A graphic book that compiles methodologies for urban observation and description, reflecting on the “Osaka Bastard Architecture” workshop held last October at Kindai University with CHAT Architects from Bangkok. The final binding of the book was completed through hand-stitch binding by the participants. Under the guidance of editor Keigo Nishio, the entire process—editorial work, graphic design, and binding—was developed as an integrated workshop. #kindai #kindai_architecture Horiguchi Lab.+
ตรอกวิน... Bangkok’s “Win” motorcycle taxi networks deliver passengers to locations public transports like busses and skytrains cannot. They are essential to maintaining the city’s connectivity. This particular “Win” MotoTaxi Station operates from a 2.5 meter-wide shophouse alley. MotoTaxi drivers and passengers line up during rush hour in the 2.5 meter wide alley next to Bunnavitti BTS Station. The shophouse backlot at the end of the alley becomes the moto-rider’s rest area, pop-up repair shop, chicken coop, and taw kraw court.
📢 Announcing: ‘Intertidal Exchange’ — an international exchange programme that brings together UK artist Andrew Merritt (of @somethingandson ) and Thai architect Chatpong Chuenrudeemol (@chatarchitects ) to share their ongoing research into how informal architecture, sustainable building practices, and community action can respond to climate change.
Andrew’s current project with Cement Fields, ‘Intertidal Allotment’, is creating a functional artwork and world-first shoreline community allotment on the Isle of Sheppey in Kent. Taking inspiration from the traditional allotment form, the project expands it into the intertidal zone, where tidal movements create a unique belt of biodiversity. Both a functional artwork and a co-created community asset, ‘Intertidal Allotment’ aims to create a sustainable modular system that responds to the needs of local people, supports Sheppey’s coastal ecology and is replicable in other locations.
Chatpong has developed the concept of ‘bastard architecture’ — a form of vernacular architecture born of necessity, exemplified in his project ‘Angsila Oyster Scaffolding Pavilion’ in Chonburi province, Thailand, which literally builds upon the traditional bamboo scaffolding used for oyster cultivation to create a new community-owned space in the intertidal zone. Meanwhile, Chatpong’s ongoing project ‘Growing a New Rurbanism’, supported by Thailand’s Ministry of Culture, is exploring new ways of developing Thailand’s rural and coastal areas through new economies linked to local ecology, industry, and craft.
Through reciprocal residencies in the UK and Thailand, Andrew and Chatpong will come together to share their work, discussing their process, learnings and outcomes. Exploring the parallels between their projects, they will share approaches to embracing vernacular styles, using locally available materials, and nurturing social enterprise.
Stay tuned to see more from the exchange. 🤝
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‘Intertidal Exchange’ is supported by the @britishcouncil through their Connections Through Culture grants programme.
The Na-Eh Bamboo Market for the Indigenous Karen Pwo Community.
Rachaburi Province, Thailand
In collaboration with: Yer der ner
Funded by the Thailand Office of Contemporary Art and Culture, The Ministry of Culture
Builder: Chusilp Cheechuang and the Na-Eh Community Builders
Project Designer: Napat Yanotai
In conceptualizing the Na-Eh Market with the architect, the Karen community did not want to simply create “food stalls”. Instead, they requested an environment in which they can cook and eat as a community while “feeling” nature. In response to this unique request, a triangulated bamboo structure was envisioned as a “breeze vessel” that invites the wind. The lower half of contains 9 food stalls while the upper half is an elevated eating open-air mezzanine …where customers can dine and observe local ‘tung’ mobiles moved by the wind…and listen to bamboo wind chimes against the backdrop of nearby forest harmonies. The Na-Eh Bamboo market was constructed by the Karen Pwo community themselves from the plentiful local bamboo forests.
RQ Apartments
Project Architect: Natthapakorn “Ken” Kapukum
Project Interior: Karn “Feem” Chuensriswang
Lighting Designer: Gooodlux Design Consultancy
Photography by: W Workspace
Owners: Amorn and Sons Company Ltd.
The RQ Apartment is the 3rd phase of the RQ Sports Community Development, predicated on adaptive re-use of existing structures and building walkable, human-scaled neighborhoods … over needless demolition/unnecessary new construction of formulaic condo high-rises.
RQ Apartment involves the transformation of a tropical, Mid-Century Modern 4-storey flat. This uniquely Bangkok building typology, once a common urban residential building type, is fast disappearing from the city.
The adaptive reuse strategy involved stripping away decades of building additions that clogged the original open/airy facades which allowed the building to breath. The design revived the iconic central open-air glass stair that feed two spacious family units per floor. The original balconies on the south façade were uncovered and expanded, allowing tenants to sit, eat, and relax… enjoying sounds of kids at the public pools below. Pop-out window boxes – breakfast nook, working table, and daybed - were added to the east and west façades allowing each unit to have an active interface between interiors and exterior. The bay windows push interior life to the building’s periphery, allowing the tenants to visually engage with the surrounding sports community. In turn, vertical snapshots of life on the facade inject add a sense of life to the neighborhood. The earth-tone terrazzo, orange clay tiles, and teal window frames were based on the original color material pallete that from the original 1970’s buildings on site.
RQ Apartment residents choose to live here, not to escape from their surroundings, but to actively engage with its community.
