Tanapol Kositsurungkakul. From Commodification to Cooperation.
From Commodification to Cooperation Architecture of Trading and Form of Social Solidarity Network in Bangkok
Tanapol Kositsurungkakul
Program: Projective Cities, Taught MPhil in Architecture and Urban Design
Term: Term 5/ Dissertation
Student Name: Tanapol Kositsurungkakul
Dissertation Title: From Commodification to Cooperation / Architecture of Trading and Form of Social Solidarity Network in Bangkok
Course Tutor: Platon Issaias
Hamed Khosravi
Doreen Bernath
Raul P. Avilla
Cristina Gamboa
Mark Campbell
MPhil in Architecture and Urban Design Projective Cities, 2019/2021
Architectural Association School of Architecture Graduate School
Declaration:
“I certify that this piece of work is entirely my/our own and that any quotation or paraphrase from the published or unpublished work of others is duly acknowledged.”
Tanapol Kositsurungkakul May, 2021
Abstract
This thesis investigates how the food trading system of Bangkok has evolved since the period of Colonialism, and how it influences the production of architectural and urban space in the city. Although the Kingdom of Siam was never directly colonised, European imperialist forces saw it as one of their extended territories, which Lefebvre described as ‘a space of accumulation’ by the European Empire. This perspective gave rise to Thailand’s unprecedented economic domination over agricultural products that, on the one hand, was a driver for the country’s economy but which, on the other hand, suppressed producers’ negotiating powers. In resistance to this, the cooperative system which emerged in the twentieth century empowered farmers and allowed them to compete within the capitalist market structure. Bangkok offers an opportunity to study the struggles of precarious agricultural labour and forms of collective resistance against the market structures established under the Colonial framework.
The thesis focuses in particular on the market hall building as a component of food logistics that plays a socio-economic role in organising trading activities in the urban space. The market hall is a trading apparatus used by the authorities to assert regulatory control and gain politico-economic power. The analysis undertaken in this thesis of case studies of market halls regulated by the municipality shows the patterns of normalisation that render processes of trading into generic standards removed from the concerns of the everyday activities of the traders. In order to dismantle the tendency to consider trading as a set of generic, standardised processes, the research undertaken here on the differentiated and specific activities of market vendors in relation to a multitude of specific products becomes instrumental for the thesis to challenge current assumptions.
It is crucial to rethink the role of traders, farmers and buyers in the market space. These main users have been deliberately abstracted and quantified to fit the protocols of spatial calculation and bodily control. The market as a collective apparatus must be redefined through the lens of cooperative infrastructures for specific groups of people and activities in the neighbourhood. The project proposed by this dissertation is a system of welfare infrastructure, including food, care, health and education services, provided by the cooperative solidarity networks that operate within the territories of the city. This agglomeration of programs reconnects previously segregated activities and brings them into new adjacency and synchronicity, aiming to enhance both collective identities and relations among different groups of people.
Introduction
Fig. 1 A photography of Talaad Tha Tian, vendors selling agricultural products on the street.
This thesis is premised on the urgency of addressing the problems confronting small-scale producers in the vicinity of the city, and small-business traders within the city, in Bangkok’s contemporary urban food metabolism. These problems were significantly exacerbated by the decision of the Thai government in 2012 to turn its agricultural industry into its main export business, as part of the development project ‘Thailand: Kitchen of the World’. The development of agricultural business as a principle economic driver has increased the amount of production in the country; however, it is large-scale agricultural business that heavily dominates the food supply chain, and which has taken advantage of the scale of production available to them to reduce product prices. Smallscale businesses involved in the production of raw ingredients and cooked food have struggled to compete within the price-oriented economy. In order to understand the cause of this contemporary market system, it is necessary to trace the emergence of the colonial market system in the history of South East Asia.
Food production in Southeast Asia since the Colonial period has been governed, manipulated and managed through the paradigm of commodity. A commodity, as Marx suggests in Das Kapital, is an object that has an ability to satisfy humans’ needs and which consists of two properties: its use value and its exchange value. The colonial trading system transformed the use value of crops from products for eating into an object to be commodified. As the free market system consolidates the exchange value of food as commodity, food trading has been dominated by the industrialised large-scale food company, controlling the entire supply chain from seeds to the distribution channels of modern trade supermarkets. Consequently, independent, small-scale farmers are usually deprived of resourcesland, water, labour, production equipment and capital - due to their lack of competitive power in the commodified food system
One attempt to counter this system was the establishment by Siam’s autocratic government of agricultural cooperatives in the rural area in the beginning of twentieth century. It identified the problem of rural farmers who were devoid of capital, necessarily relying on money lending or advances, and inevitably charged high interest rates for the privilege. The aim of the government, on the one hand, was to offer a lower interest credit which could reduce the cost invested in production and, on the other hand, to use the cooperative as a politico-economic tool to organise the money lending and debt repayment of farmers1. The first cooperative was established in Phitsanulok, an under-utilised part of the country, to support the newly settled community and encourage internal migration to the area, which could in turn increase the productivity of the land2. Nowadays, the agricultural cooperative movement is well recognised, organised and supported by the Ministry of Agriculture and Cooperatives. As such, the cooperative movement in Thailand is widely practiced. An agricultural cooperative consists of a group of farmers who grow similar crops and pool their resources in order to access means of production such as fertiliser, farming tools,
1 Masahiro, Yamao, Cooperative Movement in Thailand: Towards the Establishment of Cooperatives Society Act in 1968 [南太平洋研究=South Pacific Study, Vol.13, No.2] p. 187
2 The History of Cooperative Movement in Thailand (ประวัติการสหกรณ์ ในประเทศไทย) <http:// www.sahakornthai. com/prasat/index.php/
3 Rawes, Peg, Housing Biopolitics and Care, Critical and Clinical Cartographies: Architecture, Robotics, Medicine, Philosophy, (dinburgh University Press, 2017) p.81
money loans and distribution channels through the cooperative shop. Each cooperative manages to collectively assemble the means of production to reduce costs, such as a rice mill for rice farmer cooperatives and a slaughterhouse for livestock cooperatives. The cooperative also acts as a middleman trader, buying products from members to secure a certain price standard. However, it still lacks a direct distribution channel to consumers.
While the infrastructural support from contemporary cooperatives is widely practiced in the rural areas of food production, the distribution channels remain highly controlled by the municipality and private company. The Department of Agricultural Extension, responsible for supporting agricultural cooperatives, has attempted to establish programs to promote a better distribution model by increasing the quantity of sales by cooperatives, farmers’ market events, and skill and knowledge trainings for farmers; however, there is still a lack of support for traders in the city. Rather, urban traders often encounter the harsh response of eviction from their operable selling locations, and are relocated to the constructed market buildings. This thesis recognises the market architecture as an infrastructure for food distribution in the city. The space of the market that accommodates an agglomeration of small-business traders and buyers as public activities can be reconceptualised through the operation of cooperative organisations with alternative forms of ownership, management and type. It offers an alternative market typology that facilitates and promotes the social value of the community, and connects local neighbourhoods to communities in a wider periphery.
By re-examining the architectural typology of the market hall in Bangkok, the research undertaken in this thesis reveals how it became instrumentalised by the authorities for the organisation and control of trading activities performed by sellers and buyers. The Bangkok Metropolitan Authority, a municipal body responsible for the erection of market halls, used them as a tool to control vendors, forcing them to sell in a way deemed, from authoritative eyes, appropriate. The standardisation in Ministerial Regulation on the Sanitation of Marketplace 2008 is highly focused on regulating both the architecture of, and the bodily control in the market hall. The current standard can be recognised as a generic distribution of the minimum provision of infrastructure: stall, circulation, water supply, electricity, drainage system, roof, lighting and ventilation, which is not humane3. The model does not address how traders actually use the space both physically and temporally, which raises the question: how can one redesign the current market typology in a way that orients it towards the main user of such a space? How could the standardisation, rather than acting as a controlling apparatus, allow instead for the possibility of variation and appropriation by the users?
