Three Generation Houses
‘The regionally unique family compound ... merits far greater analysis than has been given to it as yet.… Are the spaces as layered and veiled as they appear to be? How do they allow for the subtle ranges of “knowing” and “choosing-not-to-know” that must characterise the relationships between the three genera- tions of the family that inhabit a commune?’ Leon van Schaik
Six of the houses in this new book are so-called three-generation houses. I fi rst encountered the concept of an extended family living together in 1992 when visiting Baan Ton Son (1990) designed by Prapapat and Theeraphon Niyom of Plan Architects. The compound accessed by a narrow lane off Ploenjit Road in Bangkok has four separate dwellings— the architects and their two children occupied one with an adjacent dwelling occupied by Prapapat Niyom’s mother. A third house was the home of her elder sister’s family and a fourth the residence of her brother’s family. It is a form of cohabitation that is largely unknown in my own (British) culture. The concept of an extended family living together was also evident in House U3 (1997), a seminal dwelling in Bangkok designed by architect Kanika Ratanapridakul for herself, her parents and her sister.
In this new publication, there are several examples of this cultural phenomena, including the Three Parallel House (Baan Sam Kanan), also designed by Kanika R’kul. Somprasong Sahavat, one of the owners, says of the design: ‘Our house is essentially a place where the extended family can live together but be independent.’ This is also the case with the Baan Taab 1, which occupies a shared compound. ‘In the three-generation compound we are’, says the architect/owner, ‘connected but separate. This is the future; we live together so that we take care of my wife’s parents, one of whom is disabled and they in turn get to enjoy their off spring.
’ Similarly, the Yellow Hole House in Chiangmai designed by Plankrich Architects and owned and occupied by Sivika Sirisanthana and her younger brother, is built in the garden of their parents’ house. The Komkrit House too is a three-generation home designed by Boonlert Hemvijitraphan where, in addition to two lawyers and their daughter, the house is also home to a sister in a self-contained apartment on the lower fl oor of the main house, and a retired parent, formerly an engineer with a Japanese automotive firm.
Another example is the Harirak House, where the owner’s mother currently occupies an old house behind her daughter’s residence but the family hope that she will at some time in the future move to what is already referred to as the ‘mothers house’, currently used as a study and guest accommodation. It is a sentiment echoed by other house owners; indeed, it would appear that the three-generation house is enduring in Thai culture. There may be economic as well as cultural reasons for this, for the cost of land is high in the city and often the only way for a young couple to aff ord a home is to build in the garden of their parents’ home.
The multigenerational home presents a number of challenges for the designer. There are hierarchies of privacy to consider, and it is necessary for the architect to understand the relationships between members of the family. There is a balance to be maintained between intimate and private space and shared space that refl ects the family structure.
Factored into the design there must also be provision of ‘maid space’. Few of the houses in this book would be able to function without domestic staff employed to care for children or elderly relatives or in countless other roles as cooks, cleaners, gardeners, drivers and security personnel. Staff must be accommodated in a manner that does not intrude into the privacy of the family but simultaneously be on hand to perform often intimate tasks. Domestic employees are paradoxically required to be present but ‘invisible’.
Architectural Patronage
‘The houses in this book represent a spectrum of responses to cultural change in Southeast Asia…. The houses are a barometer of taste and changing attitudes…. The owners may be collectively termed the well educated and relatively wealthy. It is often those who can afford to build their own houses and commission architects to design them who determine the aspirations of others.’ Robert Powell
In common with Indonesia, Singapore and Malaysia, the growth of a highly educated and widely traveled middle and upper middle class in Thailand has changed the profi le of clients. Thus, the patrons of the houses illustrated in this book include academics, international lawyers, an investment analyst, an art dealer, a popular singer, a TV personality,a newspaper editor, a public relations and advertising consultant, a photographer, an artist, several architects, a fi nancial controller and a global banker, many of whom also pursued their education overseas.
