The Modern Thailand House
‘Modern architecture is a creation of the West. In a non- Western context, it normally reflects a direct intervention of the Western powers through colonization. However, Thailand is an exception. Thai people adopted and assimilated Modern Architecture into their unique cultural tradition without being directly colonized.’ Koompong Noobanjong.
A decade has elapsed since the publication of my first book on houses in Thailand, entitled The New Thai House,2 which was, arguably, the fi rst publication in the English language to bring to the attention of an international audience the ground-breaking residential designs of an emerging generation of Thai architects, including Kanika R’kul (Ratanapridakul), Duangrit Bunnag and Somchai Jongsaeng. An informative essay in the book by Duangrit Bunnag, entitled ‘Co-Evolving Heterogeneity’ ,3 provided the historical context to the imaginative dwellings that were springing up in Thailand as the world entered a new millennium.
Ten years later, with rapid globalization and the penetration of digital technology into all aspects of life, the architectural landscape in Southeast Asia is changing rapidly and it is an appropriate time to assess the progress of the architects who I encountered in 2002 and, in addition, to visit the work of others who have attracted attention in the architectural media, among them Vasu Virajsilp and Boonlert Deeyuen of VaSLab Architecture, Tanit Choomsang and Khwanchai Suthamsao of Plankrich Architects and Boonlert Hemvijitraphan of Boon Design.
It was also an opportunity to renew a friendship with Dr Sumet Jumsai, a polymath and one of Thailand’s most respected modern architects. Now in his early seventies, Dr Jumsai devotes much of his productive time to painting. I heard that he had designed and built an entrancing Le Corbusier-inspired weekend studio in Sriracha, one hour south of Bangkok, and this was enough to entice me back to the Thai capital. But first let me explain how I came to be interested in Thailand’s architecture.
In June 1984, I took up an appointment in the School of Architecture at the National University of Singapore (NUS). Although my brief was to teach a design studio and to give Urban Design lectures based on mid-twentieth century European and American sources such as Kevin Lynch, Christopher Alexander, Rob Krier, Gordon Cullen and Jan Gehl, my real interest lay in contemporary Southeast Asian architecture. Thus, I set out in September of that year to backpack through Thailand. One of my colleagues in the School of Architecture in Singapore in 1984 was Mathar ‘Lek’ Bunnag, a Thai architect, recently graduated from Harvard University, who had taken up a teaching post at NUS prior to setting up his own successful practise. With Mathar’s assistance, I planned a route that took me from Bangkok to Chiangmai by train and thence by local transport to Fang where I boarded a ferryboat on the Fang River and journeyed downriver (accompanied by an armed guard) along the Burmese (Myanmar) border to Chiangrai, and then on to Mae Sae in the Golden Triangle overlooking Laos and Myanmar, before returning south on buses via Sukhothai and Ayuthaya.
The following year I was invited by Dr Suha Özkan, then the Deputy Secretary-General of the Aga Khan Award for Architecture (AKAA) in Geneva, and now the President of the World Architecture Community (WAC) based in Istanbul, to edit a series of seminar proceedings. The first of these seminars was held in Kuala Lumpur to debate Architecture and Identity.4 One of the participants in that symposium was Sumet Jumsai, who contributed a paper entitled ‘House on Stilts: Pointer to South East Asian Cultural Origin’. It was a condensed version of his major publication, Naga: Cultural Origins in Siam and the West Pacifi c.5 Hard on the heels of the Kuala Lumpur seminar came another in Bangladesh that explored the notion of Regionalism in Architecture.6 A year later, the AKAA assembled on the Mediterranean island of Malta, conveniently close to North Africa, to discuss Criticism in Architecture,7 and a fourth seminar one year later in Zanzibar addressed the subject of The Architecture of Housing.8 It was at this gathering in East Africa that I fi rst encountered and subsequently befriended Geoff rey Bawa, the renowned Sri Lankan architect who had such a profound infl uence on young architects in Southeast Asia from the mid-1980s onwards.
The informed discussions that took place at these four gatherings fueled my interest in residential architecture in Southeast Asia, and in the early 1990s I was commissioned by Lena Lim U Wen of Select Books (later Select Publishing) in Singapore to write The Asian House,9 an investigation of new houses in the region. I included fi ve houses in Thailand, two of them—Baan Rim Nam (1990) and Baan Soi Klang (1990)—designed by Nithi Sthapitanonda of A49. Khun Nithi, the Chairman of A49, was the pivotal fi gure in my early research on new houses in Thailand. Through his fi rm’s promotion of the journal art4d, he has brought the work of many young Thai architects to the attention of a wider audience. Today, he continues to do this through Li-Zenn Publishing.