As the thesis reconceptualises the market as an interface between urban and rural communities, the cooperative organisation could be an agent to challenge the current idea of market architecture. This thesis’ redefinition of market architecture, explored here as a
design proposition, aims to expand the potential of urban, suburban and rural cooperative networks to collaborate and fulfil each other’s objectives and to sustain their operation, under the concept of solidarity economy. The consolidation of monetary funding, trading, care, education and health facilities within a larger collective solidarity network enables an effective resistance to the free market system based on privatisation, in which public institutions have forsaken or evaded their responsibility for providing care and welfare facilities. This thesis proposes a system of ‘communal infrastructure’ hosted by a multifunctional building or social condenser4, that will be collectively owned and managed by the cooperatives. It argues that such multi-functional spatial assembly could promote and enhance a sense of the collective, where specific spatial interfaces can be activated by various groups of people to meet and use. The model is a critique of the single-function market and offers new possibilities to re-connect the specific activities of market trading with the other civic, social and welfare functions that these underprivileged communities urgently need. This conceptualisation of multiple stakeholders raises the spatial question: what are the architectural elements that could facilitate functions with a different, even contradictory, requirement to each other?
Research Method, Problem, Aims and Questions
Research Method
This dissertation addresses three topics which each require a different approach when it comes to data gathering. Firstly, the historical development of Bangkok in the colonial period, as well as the genealogy of market hall architecture in accordance with this history. These narratives necessarily require information gathering through archival research and literature review. On the other hand, the second part of this thesis, which entails understanding of market vendors’ everyday operations, requires a primary source of knowledge through in-depth interview with the vendors in multiple Bangkok markets in various locations, as well as secondary sources through literature review. The third part is the research by design, which brings together all previous content. The design will be tested against various sites in Bangkok, which will be analysed and concluded at the end of the dissertation.
Research Problems
The current food distribution system of Bangkok, evolved from the trade market system since colonisation in Southeast Asia, has suppressed agricultural producers into mere mechanisms within a complex supply chain.
The model of the market hall in Bangkok prioritises the protocols of hygiene and order, without taking into consideration the operations of vendors in their everyday activities.
Research Aims
The thesis aims to facilitate an alternative food distribution system through the operation of cooperative producers in territories
4 In the book contents, social condenser is referred to the co-existence of activities that could produce and reproduce undetermined events further reading: McGetrick, Brendan; Koolhaas, Rem, Content, (Taschen, 2004) p. 73.
nearby to Bangkok. The project aims to accommodate a cooperative solidarity network that could challenge the typological and formal apparatuses and go beyond the current standardisation.
Urban Questions
Can the market architecture be rethought as urban and provide common infrastructure for the cooperatives in the neighbourhood?
Typological Questions
How could the cooperative model challenge the current typologies of market architecture?
Disciplinary Questions
How could the standardisation of food trading space be changed by the model of the cooperative mode of production?
Dissertation Structure
This dissertation is divided into five main chapters. The first chapter recognises the contemporary situation of the food distribution system in relation to colonial free trade policy. The second chapter focuses on the genealogy of food trading space, by unfolding the socio-economic role of the market hall in the context of Bangkok. It also proposes an alternative standard for market hall design. The third chapter comprises the operation of vendors in their everyday activities, which will drive the design of the stall. The fourth chapter will perceive the cooperatives’ organisation and their solidarity network as an agent in the design of the alternative model of market. This chapter will present a design strategy for a multipurpose market building. The fifth chapter is a synthesis of the cooperative market design and suggests how the model could be tested within other types of urban form.
Chapter 1 Commodification through Colonisation
Fig.2 A photography of a crowded Tha Tian market around 1950s
1686 Map of the Kingdom of Siam, R. Placide Augustin Dechaussé (Paris 1649 - ibidem 1734), augustin déchaussé, géographe ordinaire de Sa Majesté The trade route could be seen by the drawing of a dash line connecting the two cities.
Fig.3
5 Askew, Marc, Bangkok Place, Practice and Representation (Routledge, 2002) p.27
6 Lefebvre, Henri. The Production of Space (Blackwell, 1991) p.263
7 Lynn, Marty, British Policy, Trade, and Informal Empire in the Mid-Nineteenth Century (Oxford Scholarship Online: October 2011) p. 103
The Birth of Commodification Through Free Trade
Fig.3
European Imperialists first started to trade with Southeast Asian countries in the sixteenth century. The first empire to set foot on the territory known today as the Philippines was the Portuguese. The VOC (Dutch East Indies Company) out-powered the Portuguese empire and built its main trading port in Batavia (now Jakarta) in 1619. The VOC then erected trading ports in many cities concurrently to conduct trade with other kingdoms. Ayutthaya, a former capital city of Siam, now Thailand, played an important role in trading rice and forest products with other colonial cities. In 1782, fifteen years after the invasion and devastation of Ayutthaya by Burma, the Siamese rulers established their new capital city on the west side of Chao Praya River, 200 kilometres further down from the old capital. After an initial period of instability, a stable political constitution was established. 73 years later, Siam saw a fundamental change in its trading system when it agreed to a treaty with Sir John Bowring, a governor of Hong Kong, to open its country to a free trade policy in 1855. This treaty paved the way for other Imperialist countries to sign treaties with Siam, which allowed them to start trading in this region5. Various companies such as the British East India Company, Danish East Asiatique Company and Chinese Companies established ports, warehouses, factories and rice mills in the region, and started trading in agricultural and forest resources.
In his book, The Production of Space, Henry Lefebvre described how, since the 12th century, the space of European territory has transformed from an ‘absolute space,’ that represents the symbolic religious ideology, to the ‘space of accumulation,’ which aims to acquire resources of wealth, knowledge, technology and money6. This reading of space as a space of accumulation is also relevant to the territories under colonial rule. In Southeast Asia, its territory was seen as a potential extending space of accumulation from the European territories. The apparatus of trading had a social, economic and political impact on the transformation of what would become the Siamese modern state and has changed the logic of urban development of Bangkok, the capital city of Siam.
Once Siam accepted the treaty with the British Empire, it brought about a new economic model under the free trade system. Free trade can be described in the broadest sense as an allowance of the optimally minimal regulation over the market. The British empire tended to adopt a free market system as a political tool in those countries that they could negotiate with7, for instance, China, Japan, Zanzibar and Siam. This type of negotiation was more beneficial to the expansion of Britain’s economy than attempts to formally gain control over the territory, which required a high investment in military force. Under the contract with the Imperialists, the major resources that were commodified were from the agricultural and forestry sector. This was the first step toward the industrialisation of agricultural processes, that repressed the economic power of farmers in the food production system.
Self-Colonising the City as a Project
Although Siam is the only Southeast Asian country that has never been formally colonised by any European Empire, the apparatus of colonial trade had a similar impact on the politicoeconomic system, as well as on the urban transformation, as on other colonised countries. King Rama V (King Chulalongkorn), the first king under the Absolute Monarchy system8, shifted administrative power to the central bureaucratic institutions in Bangkok. The centralisation of power allowed him to implement various policies across the entire territory of Siam. The quest of the King to modernise the city and civilise the entire political system, or in Thai, Siwilai9, demanded a government, institutional transformation as a major power assertion system and the transformation of the city scape and its socio-economic regime.