In the fi rst decade of the twenty-fi rst century, the notion of globaliz- ation pervades the language of political, economic and cultural discourse. This has a signifi cant eff ect on architecture and urban forms. In the contemporary world system, architecture is a commodity that fl ows across national boundaries. In addition, the people who commis- sion private houses are via the Internet ‘wired’ to current fashion.
For an architect, the design of an individual family dwelling is a demanding yet ultimately rewarding task. Rarely will the designer have such a close relationship with the end user. The most successful houses arise out of a strong empathy between the client and the designer. This compatibility is of critical importance because a house is ultimately ‘a social portrait of its owner’.
Weekend And Vacation Homes
‘Could it be that it will become more common for people to spend less on their homes-workplaces and save their earnings to buy weekend houses, thereby reintegrating solitude into an otherwise wired world?’ Terence Riley
The rapid growth of Bangkok and the accompanying problems of increased density, traffi c congestion and pollution have seen the proliferation of a parallel phenomenon—second homes. When city dwellers have suffi cient means to escape the frenetic pace of life in the city, they acquire a site some distance from the city to build a second home. Preferably the site will be off the beaten track yet accessible, and although somewhat isolated not without basic services.
The owners of The Other Residence at Khao Yai have their main residence in central Bangkok but they enjoy escaping from the city at every possible opportunity. ‘The capital is a quality place to work,’ says Jens Niedzielski, ‘but not to live. This house is an antidote to life in Bangkok.’ Both he and his wife, Paramee Thongcharoen, were united in their requirement that the house should be ‘a home away from home’.Likewise, the Acharapan House is a sanctuary for its owner, the veteran TV personality and actress Pa Ji. When the owner arrives at her house in Nakorn Chaisri, she is happy to live a simple life amidst natural surroundings. ‘When I have to work, I stay in my house in Bangkok,’ she remarks. ‘But whenever I am free from all burdens, I will head to my second home, my favorite place to relax my body and soul.’
Similarly, Sumet Jumsai attempts to frequently escape to his painting studio in Sriracha, a one-hour drive from Bangkok, for it is a place where, unlike the metropolis, the skies are clear in the afternoons and evenings and the light is excellent. ‘This house has been designed for the use of ’ explains the architect/owner. ‘I come here on weekends solely to paint.’
Other houses are vacation homes and the primary residence of their owner is elsewhere. Laemsingh Villa No. 1 at Surin Beach, Phuket, is the holiday home of Australian Julien Reis and his Singaporean wife Yen. The couple are the proprietors of Gallery Reis, located in the Palais Renaissance retail mall in Singapore. And Villa Noi, the vacation home of Hong Kong banker H. Chin Chou and his wife Veronica, is located at Natai Beach, adjacent to the Aleenta Resort and Spa in Phuket.
Sustainability
In a world where climate change and carbon emissions will impact upon every region and every country, there is evidence of an increasing awareness of the responsibility of architects to build in a sustainable manner. Sustainability, ecological design, bioclimatic performance and green credentials are now high on the agenda of many prospective house owners and, interestingly, these are now marketable aspects. The houses in this book generally show a grasp of the principles of designing with climate. They are concerned with orientation in relation to the sunpath and to wind. Overhanging eaves are part of the vocabulary that most architects draw upon, as are high ceilings, louvered walls, and the use of the ‘skin’ of the building as a permeable fi lter.
It is evident also that architects appreciate that buildings in the tropics should be designed in section rather than in plan. The roof is frequently the most important element in the design of a house, providing shade from the sun and shelter from the monsoon rains. Water is incorporated into a number of dwellings, and increasingly it is recycled.