Other houses that featured in my fi rst foray into Thailand included Baan Ton Son (1990) designed by Prapapat and Theeraphon Niyom of Plan Architect Co. Ltd., the Vacharphol House (1990) designed by John Rifenberg, a long-time American resident in Bangkok, and the Tiptus House (1983), a seminal dwelling built for their own occupation by Booyawat and Pussadee Tiptus. The latter house was a conscious act of resistance to the intrusion of ‘international style’ architecture into Thai culture, and it received the Association of Siamese Architects under Royal Patronage Gold Medal in 1984.
Baan Ton Son was thought-provoking for it was the fi rst time I had encountered the concept of a ‘three-generation house’. It is a form of family dwelling not commonly found in the UK where I spent my childhood and, indeed, it seems to be a uniquely Asian concept closely tied to a culture of fi lial piety. I will return to this later.
In this he wrote: ‘In order to get on the road to modernisation, is it necessary to jettison the old cultural past...? On the one hand the nation has to root itself in the soil of its past, forge a national spirit and unfurl this spiritual and cultural revindication of the colonists personality. But in order to take part in modern civilisation, it is necessary at the same time to invest in scientifi c, technical and political rationality; something which often requires the pure and simple abandonment of a whole cultural past. There is the paradox; how to become modern and to return to your sources.’11 Notwithstanding the fact that Thailand has never been under colonial rule, all fi ve houses, it occurred to me, were attempts to resolve this paradox.
Duangrit Bunnag has succinctly summarized this situation in the Thailand context. ‘Part of the political agenda of Siamese architecture’, he wrote in his 2003 essay, ‘has been to reject the international move- ment in architecture as a heretic idea capable of destroying “locality” in Thai architecture. Nevertheless in the latter half of the 20th century Thai architecture could never have advanced without the foreign factor.... The idea of a global lifestyle utilizing contemporary forms, modern materials and information technology has become the crucial “external force” that co-evolves with Thai “internal forces” of culture, tradition, environment and context.’
Three years later, I published another book, The Tropical Asian House, that continued my investigation.13 Once again, I returned to consult Nithi Sthapitanonda at A49 and included Baan Chang Nag, a vacation house he had designed in Chiangmai (1994). This house was closely aligned with traditional forms, as was Baan Bill Bensley (1992), the faithful reconstruction of two traditional dwellings in Bangkok by Bill Bensley and Saichol Saejew of Bensley Design studio to form an urban home for the expatriate American landscape architect and his partner Jirachai. A third home, the Dutchanee House (1980), was another reconstructed traditional dwelling in Chiangrai by the controversial artist Thawan Dutchanee. In complete contrast were two houses that employed a totally modern architectural language, namely the Cubic House (1990) by Vittvat Charoenpong, an assistant dean in the Faculty of Architecture at Rangsit University, and Baan In-Chan (1993) by Chirakorn Prasongkit of ACP Co. Ltd.
In 1997, I was invited by Duangrit Bunnag to address the Association of Siamese Architects Under Royal Patronage on ‘Regionalism in Architecture’. The previous year, the annual lecture had been delivered by Zaha Hadid on ‘Urban Phenomena’ and the following year by Rem Koolhaas on ‘Brave New World’, so the invitation appeared to recognize the relevance of the issues raised in my earlier books.
The Tropical Asian House proved to be a huge success and my publisher encouraged me to write a third volume, The Urban Asian House.14 This book included Baan Prabhawiwat (1997), another house designed by Vittvat Charoenpong, and Baan Impuntung (1997), the home of Vira Impuntung, an associate professor at the School of Architecture at Silpakorn University.
Two more years passed and I returned to Thailand while researching a fourth book, The New Asian House.15 It was evident there was increasing confi dence among a younger generation of architects returning from their studies overseas. House U3 designed by Kanika Ratanapridakul (1997) was a seminal residence that was modern and yet embodied the spirit of a traditional dwelling. The Chindavanig House (1992) by Thanit Chindavanig, an assistant professor at Chulalongkorn University, also explored a modern expression of a traditional form. Two other houses, the Krissana Tanatanit House (1997) by Channa Sumpalang of A49, and a modern house designed for his own family by Somchai Jongsaeng of DECA Atelier (1990), completed the entries in the book.
The following year, my publisher decided to bring all sixteen houses together in a single volume, The New Thai House,16 and I added four more houses—the V42 House (2002) by DBALP, the emerging practise of Duangrit Bunnag; Baan Tawan-ork (2002) by Pirast Pacharaswate, an assistant professor in the School of Architecture at Chulalongkorn University; Baan Rimtai (2000), a resort villa in Chiangmai by Nithi Sthapitanonda of A49, and the innovative modern Prabhakorn House (2002) by the successor to Khun Nithi as chairman of A49, Prabhakorn Vadanyakul. The twenty houses were together a condensed summary of the development of the modern Thai house from 1980 to 2002.