The project to modernise Bangkok city and bring it in line with other colonial port-cities in Southeast Asia was implemented through the appropriation of European styles of city development. The Siamese King took the protagonist’s role in initiating such a project himself. This could be called a self-colonisation10: when the local leader himself plays an active role in initiating economic, political and legal reforms. The reforms favoured the Colonial powers more than the subjects of the Siamese state, and the government put forward public policies which served Imperialist Officers. This included special rights under law and urban transformation. This can be illustrated by the provision of the first street, constructed in 1861, Charoen Krung Road, which mainly served the European diplomats who preferred to travel by horse rather than in the traditional way: by boat, via the canal. The road also served as a connection between the main palace and the consulate and port in the southern part of the city. King Rama V was also a great admirer of western-style architecture, which can be seen from the increasing number of European architects who were hired to design major institutions’ central offices, as well as his new palace in the northern part of the city and many large infrastructural projects such as the first central railway station in Hua Lam Pong.
The mid-nineteenth century was a critical moment for Bangkok as a colonial-influenced city, as it saw a large expansion due to an influx of immigrant traders. As I have previously mentioned, the conventional narrative of Thai history claims that the country was never colonised by any Imperial power. As such, studies of its urban transformation that link to the effect of colonialism are limited. It is also useful to note that the Siamese rulers themselves took on a role in the Colonial Empire, making an effort to conquer the territory around it and shaping Thailand as it is shown on a map today. Another conventional narrative is that the city was generally claimed as an imitation of a European city. One of the most prominent examples of this claim takes as its evidence the construction of Ratchadamnoen Road, which could be seen as a copycat of the Champs-Élysées in Paris; however, recent research in Thai Studies has claimed that much of the transformation of the city was largely influenced by other colonial cities in the region11 .
Fig. 4
8 The Thai Absolute Monarchy is a way the government centralised the governing power, in contrast to the pre-modern state in which each landlord had his own power Kesboonchoo Mead, Kullada, [The Rise and Decline of Thai Absolutism]
9 In Thai, the word is a modified English Word Siwilai which does not have a certain or absolute meaning; however, it is generally the term used by the Siam elite to represent ‘modern, modernity’.
10 This term has been used by a small number of scholars including Sidh Sintusingha and Morteza Mirgholami. Some scholars use the term ‘semicolony’ or ‘informal empire’. I prefer to use the term ‘self-colonise’ to describe the active role of the Siamese elite themselves, who subjected various policies on their own state and subject in favour of the Imperialists.
11 King Rama V visited Batavia and Singapore in 1870 and was impressed by the landscape of the city. See further, Teeraviriyakul, Udomporn, “Bangkok modern”: the transformation of Bangkok with Singapore and Batavia as models [Thesis (Ph.D. ) Chulalongkorn University, 2012]
Boundary of Old Town China Town European and Chinese Port
Fig. 4 Map of City of Bangkok in 1870 Sternstein, Larry, Portrait of Bangkok (Bangkok Metropolitan Administration, 1982) p.22 / Hatch by author
5 King Rama V, his royal family and British Engineer together on the opening ceremony of the first railway connecting Bangkok to Nakorn Sri Tammarat Province in 1886 Nana, Krairerk, The Blueprint of Siam-China raiway connection, Is it real?, Who is behind?
< https://www.silpa-mag.com/history/article_8421 > accessed 15 April 2021 Krailerk Nana’s collection, Black and White News Paper, 2 May 1896
Fig.
12 Chaumpol, Mantana, เจ้าของ
(The owner of the first Title Deed in Thailand and the beginning of map drawing and new type of title deed.) <https://www.silpa-mag. com/history/article_6630, published 14 April 2021> [accessed 18 April 2021]
13 Chantavanich, Supang, Thailand’s Responses to Transnational Migration during Economic Growth and Economic Downturn, Journal of Social Issues in Southeast Asia, Vol. 14, No. 1, April 1999, p 160
The Spatial Transformation of Bangkok
As this thesis deploys a post-colonial read of the city’s development, the impact of colonialism and commodification on the urban transformation can be read through three factors: land distribution policy, logistic infrastructure development and the typological transformation of urban space and architecture. Firstly, land distribution through the mechanism of the title deed took its first step in 1901, aiming to clarify the ownership of land and giving rise to its commodification and privatisation. The demarcation of land in the pre-colonial kingdom was not as important as it became under the rules of colonialism. This marked the first time that land did not entirely belong to landlords (as in western Feudalism), but where other private companies of Colonial Empires could also own the land as a means of production12. The second factor is the development of logistical technology through the erection of logistic infrastructure. On a rural scale, there was the construction of the railway system, which started in 1891 with the help of a British engineer, and was initially intended as a device to help the ruler control remote territories. The railway system also became a crucial support to the agricultural product logistics. Crops could now travel a greater distance in less time, an efficiency which helped retain the freshness of the products. On the urban scale, the Siamese government implemented a policy to expand the number of streets and canals in the city, which aimed to facilitate the mobility of trade in the city. Finally, on the architectural scale, as the urban expanded, two new architectural typologies were constructed to facilitate trading activities: the shophouse, or row house, with retail space on the ground floor and living space on the upper floor; and, the market hall, a wide span building that provided coverage for small vendors and organised trading activities in the urban area.
The policy to distribute land with the application of a title deed was the first step taken by the Siamese government to privatise land and turn it into commodity. The King and his government voluntarily accepted free trade policy. They also withdrew from any discussion of the use of land and left these issues in the hands of private business, providing only minimal support in the form of infrastructure: streets, canals and, later, water and electricity. The urbanisation of Bangkok since the mid-nineteenth century was therefore a direct result of neo-liberal policy, in which the economy was greatly driven by the market. The allocation of private land also had a marked effect on the typology of the architecture and the conceptualisation of the urban fabric. The newly introduced architecture typology, such as the shophouse, is an archetype of an architecture used to divide land, ownership and building.
The project to transform the city was also dominated by the constraint of migration into the city in that period. The rise of free trade led to an influx of foreign migrants to the city, at a rate of 15,000 a year in 185013. The immigrants, mostly Chinese and other various ethnic groups, migrated to Bangkok to work as labourers in the freshly opened port city. The most prominent area that increased in the number of inhabitants was in the Yaowarat District, or
Fig.5
Chinatown, the main trading district of Siam in the mid-nineteenth century. The area was perceived by the European missionary as a Chinese bazaar, which suggests a sense of similarity to the Middle Eastern bazaar where shops and retail are spread out across the entire district.
As trading activities increased, so too did pressure on the government to govern over these areas; the streets became a device to both facilitate the efficiency of trade, by acting as a logistical infrastructure, but also to perform as regulating tools: allowing the regulator, the police, to patrol in the city, and opening up its visibility to the gaze of the officials. It is no coincidence that the first police force (with the assistance of the British) was established in this period as well. In the period between King Rama V succeeding to the throne in 1869, to his end of rule in 1910, 110 streets were constructed. The increased number of streets is immediately linked to the urbanisation that spurred from the increased amount of trade of commodities. As we can see in Figure 6, the layout of the streets forms a grid system that facilitates the distribution of private land, accessibility to the streets and mobility of people and vehicle. The gridiron urban form is a representation of a new ideological value, transforming the city from a space to celebrate the religious and monarchical divinity into a space that prioritises commercial activities.