I make no apologies for reiterating these and other attributes of a dwelling in the tropics that I summarized in 1996 in The Tropical Asian House and have repeated in subsequent publications. The fi rst three criteria were articulated in a discussion with Geoff rey Bawa while dining on the terrace of his home at Lunuganga in Sri Lanka.23 He asserted that a house in the tropics is about living in close proximity to the natural world and therefore a house in the tropics should not destroy any substantial trees on the site. A house in the tropics, he said, should be designed with the minimal use of glass while other attributes include the use of gardens and non-refl ective surfaces to reduce radiated heat, wide overhanging eaves to provide shade, the omission of gutters, in-between spaces in the form of verandas, terraces and shaded balconies, tall rooms to create thermal air mass and provide thermal insulation, permeable walls facing prevailing winds to give natural ventilation, and plans that are one room deep with openings on opposite sides capable of being adjusted to promote natural ventilation by the ‘venturi’ eff ect.
Several architects in this book are adherents to what I call the ‘Bawa principles’. Of the Dama zAmya House in Phuket, the architect John Bulcock states: ‘All our projects incorporate passive design, including orientation to minimize the area of exposed heat absorbing hard surfaces, roof overhangs, rainwater harvesting, and landscape as an integral design element for shading and cooling.’
Further cooling strategies include roof surfaces that are either vegetated or pebbled, creating garden spaces for entertaining as well as providing additional insulation for interior spaces. ‘For ten months of the year we don’t use air-conditioning,’ affi rms the owner of the house, Gary Dublanko. ‘There is abundant natural ventilation and the house cools down quickly at night. On still days a fan is utilized.’ Rainwater is collected from the roofs and channeled into an 80,000-liter underground storage tank. During the dry season, water from a 72-meter-deep well supplements the tank. All wastewater is treated on site by an Aerotol septic system.
Similarly, upon deciding to build her house in Chiangmai, Carol Grodzins drew on her earlier experience of living in a Dayak longhouse in the 1960s. She recalled the wisdom of cross-ventilation, orientation to catch the prevailing breeze, balconies and verandas, and wide overhanging eaves to provide shade, and resolved, when instructing her architect, to draw upon what she terms the ‘ancient wisdom’. All of this would have been recognizable to Bawa, while another dwelling, the Soi Wat Umong House, also in Chiangmai, embodies another Bawa edict. The owners, Rirkrit Tiravanija and Antoinette Aurell, declared that their house was to be built without destroying any trees on the site, so at the outset all the trees were marked.
In yet another response to climate, Kanika R’kul, the architect of the DKFF House in Bangkok, carried out extensive solar studies. A planted sedum grass roof was seriously considered but eventually a decision was made to go for a relatively light roof, insulated with shredded newsprint. The roof has wide overhanging eaves to shade the glass and for energy conservation. Solar studies also informed the design of shading devices to deal with sunlight in the late afternoon.
Yet, a major challenge facing architects in Bangkok is to design houses that permit their clients to live a relaxed open lifestyle with verandas, terraces and courtyard spaces while simultaneously solving issues of security. Living in a conurbation necessitates a variety of responses to the perceived threat of intruders, including high perimeter walls and electronic surveillance devices. A house in the city invariably includes some means of isolating and securing the family sleeping quarters at night.
The houses frequently embody a hierarchy of privacy, with a public façade that seeks not to attract undue attention or to make an extrava- gant display of wealth, and interior spaces that embrace and shelter their occupants while opening out to courtyards and terraces. The houses provide a haven of calm and a refuge from the frantic pace of life in the city and seek to modify the eff ects of air pollution, noise and increasingly high temperatures that inevitably necessitate air-conditioning in some parts of a house.
The Aurapin House in the Ladprao area of Bangkok has a calm atmosphere that, amidst the frenetic bustle of the city, is a quiet retreat. No matter how hot the climate, architect Boonlert Hemvijitraphan asserts, the house is always cool. The house is lightly ‘clothed’ with steel and bamboo screens that form a second ‘skin’, and because of the movable components permits cross-ventilation. The simple concept underlying the design of the house is ‘to be part of the garden—to live in the garden’, the architect explains.