The Modern Thai House 2002–2012
‘Throughout history the private house has played [a] role. Unlike large projects, which normally require broader societal corporate or political consensus, the private house can be realized through the efforts of a few people. It often expresses in the most uncompromising way possible, the vision of a client or architect, or both.’ Terence Riley
Fast forward ten years to the current publication—The Modern Thai House. In 2010, I assembled a list of houses, initially seeking advice from the architects whose work appeared in previous books, and in April 2011 I embarked on an extensive journey with photographer Albert Lim KS to visit some forty houses that we had identified.
The houses are located in or are readily accessible from Bangkok, Phuket and Chiangmai and are, with several notable exceptions, the product of a generation of Thai architects who at the time of writing are in their late thirties or early forties. They include Aroon Puritat, Boonlert Deeyuen, Boonlert Hemvijitraphran, Bundit Kanisthakhon, Duangrit Bunnag, Juthathip Techachumreon, Kanika R’kul (Ratanapridakul), Kwanchai Suthamsao, Pattawadee Roogrojdee, Pirast Pacharaswate, Ponlawat Buasri, Somchai Jongsaeng, Songsuda Adhibai, Srisak Phattanawasin, Surachai Akekapobyotin, Tanit Choomsang and Vasu Virajsilp.
It is, perhaps, not surprising that the work of this youthful generation of Thai architects has an affi nity with the products of their contem- poraries in Malaysia, Singapore, Indonesia and the Philippines, although there is little evidence of an overarching bond other than ARCASIA, the regional forum of the professional institutes of these and other Asian countries and organizations, such AA Asia, based in Singapore, and Asian Design Forum (ADF), the brainchild of Malaysian architect Ken Yeang.
Most of the architects named above and in my earlier publication, The New Thai House, completed their undergraduate studies at one of the established architecture schools in Thailand—Chulalongkorn University in Bangkok, Silpakorn University, also in Bangkok, Rangsit University, King Mongkut Institute of Technology Ladkrabang University (KMITL), Thammasat University Bangkok, Ratchamangala University of Technology Lanna Chiangmai (RUTLC) and King Mongkut University of Technology Thonburi (KMUTT).
With two exceptions, all the architects featured in this new publication pursued graduate studies in the US or the UK. Sumet Jumsai was awarded his doctorate by Cambridge University and Duangrit Bunnag and Stefan Schlau studied at the Architectural Association in London. Boonlert Hemvijitraphran gained his Masters qualifi cation at the Bartlett School of Architecture, also in London, and Tanit Choomsang gained a Masters degree in Urban Design at the University of the West of England (UWE) at Bristol, while John Bulcock is a graduate of the Hull School of Architecture in the north of England. These six architects are responsible for eleven of the houses illustrated in this volume. The European experience is in one sense a ‘rite of passage’ that began as early as the reign of King Rama Vll when, according to Professor Pussadee Tiptus, ‘many Thai students, supported by Government scholarships or private funds, set out to England and France in quest of further education in western architecture’.
The USA has been the chosen route for graduate studies for eight other architects featured in this book. Kanika R’kul (Ratanapridakul) studied at SCI-Arc and Southern Illinois University and Srisak Phattana- wasin gained his Masters degree at Ohio State University, while Bundit Kanisthakhon studied at the University of Washington and MIT. Vasu Virajsilp gained his qualifi cations at Pratt Institute and Columbia University New York and Songsuda Adhibai at the University of Colorado. Three architects—Pirast Pacharaswate, Surachai Akekapobyotin and Juthathip Techachumreon—studied for their Masters qualifi cations at the University of Michigan, Ann Arbor. The architects who followed the USA path are responsible for ten of the houses illustrated in this publication, while Ernesto Bedmar, who trained at the University of Cordoba, Argentina, is the designer of another.
Thus, architects who have pursued a master’s degree or Ph.D. in America or Europe designed twenty of the twenty-fi ve houses featured here and, even if the sample is not large, my conclusion is that Thai architects are closely allied to architectural production in the West. It confirms a trend I noted in The New Thai House, published in 2003, where architects who pursued their higher architectural qualifi cations in the US or the UK designed fi fteen of the twenty houses featured.
At the same time, the fi rst decade of the twenty-fi rst century has seen a huge shift in the way in which ideas are disseminated. The infl uence of the Internet and www is pervasive and the work of signature architects is immediately accessible ‘on line’. It is evident that the towering fi gures of twentieth-century modernism, including Le Corbusier, Gerrit Rietveld, Rudolf Schindler, Walter Gropius, Louis Kahn, and particularly Mies van der Rohe, have been a signifi cant infl uence on the current generation of architects.