Siam changed its regime as well as its name after the 1932 revolution, with the rise of a group of young bureaucrats who succeeded in transforming the Absolute Monarchy into a Democracy. However, it continued to operate within the same economic system: capitalism. In 1961, the dictatorship government put forward a policy of economic development, called the National Economic and Social Development Plan No. 1. The plan was intended to encourage the whole economic system across various sectors, including the agricultural sector, in line with the global trend of the Green Revolution in the 1960s14. The government initiated a research program on genetic technology in farming, to be able to increase the efficiency and productivity of crops. Farming was highly industrialised to fulfil the demand for food for a growing population, which in turn could act as labour in the industrial sector15. By industrialising the farming system, a large number of crops could be produced and sold in a wholesale manner. Although the wholesale market was intended as a place to which farmers could directly transport their goods and then sell directly to consumers, this intention never materialised; mainly because of the nature of wholesaling, in which the customers are mostly major businesses buying in lump quantities for the discount. This system of market trading denied access to small-scale farms that produced in small quantities and were therefore unable to sell in bulk. The mega food companies have taken advantage of this, producing and owning large quantities of the means of production including crop seeds, livestock breeders, fertiliser and animal feed16. The whole complex supply chain reduces both farmers’ ability to set and negotiate prices and consumers’ power to choose what they buy. In other words, food as an infrastructure of everyday life is under the control of
14 Evenson, Robert E. “Besting Malthus: The Green Revolution.” Proceedings of the American Philosophical Society, vol. 149, no. 4, 2005, pp. 469–486. JSTOR, www. jstor.org/stable/4598956. Accessed 26 May 2021.
15 National Economic and Social Development Plan No. 1. [https://www.nesdc. go.th/ewt_w3c/ewt_dl_link. php?filename=develop_ issue&nid=3776] p.41
16 Charoen Pokphand Foods Embarks on Digital Supply Chain Transformation with JDA, BusinessWire, 2018 <https://apnews.com/pressrelease/pr-businesswire/
Fig. 6
Fig.6 Map of City of Bangkok in 1870 in Sternstein, Larry, Portrait of Bangkok [Bangkok Metropolitan Administration, 1982] p.22/ Below, Sampeng, one of the district in China town in 1909
China Town or Chinese Bazaar
Talaad Tai Wholesale Market Largest, Wholesale Market it Southeast Asia, 1997
Source : https://www.m2fnews.com/news/money/48584
Fig.7
Talaad Tai
Talaad Si Mum Muang
Pak Klong Talaad Klong Toey
10 km
Wholesale Market High Way County Boundary
Fig.8 (right) Map of Bangkok, showing the location of wholesale market, and its construction period, by Author
several private companies. This circumstance should be challenged. In Bangkok, the initial model of the wholesale market was a spontaneous response, providing shelter for the existing traders conducting their business in that area. For example, Pak Klong Talaad market, which was established during the reign of King Rama V and was the largest flower market of its time, was originally a bazaar, where vendors occupied the entire district as a market. Thus, the construction of the market hall was used to regulate and clear away these vendors, opening up the streetscape. The first suburban wholesale market was Talaad Si Mum Muang, which is the four main wholesale markets located in four corners of the city17. After 30 years of operation, the capacity of this market became obsolete so, in 1997, the government initiated a project to construct the largest wholesale market in Southeast Asia: Talaad Thai, situated in the northern suburban part of the city. The idea behind relocating the wholesale market toward the suburbs is generally linked to two major reasons: firstly, the disturbance of the activities in the market including noise, smell, concerns over hygiene and the dense traffic of vehicles coming into the market at any one time. Secondly, the accessibility by logistic vehicles such as trucks and cars that carry the crops. Talaad Thai wholesale market is comprised of a large complex of wide-span buildings, with each building accommodating different products. The architecture of the wholesale market was developed as part of food logistics. Architectural design-wise, it is a logistical machine determined partly by the specificity of users’ needs, but mostly by the volume of product that circulates each day.
Commodification and Small-Scale Business
This chapter describes the genealogy and development of the city of Bangkok and the effect of commodification brought in by the colonial free trade system in the mid-nineteenth century. As the capitalist economy remained effective, inequality of access to the means of production, such as land and production and logistic infrastructure, became the major problem to small businesses such as food vendors and small-scale farmers. The privatisation of land is one of, if not the most, essential problems that causes inequality in both urban and rural Thailand today. The economic development since the period of colonisation, and industrialisation from the 1960s onward, relied heavily on private investment. It restricted the accessibility of land in prime areas, both urban and rural, from those groups of people lacking in capital. As the land and agricultural products became commodified the inner city became accessible only to large-scale business through the system of modern trade. The modern trade businesses that own the majority of the means of production such as the rural farm, processing plant, distribution centre and supermarket, have the power to govern over the entire food supply chain. Thus, small-scale farmers are ignored in this scene of development.
A result of the free market system is the commodification of natural, agricultural resources and land, while also changing
17 Chivakul, Kiat, Markets in Bangkok, Expansion and Development (Chulalongkorn University Research Department,1982) p.69
Fig. 8
Fig. 7
Pre-Colonial Pre-1855
Post-Colonial Post-1855 Green Revolution Post-1950s
Scale Agricultural Producers Large Scale Agricultural Producers
/ Contractor
Diagram of historical development of food distribution system in Bangkok
Fig.9
the power relation between the producers and consumers. A food supply chain is a description of the steps of food production from farm to table. The process involves three sectors: agriculture, food processors and distributors (wholesale and retail)18. Apart from the domination of the supermarket and the modern trade system, the emergence of middleman traders also out-powers the producers. The middleman traders play a crucial role in offering logistical support to the food supply chain, collecting a large amount of produce from farms in rural areas to sell in the urban market. The most deprived player in this chain, the small-scale farmer, which represents the majority of farmers in the country, are faced with insufficient means of production. Most farmers fall into a debt economy resulting from the industrialisation of crops. Not only are small-business farmers deprived of the power to gain control over the price of their goods, but they are forced to sell in the cheapest bulk form to gain some return from their investment and be able to finance a new production cycle.
Their lack of capital and means of production prevent them from achieving production efficiency, causing them to produce at a high cost, but leaving them unable to sell at a high price. One of the most common ways to deal with such a problem is to organise a cooperative of these vulnerable farmers, to pool resources together to finance the common infrastructure that is then owned and run by the cooperative for its members to use without further payment. The common infrastructure depends on the specific needs of the members: for example, a rice cooperative would consider constructing a rice mill and warehouse to store rice as a common facility for its member in the surrounding area whilst, on the other hand, cooperatives whose members grow a large amount of fruit might invest in a packaging factory or a truck for distribution purposes. This provision of facilities by the cooperative opens up the possibility of rethinking the alternative channel of the product, as well as an alternative typology of the architecture within this logistic system.
18 Bukeviciute, Lina, Dierx , Adriaan, Ilzkovi, Fabienne, The Functioning of the Food Supply Chain and its Effect on Food Prices in the European Union, European Economy Occasional Papers No. 47, 2009 p.4
Fig. 9
The Market Hall as Bio-Political Apparatus Chapter 2
Fig.10 The Construction Site of Pak Klong 2 Market in 2016
As mentioned in the first chapter, the commodification that followed the free trade policy put forward by the European Colonial Empire used trading as its main tool to claim power over the colonised country. The rising number of both small and wholesale traders in mid-nineteenth century Bangkok created pressure for its municipality to manage and regulate these activities. Streets were converted to be the main space for traders to conduct their business, as the most convenient interface between consumers and sellers. However, although selling on the street is the simplest way to reach customers, these activities could be disorganised and uncontrollable. To formalised for the purpose of control and taxation, two main architectural typologies were appropriated to the city of Bangkok, by taking the model from Singapore and Batavia. Firstly, the shophouse, an agglomeration of houses with shops on the ground floor and houses on the upper floor. Secondly, the market hall, which a wide span structure sheltering various types of traders.
The Shophouse
The shophouse, or row house, type is nowadays one of the most common building types in Bangkok. Historically, there is no clear evidence that indicates which specific building was the first shophouse to be built, but the first generation of shophouses, constructed in the 1860s, can be found in the central trading district, such as in the inner part of Charoenkrung Road and Talaad Noi19. The shophouse’s great efficiency of land usage suits the high price of land in a denser part of the city. As well as the repetition of empty spaces stacking one above the other, each house also facilitates the division of land plots divided by the shared walls.