In the L71 House, also in Ladprao, owners Tosaporn and Samorn Wongweratom required the separation of ‘public’ and ‘private’ spaces. The various functions of reception, living and dining are consequently rationally planned in a linear configuration of interlocking spaces, while external landscape is ‘inserted’ into the spatial planning. The house owners have occasional parties and thus the public areas are located close to the parking at the entrance to the house whereas private areas such as the dining room are located at the rear.
In the Bunker House at Lopburi, architects Vasu Virajsilp and Boonlert Deeyuen have succeeded in answering the owners expressed desire for privacy while simultaneously requiring interaction with the outside. They have worked with the contradictions inherent in the request, such as ‘hidden versus visible’ and ‘secure versus open’. The house is private, yet the owners can observe life on the street from their living room.
Cultural Memory
Several houses in this book are raised on concrete piles. The Aurapin House, the Harirak House, Baan Jew, the Soi Wat Umong House and the Acharapan House are all elevated approximately one meter above ground level and entered by a short fl ight of stairs, while Carol Grodzins’ House and the Lampyris House are built on tall piloti. Whether con- sciously or otherwise, these dwellings appear to confirm Sumet Jumsai’s contention that the aquatic origins of the Siamese still exist.
There is a constant reminder of these aquatic origins with the presence of water in every house showcased in this book. Four of the houses are located on the coast. Villa Noi and Laemsingh Villa No. 1 in Phuket overlook the Andaman Sea, while Serenity, another house on the island of Phuket, has vistas over Phang Nga Bay. Sumet Jumsai’s own studio at Srirachi, an hour south of Bangkok, faces the Gulf of Siam. Dama zAmya is perched atop a hill in Phuket, with magnifi cent views to the north of Ngam Island and Pa Yu and with Kung Bay in the foreground.
Inland, the Acharapan House and DKFF House on the outskirts of Bangkok are located alongside large ponds, while Carol Grodzins’ House in Chiangmai overlooks a small inland lake. The site of the Harirak Residence includes the remains of an urban klong formerly part of a network of inland waterways in Bangkok. In every other house featured here, the owners have incorporated water in some form or other—a lap pool, a koi pond, a fountain or a waterfall.
Several houses incorporate a high 40-degree pitched roof underdrawn with a sloping timber soffi t. This construction detail is evident in the Trop V House, the Harirak House, Laemsingh Villa No. 1, Carole Grodzins’ House and the Acharapan House, and instantly evokes memories of the interior of traditional timber houses in Thailand, as indeed does the open-to-sky timber ‘deck’ found in the Soi Wat Umong House, Laemsingh Villa No. 1 and Villa Noi that suggests a tenuous link to the traditional dwellings of the central region of Thailand in the Rattanakosin period (1782 onwards), which comprised a series of pavilions arranged around a wooden platform. Carole Grodzins’ House, with its broad timber veranda, similarly embodies features of a traditional Northern Thai House.
All these cultural references reinforce the conclusions of Duangrit Bunnag in ‘Co-Evolving Heterogeneity’ that introduced my earlier book, where he noted that ‘Throughout the history of modern architecture in Thailand, houses have been generally a form of negotiation between foreign architectural ideas and the local context which includes lifestyle and culture, climate and traditional architectural vocabularies. The signifi cant fact is that where negotiation ends, co-evolution begins. In the hands of local architects the external forces seem to develop an internal force, and vice versa, so that the result is a coherent structure and not a collision of styles.’
A Remarkable Decade
A signifi cant number of sophisticated and sensitively designed dwellings have been produced in Thailand in the fi rst decade of the twenty-fi rst century. The houses illustrate radical design investigation and architects are producing work that is comparable with and in some cases surpasses the very best in the world. Nurtured by increasingly knowledgeable patronage, modern Thai houses are emerging in a variety of innovative architectural expressions.
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