The work of the Bauhaus and De Stijl movement are also relevant, and the projects of signature architects such as Peter Zumthor, Rem Koolhaas, Zaha Hadid, Coop Himmelblau, Luis Barragan, Morphosis, Miguel Angel Roca and Ken Yeang surface in discussions with Thai architects, while Japanese architects Tadao Ando, Kazuo Shinohara, Toyo Ito, Kengo Kuma and Kazuyo Sejima have also been infl uential. Geoff rey Bawa’s sensitive modernism has inspired several architects, while nearer home Mathar Bunnag and Kanika R’kul are both described as ‘inspirational’ practitioners and teachers and Nithi Sthapatinonda has furthered the career of several young architects.
Academic mentors have been an important source of inspiration, too, so that theoretical constructs and design methodologies can often be traced back to Peter Cook, Jeff rey Kipness and Michael Lloyd in the UK, and to Bernard Tschumi, Raymond Abraham, Jim Schaff er, Hasan-Uddin Khan and José Oubrerie in the US. An earlier generation of academic gurus that included Colin Rowe and Buckminster Fuller is also acknowledged.
This roll call of professional and academic infl uences indicates a strong connection to mainstream modernism emanating from Europe and North America.
Endnotes
1. Koompong Noobanjong, ‘A Literature Review’, Power, Identity and the Rise of Modern Architecture: From Siam to Thailand, College of Architecture and Planning, University of Colorado, 2001, p. 1.
2. Robert Powell, The New Thai House, Select Publishing, Singapore, 2003.
3. Duangrit Bunnag, ‘Co-Evolving Heterogeneity’, in Robert Powell, The New Thai House, Select Publishing, Singapore, 2003, pp. 10–21.
4. Robert Powell (ed.), Architecture and Identity: Exploring Architecture in Islamic Cultures, Vol. 1, The Aga Khan Award for Architecture, Concept Media, Singapore, 1983.
5. Sumet Jumsai, Naga: Cultural Origins in Siam and the West Pacific, Oxford University Press, Singapore, 1987.
6. Robert Powell (ed.), Regionalism in Architecture: Exploring Architecture in Islamic Cultures, Vol. 2, The Aga Khan Award for Architecture, Concept Media, Singapore, 1987.
7. Robert Powell (ed.), Criticism in Architecture: Exploring Architecture in Islamic Cultures, Vol. 3, The Aga Khan Award for Architecture, Concept Media, Singapore, 1989.
8. Robert Powell (ed.), The Architecture of Housing: Exploring Architecture in Islamic Cultures, Vol. 4, The Aga Khan Award for Architecture, Aga Khan Trust for Culture, Geneva, 1990.
9. Robert Powell, The Asian House, Select Books, Singapore, 1993.
10. Nithi Sthapitanonda (ed.), Houses by Thai Architects, Vol. 1, Li-Zenn Publishing, Bangkok, 2008.
11. Paul Ricouer, ‘Universal Civilisations and National Cultures’, History and Truth, Northwestern University Press, Evanston, 1965, pp. 271–84.
12. Duangrit Bunnag, ‘Co-Evolving Heterogeneity’, p. 11.
13. Robert Powell, The Tropical Asian House, Select Books, Singapore, 1996.
14. Robert Powell, The Urban Asian House, Select Books, Singapore, 1998.
15. Robert Powell, The New Asian House, Select Publishing, Singapore, 2001.
16. Powell, The New Thai House, op. cit.
17. Terence Riley, The Un-Private House, Museum of Modern Art, New York, 1999, p. 28.
18. Pussadee Tiptus, ‘Architecture in Thailand in the Rattanakosin Period’, in Chadanuch Wangroongaroona (ed.), Thailand: Two Decades of Building Design, Sang-Aroon Arts and Culture Center, Bangkok, 1989, p. 8.
19. Leon van Schaik, ‘SCDA Architects: A Review’, SIA-GETZ Architecture Prize for Emerging Architecture, exhibition catalog, Singapore, 2006.
20. Powell, The Asian House, pp. 10–11.
21. Riley, The Un-Private House, p. 35.
22. ‘When a house is more than a home,’ Estates Report, Bangkok
23. Geoff rey Bawa, in discussion with the author, November 1994.
24. Sumet Jumsai, Naga, p. 60.
25. William Warren, Thai Style, Asia Books, Bangkok, 1988, pp. 202–3.
26. Duangrit Bunnag, ‘Co-Evolving Heterogeneity’, p.21.
27. Inevitably, this book is a ‘snapshot’ taken at a specifi c time (October 2011) and as such there are omissions. Th e intention was to include houses designed by A49, Architect Kidd, Cholatis Tamthal, Idin Architect, Natee Suphavilai and Pornchai Boonsom. A combination of time constraints, publishing deadlines and, in some cases, the reluctance of owners to reveal their private domain meant that houses designed by these architects missed the cut.
28. The forty-five houses in this book and my earlier publication, The New Thai House, are a comprehensive catalog of the evolution of the modern Thai residence over the three decades 1980–2011.
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