Although shophouses had existed for a long period of time in many ancient cities around the world20, urban shophouses in Southeast Asian cities were originally based on Chinese houses and adapted with a Thai vernacular architectural know-how. The adaptation involved the implementation of a local architectural element and construction technique and the use of material appropriate for the tropical climate. With the exception of its wellknown characteristics, the different decoration of ornaments on the façade varies across different periods. It is important to consider the shophouse’s formal articulations in the face of great variations of climate. There is a necessity to let light and ventilation come into an interior space, so the front and back of the building is exposed to the outside, with a window, and vent window above the door. The canopy in front of the entrance shelters the front door from direct exposure to the hot sun and heavy rain which is common in this part of the world21. The use of brick for the wall and terracotta roof tiles comes from Chinese architectural know-how, but suits local materials and craftsmanship equally well. Local material such as timber manipulates the width of the house, which is normally around 3 – 4 meters.
19 Chantavilasvong, Santi, A Study of Some Aspects of Shophouse Architecture, (unpublished Master Thesis, Chulalongkorn University, 1987) p.27
20 Ibid. p.14
21 In Southern cities, such as those on Phuket Island, or in cities in Malaysia, there is an existence of front arcade, and courtyard inside. This is a great response to the climate in the South, while this type of space is uncommon in Bangkok.
Fig. 11
Section
Ground Floor Plan
Typical Shophouse
5m
Fig.11 Initial period of Shophouse in Charoenkrung Road, source: Carter A.C The Kingdom of Siam New York and London, 1904
Fig.12 Nang Loeng Market, The first wide-span structure market integrated with a theater constructed in 1899, source: https://mgronline.com/travel/detail/9560000055237
Nang Loeng Market
12
One of the fundamental qualities of the shophouse is the ability for the space to change depending on its users. Its name, shop-house, partly suggests the purpose of the building, but its genericness allows for other possibilities of use. The ground floor could turn from a space for retail to one for car parking, or into a kitchen. The second floor could be used as a warehouse or an office space, depending on the business. The main agency for this flexible space is the position of an unchangeable core, formed of a toilet and the staircase, which is usually pushed backward to clear up the area in the front.
The Market Hall
The colonialist trading system raised the number of ingredients trading around the world. Inevitably, it also increased the amount of production and the logistics that supported the deliverability of the products. In Southeast Asian port cities, which were mostly colonised by the European Empire, the colonial ruler adopted market hall typology as a model to organise and regulate trading activities in the city. The main objective of such construction was to consolidate the power and domination of the colonial government. In Singapore, following Sir Stamford Raffle’s plan to reform Singapore’s shore, the central fish market named Talok Ayer market was constructed in 1832 to house a great number of fish traders. The building is an octagonal shape with timber structure. It is located on the seashore, with part of it extending over the water, which allows easy access for boats to unload. Its location and spatial orientation is more aligned with local and global trading activities than with the living condition of the traders.
In Bangkok, the influx of multi-ethnic immigrant traders triggered tensions between the authorities and unorganised trading activities. The first market hall was constructed during the reign of King Rama V in 1899. Whilst the concept of the marketplace was nothing new to the Thai, the construction of the Nang Loeng market hall was of prime importance to the king. The market was designed as a large floor plate covered with wide-span timber roof. Stalls were distributed equally across the ground floor. Although the market hall was a new building type that exemplified the modern city in the context of nineteenth century Bangkok, it can still be recognised as a space that generated unhygienic activities which were hidden away from the urban scene. It was constructed in the interior of a block of buildings, peripherally surrounded by the shophouses, which were considered a more positive façade to line the streets. Not far away from the market, the authority also constructed a wooden theatre, called Sala Chalermthani, which was the first theatre in Bangkok. Taken in combination, these building projects show the intention to construct a cultural district in the city, where normal people could dress up, shop and enjoy a play at night.
These two types of building, the shophouse and market hall, contributed to organising trading activities. Although the designer of these Asian markets adapted them to fit with the local socio-economic circumstances and climate, they remain a generic
Fig.
standard implemented by the authoritative power, which showed an asymmetrical power relation between the coloniser and the colonies (in the case of Bangkok, the coloniser is the local ruler himself). The term ‘generic’ implies indistinguishable in quality and related to a whole group of similar things22. Thus, the generic plan can be described as a typical, undistinguishable plan that provides both determined infrastructures to allow the plan to function, while welcoming other undetermined activities to take place. It has the same quality as the factory in the industrial sector, a rectangular empty box that is large enough to house the production equipment and allow for the circulation of the workers. It emerged since industrialisation, when labour became the main driver of capitalist modes of production and the factory became the space that accommodated these productions; therefore, the factory is the first establishment of generic architecture23.
The main objective of the building is efficiency of production, and the architecture of the factory can be minimised into a shell of wall and roof. Wide span structure was used, as pillars would be antagonistic to the workers’ productivity. The generic plan is a main product of the capitalist mode of both production and reproduction. The municipality constructs these buildings as a bio-political tool to regulate unorganised migrant traders, while also shaping the city’s façade, which is a vital characteristic of a modernised city.
Genealogy of Market Hall Architecture in Bangkok
The market hall typology has been known and developed for more than a century in Bangkok, however, its typological transformation still holds the same principle. By revisiting four case studies of urban market design by municipality in both the city of Bangkok and prominent examples in other towns in Thailand, we will see how the generic standard can be regarded as a device for control over the vendors, rather than in support of their everyday activities.
Firstly, by looking at the generic quality of the market hall, it can be seen that the equal provision of infrastructure to the building such as drainage system, lighting, electricity and water supply is designed to serve the purposes of flexibility and adaptability, thus could be considered generic. Despite this, all four case studies were constructed with different materials; Nang Loeng Market was constructed mainly from timber due to the construction know-how at that time. Reinforced concrete was first introduced in Thailand in 1913, and it was applied to the Chat Chai market in 192524. The recently built Pak Klong 2 Market was built with prefabricated cast iron for a large span structure (30 meters). However, they all used a wide span structure to minimise obstructions to circulation, with a high roof that allows ventilation and some daylight while protecting from rain. The evenly designed two-meter-wide circulation path is quite tight when considering the operations of vendors and the crowded activities during the morning. The division of stall and circulation is highly strict, with vendors prohibited from leaving their
22 Cambridge Dictionary
23 Marullo, Francesco, Typical Plan: The Architecture of Labor and the Space of Production (Phd. Thesis, Delft University, 2014)
24 The History of Phuket Town Hall, <https://www. phuket.go.th/webpk/contents. php?str=introduce_house> [accessed 27 May 2021]
Fig. 14
Fig.13 An appropriation of counter in Chat Chai Market
Photograph by Author
Tha Tian Market 1910s
Chat Chai Market 1925
Water
Drainage
Light
Roof
Stall
Fig. 14 The case studies of markets designed as generic architecture, a system of generic distribution of infrastructure to each unit
Tewarach Market
Pak Klong 2 Market 2013 1970s
products on the circulation route. This standard does not facilitate the possible expansion of product display. The standard sizing of stall built by Bangkok Metropolitan Authority (BMA) is 2 x 2 meters with a minimum infrastructure of the market.
