the glass blocks used in this building were reclaimed from another project of mine. The remaining glass blocks were purchased at a reduced price from the factory, as they were leftover stock - patterns that had been sitting in storage, waiting to be used.
With immense physical strength and even greater strength of spirit, the women of Ban Run , the co-founders of this restaurant ,brought this place into existence. It stands in a small subdistrict where nearly 70% of the population are women. What is remarkable is that many of them are single or widowed. Yet they have one another. They share smiles. They share food. They share life.
Today, seven years later, the intention of this restaurant and of these women continues to be passed on to every visitor who comes to eat.
For me, this place has become a sanctuary of the heart. I am one of those who return here, again and again, to let these women quietly heal to my spirit.