ขอบคุณทุกคนที่มาร่วมฟัง “Specific Spaces, Shared Experiences วงเสวนาว่าด้วยพื้นที่ในฐานะการออกแบบประสบการณ์ของชีวิต” กับ สนิทัศน์ ประดิษฐ์ทัศนีย์, ฉัตรพงษ์ ชื่นฤดีมล และสเตฟาโน ราโบลลี แพนเซรา
ด้วยนิทรรศการ "Description Without Place" ของ Absalon เป็นจุดตั้งต้น บทสนทนาในครั้งนี้ชวนให้เราพิจารณาพื้นที่ไม่ใช่เพียงสิ่งที่ถูกกำหนดมาแต่แรก หากแต่เป็นการวางเงื่อนไขบางอย่าง ที่หล่อหลอมวิธีที่เราปฏิสัมพันธ์ และแสดงออกภายในพื้นที่นั้น เงื่อนไขเหล่านี้มักเกิดขึ้นจากข้อจำกัด ไม่ว่าจะเป็นวัสดุ สถานที่ บริบท ทรัพยากร หรือการแสดงออกของตัวตน และเหล่านี้เองที่ทำให้พื้นที่เกิดความหมาย เปิดทางเข้าสู่สภาวะก้ำกึ่ง บุกเบิกอาณาเขตที่ไม่ยึดติดกับแผ่นดินใดๆ และเผยให้เห็นว่าพื้นที่คือที่ที่เราเผชิญกับประสบการณ์ของชีวิต ไม่ใช่แค่คงอยู่
ไม่ว่าจะเป็นพื้นที่สำหรับชีวิตส่วนตัวของคนเพียงหนึ่ง หรือสำหรับสาธารณะชนที่หลากหลายกว่านั้น เราหวังว่าทุกท่านจะกลับไปพร้อมมุมมองใหม่ต่อพื้นที่รอบตัว
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Thank you to everyone who joined our panel discussion, "Specific Spaces, Shared Experiences," with Sanitas Pradittasanee, Chatpong Chuenrudeemol, and Stefano Rabolli Pansera.
Taking Absalon's "Description Without Place" as a departure point, our conversation explored the idea that space is not simply a predetermined structure, but a set of conditions that shape how people interact and choreograph themselves within it. Often these conditions arise from limitations of material, site, context, means, or the expression of the self. And yet it is precisely through these constraints that space becomes meaningful, offering an entry point into the in-between, charting a new landless territory, and revealing space as something to be lived with rather than merely occupied.
Whether a space is designed for a single private life or for the many lives of a public, we hope our audiences leave with a new way of seeing the spaces around them.
Chat Chuenrudeemol, Director of Chat Architects, will be teaching Spring 2026 Options Studio, entitiled “Shophouse Metropolis”, at Harvard Graduate School of Design.
The Tarp Palace (ตำหนักสเเลน) was designed to showcase Thailand’s fashion industry in Thailand’s 2025 “Splash” Soft Power Expo, sponsored by Thailand’s Creative Culture Agency. The Event, under the theme “Sacred Skin” (inspired by the tradition of Thai spiritual tatoos) took place at Queen Sirikit Convention Center on July 8-11, 2025.
Tarp palace was created to exhibit renown Thai artist, Saran Yenpanya’s original “masterpieces” in the areas of jewelry, fashion, craft, and beauty. Each piece was based on the “beautiful conflicts” that bridge Thai high and low culture. Like the objects that are displayed inside, the architecture likewise reflects this high/low juxtaposition, an inherent contradiction that permeates through Thai culture and society…
Here, construction tarp drapes like silk…cheap, silver plastic skin worn with pride. Its silhouette nods to the temple, but its “street” tectonic is open-source, open-air, open-ended. The High-Low concept of the Sacred Skin Exhibition is reflected in the exhibition’s High-Low mongrel architecture. From a distance, the swooping roofs of the Tarp Palace suggests an architectural connection to Thailand’s tamnaks, or palaces. In contrast, its construction - a steel pipe structure wrapped in cheap agricultural tarp (salant) - is beautifully mundane, common, and low-end. To further blur the line between the high and low, a precious silver-colored tarp was selected to match the (naturally silver-toned) galvanized steel scaffolding. The result is a glistening, see-through exhibition shell that shimmers like a palace of precious alloy.
collaborative artist: Saran Yenpanya
project architect: Viphob “Deep” Manopanjasiri lighting design: Gooodlux
photos by W Workspace #wworkspace
The Indigo Loom House is a Sakon Nakhon Bastard, a crossbreed between the architecture of rice and the artifacts of weaving. Here, old wooden columns, beams, and rafters salvaged from the traditional houses-on-stilts are combined/retrofitted with components of old textile looms, warping boards, and spinning wheels.
Programmatically, the project serves as a community weaving workshop, allowing auntie weavers of Sakon Nakhon to leave the dark underbellies of their empty house to weave with other craft elders in a garden setting.
Owner: Prach “Mann” Niyomkar
Lead Architect: Chatpong Chuenrudeemol
Lead Researcher/Project Coordinator: Woranooch Chuenrudeemol
Project Architect: Dalia Schwarzbaum
On-Site Architect: Tat Tidtee Wattanamethee
Conceptual Design: Krittee “Gain” Meemongkol and Thanat “Atta” Attapibaln
Design Development: Chula INDA Indigo Loom House Studio. Indigo Loom House was funded by Office of Contemporary Art and Culture (Thailand Ministry of Art and Culture) and The International Program in Design and Architecture, Chulalongkorn University.