Secondly, these infrastructures also act as a device of control which can be seen in the case studies both historically and contemporarily. The first archetypal market, Nang Loeng market, was built by the government of Siam in order to clear out trading activities from the street and usher in a new, modernised urban quality in the mid nineteenth century. Nowadays, the orderliness and cleanliness of the urban scene is still an issue. The municipality often consider the street vendors in downtown Bangkok to be an urban nuisance25, and advocate policies to relocate these vendors away from their usual location. Standardisation of the market hall takes a role to govern and control over certain activities which are not considered to be hygienic and orderly. The provision of ventilation, daylight and drainage is a system of hygienic control that supports the cleaning activities. It is also stated in the Bangkok Local Ordinance of Marketplace that the market hall needs to be cleaned every day26. In this regulation, the distance between the products and the floor is crucial, and prohibited at less than 60 centimetres. The design of the stall counter aims to govern the bodies of both vendors and buyers, by stipulating that people need to stand while they are buying and selling. This is opposed to the usual manner of street trading in which products lie on the floor. It is useful to note the resistance of some vendors in the Tewarach market who, when forced to comply with the use of a counter, use that counter as a floor: sitting on it to prepare their produce for the next working day.
On the one hand, the generic plan, an evenly provided infrastructure in the market hall, allows the possibility of change by the users. On the other hand, the activities that take place inside the market, which include the daily routine of the vendors, consumer behaviour and logistic protocol, is far from generic. I would argue that, although the current market standard and regulation are designed to regulate and control the activities taking place inside, they ignore what is precisely happening in the space every day. The generic plan is an issue here, in that it does not take into consideration the requirement of each vendor. It ignores the discrepancy between different type of product: fresh products and dry products, morning vendors and evening vendors, raw food and cooked food, circulation of vehicle and pedestrian. This thesis takes into account these various critical moments and rethinks an alternative standard model that would empower the market users.
Case Studies: Market Architecture and the Specificity of Product
Perceiving an architecture of the market hall as a machine that organises trading activities helps us understand its purpose, and what should be projected toward an alternative model as a counter argument of the present model. However, the case studies are not a nostalgic recall of market as opposed to current prevailing modern
13
25 Bhowmik, Sharit K., Street Vendors in Asia: A Review, Economic and Political Weekly Vol. 40, No. 22/23, (2005), p.
256
26 Bangkok Local Ordinance of Marketplace, 2008 <http://web. krisdika.go.th/data/law/ law2/%A136/%A136-2b2551-a0001.htm>p.8
Fig.
27 Steel, Caloryn, Hungry City: How Food Shapes Our Lives (Random House UK, 2008) p.103
28 In Paris, Les Halles was demolished in 1971 and moved to Rungis Wholesale market, which still operates now. In London, the run down market hall was reconceptualised and renovated to establish a new middle-class model of market as tourist attraction.
29 Masterplan, A global vision of development <https://www.abattoir.be/ en/masterplan> [accessed 30 Jun 19]
trade chain supermarket, but a more strategic spatial organisation that facilitates the trading activities. This raises the question of what could remain generic, and in what way the specificity could be surfaced. Four cases of urban market around the world were selected to see how the design of each project manages and organises the process of activities that differ according to the product, including fruit, vegetables, livestock, fisheries, dry products, and cooked food, and the different moments of logistic where the products enter and leave the market.
Foodmet Abattoir, Brussels
Europe became a major consumer of agricultural produce in the 17th century by trading and cultivating all over the entire world. This coincides with a rich history of market hall architecture, including renowned art nouveau style glass houses built with steel structures such as Covent Garden or Borough Market in London, or Les Halles market in Paris. The major reason for the construction of a market hall is to organise the urban market which used to operate in the city square27. It is no coincidence that the increased amount of supermarkets, since the first supermarkets started their business in the beginning of 1950s, has had a great impact on the obsolescence of traditional market in urban European cities28 .
The Foodmet Abattoir in Brussels was initiated by the city of Brussels in 2009 and completed in 2015. It is situated within the old slaughterhouse site in an immigrant neighbourhood. The Foodmet consists of a food shop, restaurants, urban farming and (purposing) Community Land Trust housing. The food department contains 45 shops with 17 butchery stalls and a mix of stalls that house fruit, vegetables and other products29. It is an extension to the existing weekend market, that aims to provide facilities for food vendors who already open their shop in the open-air market, including cold storage that separates meat and vegetables. In this regard, the livestock section needs a certain processing area: a meat workshop that is well connected to the logistic area. In comparison, the vegetable and fruit section, which requires less technical support, would need only a large open space for preparation. The provision of cold storage is crucial here, because it helps support the contemporary model of food distribution through digital platforms (which rose dramatically during Covid 19). As people move to shopping online, the facilities that support the logistic of food products is crucial to the nature of it business. Another good practice of this market is the subsidy of rental price by the municipality. This keeps the rental price low and maintains current vendors in the site.
In term of architectural design approach, the segregation of livestock stall, fruit stall, and restaurant help organise similar activities and avoid interruption between each other. The market consists of two large halls surrounded in the periphery by small shops. Each hall is divided into two major zones: namely, a highly technical area supported by a narrow span structure and a large flexible hall covered by a wide span structure that is supported by precast concrete. The livestock shop which connects to the meat processing workshop
Foodmet abattoir
Fig.15 Study of Foodmet Abattoir Brussels
is separate from the fruit and vegetables vendors. This helps avoid disturbance between vendors: for instance, when livestock vendors wash the floor, the fruit vendors, who do not need a heavy duty cleaning procedure, are not disturbed. Another strategy to avoid disturbance between various groups of users is the split between logistic circulation which is used by vehicles and the pedestrian walkway. This helps prevent cross circulation and allows a more friendly approach for customers walking in from the flea market outside through the two major entrances.
Throughout all the cases, the dissimilarity of activities between wet area and dry area are organised through the composition of a row of shops and open hall that orient in a different shape. In Shengli market, the aquatic shops are located in a separate building as this type of shop would have a different process of cleaning by washing the floor with an excessive amount of water. This also helps prevents smell and humidity from aquatic products spreading into the main hall. All the cases succeed in preventing potential interruptions between different types of activity.
The composition of two distinct structures, narrow span which represents a rigid frame and wide span that represents a more flexible space, could potentially allow other activities to happen when the market is not in operation. In the case of Foodmet Abattoir, the market is only used for more or less half of the week (mornings from Thursday to Sunday), which opens up the possibility of other uses by the community. However, some elements in the building such as non-movable counters reduce the possibility that the space can be appropriated.
The design project recognises this possibility and reconsiders the balance between what needs to be provided and what could be changed. The design of the market hall uses the strategy to divide space into two major zones: a rigid space that houses small shops, and a more flexible space that would allow other activities to happen. Stall design is the protagonist in achieving such a balance, by limiting the minimum provision of infrastructure that would be used by each type of vendors and leaving the space to be appropriated by the users: either the vendors themselves when the market is open or other possible users in the community. This balance between a rigid and flexible structure is also conform to the counterargument of generic market. The provision of infrastructure and the layout of each stall could be kept generic. While the specific concern of possible disturbance between wet area, and dry area, raw food and cooked food, food products and non-food products could be organised by zoning and grouping each type of stall together and placing them strategically to avoid collisions and interruptions.
Fig. 15, 16
Baltic Station Market
KOKO Architect
Tallinn Estonia 50 m
Fig.16 Study of case studies of market and its zoning
ORG Permanent Modernity
Brussel, Belgium
LUO Architect
Puyang, China
Meat Storage Vegetable / Fruit Store
Vegetable Storage Fisheries and Seafood Store Restaurant Dry Products
Meat Store and Workshop
Foodmet abattoir
Shengli Market
50 m
Baltic Station Market KOKO Architect Tallinn Estonia
Fig.17 Study of circulation, open area and close area
Brussel, Belgium
Puyang, China
Foodmet abattoir
ORG Permanent Modernity
Shengli Market LUO Architect
Chapter 3
Operation of Vendors
Fig.18 Vegetable seller in Pakklong talaad, a Wholesale Market in old town Bangkok
Trading played a role in the genealogy of urban space and market architecture, as described in Chapters 1 and 2. While vendors play a crucial part in being a driving force in circulating produces from the rural to the urban of Bangkok. As trading affects the way the urban space and market architecture is conceived, It is important to understand the different types of vendors to understand their pattern of operation and struggle in their everyday life which could help challenge the idea of trading space and its standardization.
The most basic way of trading is street vendors, which can be described as “a person who offers goods for sale to the public without having a permanent build-up structure from which to sell”30. This type of occupation is a part of the informal economy, in which it is a resilient, small-scale, self-reliant work, and people who are struggling in the formal sector are influenced to conduct business in the public space. Being on the street makes them inevitably be a subject of regulatory control by the city’s authority, historically and contemporarily. Street vendors are continually be eradicated from the urban sight, by the Bangkok Metropolitan Authorities, following the 2019 policy named ‘a project to manage street vendors and reclaim the walkway to the urban citizen’. The name itself suggested a bias toward the vendors that they are not included in the term ‘urban citizen’. The eviction of vendors in many central areas of the cities could create a problem both for buyers who have reduced the choice of buying affordable price products, and the vendors themselves who cannot operate in the usual way. The vendors were obliged to move to a market hall constructed by the municipality in a highly remote area, this assertion of power toward the vendors was problematic to the operation of their businesses and impact their entire supply chain. In other words, it disrupts the vendor’s operation, while also creates an impact on entire stakeholders from the source of materials to the end consumer31.
The policy to evict street vendors is always an ongoing project by the BMA32. There are several strategies when vendors are faced with eviction. Vendors who work individually move to the new location either provided and managed by the municipality or rented stall in the market. Some people find their way to remain in the same area, by renting some small area in the building. When these vulnerable group cannot run their business, they need to find a tactic to hide away from the gaze of the authority by being mobilised, moving around the area, or occupied a public space that could still reach the same customers which would certainly reduce their income. Ironically the removal of vendors was claimed by the municipality as to ‘return’ the walkway to the pedestrian, there are fewer people who used the walkway after the clearance. The devoid of people and business on the street turns it to be less friendly, while the pedestrian tends to feel more insecure33.
13
30 Bhowmik, Sharit K , Street Vendors in Asia: A Review, Economic and Political Weekly Vol 40, No 22/23 (2005) p 256
31 This part came from an interview with various vendors in market, their supply chain usually based on the connection with local producers, in which they have a long-term relationship, this small scale local connection from producers to consumers is beneficial to the way they operate, as they are more flexible to allow credit, and payback system.
32 Nirathorn, Narumol, The Management of Street Vendors in Bangkok : Notice and Suggestion (WIEGO (Women in Informal Employment : Globalizing and Organizing), 2014), p.11, The research shows that the authority of Bangkok has an erratic decision prohibition of streets vendors since 1973 until 2014, but overall majorly restrict their operation.
33 Boonjubun, Chaitawat, Con!icts over streets: The eviction of Bangkok street vendors, Cities, Volume 70 (2017) p.28
Fig.
Current standard provide by the municipality, drawn by Author
Fig.19
Vendors’ Everyday Life
Market hall, as described in Chapter 2, is historically used as a tool to formalise, organise and regulate vendors, the idea of market hall in Bangkok is to provide minimum standard in a generic way, while the practice of selling is not. If we think of the stall as a tool for the craftsmen, each craftsman or in this case, vendor will require a different tool for different purpose. The stall was firstly implemented in the Nang Loeng market to emphasize an image of civilised society in which commercial activities are conducted in a covering space with a certain standard34. This thesis argued that the standardisation provide by the municipality is aiming toward inhumane bio-political control of the body. The idea of bio-power, as described by Foucault in his multiple lectures, is “mechanism through which the basic biological features of the human species became the object of political strategy”35. In his light, the system of bio-political control over the bodies is a strategy by the state to the whole population, using spatial strategy of architecture and city. Bio-politcal apparatus can be assert in the scale of architecture through standardisation36. It governs the gesture of the sellers and buyers, through the design of the stall, which indicate the distance between displayed surface and the floor. The position of drainage system also suggests a cleaning procedure37. This biopolitical control prioritize the control over order and hygiene protocol, while dismiss the integration of the pattern of vendors’ everyday life.
According to Bangkok Local Ordinance of Marketplace, the minimum size of market stall is 1.5 x 1 meters which is astoundingly small when compared to the required furniture (even a normal table measures at least 0.9 x 1.5 meters) although only a small number of markets followed this standard. The current standard, according to the BMA, is relatively larger at 2 x 2 meters with a minimum specification of infrastructure. This standardisation provided by the authority rests on the idea that this size of stall is a reasonable minimum size for the vendors and is a profitable investment, so they can accommodate as many people in the market as possible and thus raise income from rent. The unit size also flexible enough that a seller who wants a larger stall can rent another unit. Another practical reason for the current standard is the minimum provision of infrastructure including lighting, electricity, water and drainage. In recent projects constructed by the municipality, they have started to leave the space open for the vendors to adapt to their needs. This is a logical practice that allows the vendor some flexibility to adapt the furniture they want to use. However, the placement of a unit which is equally distributed throughout the entire space still does not determine the specificity of the traders that operate differently. These types of trader can range from livestock, fruits, vegetable, fisheries, seafood, dry products and cooked products. This categorisation could lead to the new protocol of design of the standard stall.
Recognising the specificity of the market through each product could open up a design question: how could the standard stall accommodate different types of product and the activities around those products? According to the market stall design standard
Fig. 19
34 Jindamaneerojana, Suphaphorn, The Development of Nang-Loeng Area [Silapakorn Univrsity Jornal, Thai Version, 2010] p. 104
35 Foucault, Michel, Michel Senellart, Francois Ewald, and Alessandro Fontana. Security, Territory, Population: Lectures at the Collège De France, 1977-1978. New York, (N.Y: Picador/Palgrave Macmillan, 2009) p.16
36 Rawes, Peg, Housing Biopolitics and Care, Critical And Clinical Cartographies: Architecture, Robotics, Medicine, Philosophy, (dinburgh University Press, 2017) p.89
37 This part already describes as a generic stall standard, see p.38
38 White, Tracey, J. D. 1997 Retail Markets Planning Manual. FAO Agricultural Services Bulletin, N° 121 and “Food into Cities” Collection, Vol. 02/98. Rome, FAO, <http://www.fao. org/3/v8390e/V8390E08. htm#Chapter%205.%20 The%20design%20of%20 market%20buildings%20 and%20infrastructure> [accessed 8 April 2021]
39 Ibid.
40 Suphan Buri is one of the provinces 100 kilometers to the north-west of Bangkok. Travelling between the two would take around 1 hour by car.
by FAO, the segregation of products that require different sanitary protocols is crucial. A zone of livestock products: butcheries, poultry, fisheries should group together, so they can wash the stall freely and not disturb other products. Fruit should not be close to a flower shop because the Ethelyn gas from the fruit could damage the flowers38. Each type of product should be grouped together to ease the customers’ shopping experience39. The everyday activities of the vendors are key to the design decision here, which could be categorised in 5 types of product.
Fruit & Vegetable
Fruit and vegetables can take up a large proportion of the market, due to the great productivity and variation in Thailand. Although fruit and vegetables are similar and could be sold together, each of the products require different modes of transportation and care from the farm to market. Although this thesis focuses on the vendors and not the product per se, it is not over-detailed to note the process of harvesting individual products. Interviews with Mr. Chai, a vegetable vendor in Tewarach market, have provided specific learnings in this area. Mr. Chai details how he and his whole family would use the stall as a second home, in which he and his mother would spend most of the day while his daughter was at to school on a weekday. He begins his daily routine of selling vegetables at midnight, when he wake up, goes to the wholesale market at 2am and prepare to open his shop which includes packaging the vegetable into saleable portions, cutting, peeling and discarding any nonsaleable pieces, and washing prior to selling them at 3am. By 11am he is packing up his stall and preparing to close at 1pm. The crucial aspect of this daily routine is that the sale of vegetables demands a large area for preparation prior to sale. To increase the length of time for which the product stays fresh, these products need to be stored at a low temperature so, the space for refrigerator would also be required.
Livestock & Poultry
Livestock and poultry can include meat, pork, chicken and processed meat like sausage. This type of stall requires a large area to accommodate machines. In contemporary markets, selling live animals (except fisheries and seafood) is prohibited, and most of the product would already be butchered and ready to sell. However, some of the grinder would be required by the butcher to serve the customers’ need. Interviews with pork vendors in Don Phrom Market in Bangkok illuminate the process of selling meat across the course of a day. The day begins with the pork vendor and her husband transporting the pork by pick-up truck from the slaughterhouse in Suphan Buri,40 where she also lives, to the market, at 3am in the morning. Her husband then delivers his products to other vendors and picks her up at 3pm in the afternoon. While she is in the market, she starts to prepare the display by cutting, packaging, mincing and dicing her meat, prior to opening her shop at 4am. By around 12pm,
Fig. 20
Donphrom Market
Livestock
Fig. 20 The Element within Each different Stall selling different type of goods, drawn by Author
Bangkapi Market
Fishery & Seafood
Donphrom Market
Cooked Meal
Bangkapi Market
Dry Product Store
her products have usually sold out, so she starts cleaning the shop before going back home. Beef vendors require quite a similar space to pork vendors, whereas poultry vendors do not need such a large space for the processing machine because most of their products have already been processed. To store the product, the crucial point is to keep it cold and avoid air permeating inside. It could be stored in an insulated container with ice, which is more cost effective than a refrigerator.
Fisheries and seafood
Fisheries include products that are grown in a farm system for the purpose of selling as food product, while seafood could also include farm products or wildlife products from the sea. Both types of product can be sold dead or alive. The living animal would need a container with a water they are used to (maybe a water from the farm), while dead seafood and fishery products are mandatorily kept at a low temperature on ice. The display counters also need to be filled with ice, with a properly functioning drainage system. Observing a seafood shop in Bangkapi market, we can note that the vendors start their operation in the early morning, though slightly later than other sellers: as seafood products require less preparation than others, much of the work is on the display of products. The seafood vendor cleans her stall at 3pm, closing her shop around 4-5pm, adjusting these hours to her customers’ behaviour. Of crucial important is a storage space for the container that was used to carry the product to the market, the insulated bucket that would take up a lot of space in the shop.
Dry products
Dry products are the least complex type of product to deal with. In this thesis, the category includes both food and non-food products. Neither need space for processing or a heavy-duty cleaning method. They do not generate disturbance through smell, so these types of product could be grouped together (though dry food could be grouped with fresh food, this thesis deems it better to separate them). The crucial space required for these types of products is a sizeable storage facility so that the product can be left overnight when the shop is closed. A large and expandable space for display could also be important because in some shops a great variation of products could be displayed. An interview with Ms. Kang, who sells eggs in Bangkok Noi Market, reveals how she opens her shop at 3am and finishes at 10 pm, with most of her products coming from a farm in Suphan Buri with which she has a great connection. The business is family-owned with no employees. Ms. Kang, her husband, and her brother take shifts in the shop during its opening hours. In their case, a large storage space is not needed, because most of their products sell out on a day to day basis.
Cooked Food
Spaces to sell cooked products require great care in the planning phase, because they can generate a lot of disturbance from noise, smell and smoke. It is crucial to group cooked food together and separate it from a more subtle area like dry products. The category of cooked food could include both cook-in-place food and a pre-cooked food. Space used by cook-in-place would require a more complex mechanic like electrical appliance, gas container, and water system. Pre-cooked product, most of the time sellers would cook it at home before the market open. Cooked product would have a slightly different operation time to raw product because people who come to the shop would come during their working day routine, which could be in the morning, lunch, and dinner. According to a different type of food people would eat in different time during the day, the market in the morning could be completely different from the market in the evening because customers would come with different purpose: in a rushing time like in the morning quick and grab and go type of food would be needed while in the evening when people can be more relaxed they could come for dinner as a group.
Temporal usage
Learning from vendors in various market in Bangkok, they operate in a different way from each other, both physical and temporal. This condition gives the possibility for an alternative vision to the use of market, from space for trading to space that can serve other users requirement. Most urban market open in the morning and closed during afternoon until midnight, this give a chance to reorganize other uses such as turning into assembly hall, or a space for sports in the afternoon which can serve the neighbourhood. Fig. 21
3,000 3,000
Stall 1 Stall 2
3,000 3,000
Typical Stall Infrastructure
Fixed Wall for infrastructure
Non-Fixed Wall
Fig.23 Design proposal stall frame as infrastructure
Fig.24 Above : Frame , Middle : Potential appropriation by vendors, Below : Fitting Furniture in.
Design Proposal: Archetypal unit
The current stall standard provided by the municipality of Bangkok (which is an archetype for the whole country), as described in this chapter, is designed base on a demarcation of unit with an essential provision of infrastructure, while the content of everyday usage of the market are not surfaced. To achieve new standardization that concerned the activities of vendors, it raises the question: what is the architectural element that should be specific to the usage of different vendors, while remain compatible to the whole market hall structure system? And, what are the elements to remain rigid and what are the element that could change to fulfil unique needs and be able to accommodate different users when the stall holds a completely different vendor.
To fulfil the main objective of the stall design, it tries to balance the contradiction between rigid and flexible element. The proposal is a 3 x 3 meters wide. It is determined as a suitable size for the loading, washing, storing, those could take place. The pathway is 3 meters wide to avoid obstruction by each vendor when the market is crowded in early morning, and during closing time. The wider of pathway is allowing an extension of the display counter over the boundary which marked by the drainage system. The proposition is basically larger than the current standard, this will inevitably reduce the potential number of vendors in the market, and the suggest form of a square stall meters could be inappropriate in some other sites where the form of the land is irregular.
The issue of flexibility of the stall is approached by an implement of the 10 x 10 cm steel frame which aims to be a suggest the stall boundary. The steel would be framed as a box that the vendors could install other type of material according to their needs, for example the mesh wall which they used to lock up the stall. The back-side wall would be the main infrastructural support for the stall where electricity, water, air exhaust will be placed, while the side wall and the front can be removed when vendors wants to expand his/her shop. Each shop is treated differently to fit their condition, for instance, a different provision of infrastructure: raw food could be plugged with water supply and drainage, while dry product would only need a lockable stall. The limited implementation of infrastructure allows the vendors to maintain autonomous, give opportunity to the vendors to proactively play a role in redefine the space they used.
Fig. 24
Fig. 23
of the day.
Fruits & Vegetable
Livestock
Fisheries
Cooked Food
Dry Product
Fig.25 Stall frame and scneario of different tenancy, different vendors, and different time
Chapter 4
Solidarity Network
Fig. 26 Sports Day Celebration in Klong Jan Community Source: https://www.facebook.com/Klongjunstadium
Solidarity as Resistance to Capitalism
When Siam opened up its territory to the Western imperialist in the mid-nineteenth century, it not only engaged with new players in its trading activities, but also changed the entire economic system from conventional feudalism to capitalism. As in many other countries, this capitalist production meant exploiting Siam’s own natural and labour resources. The implementation of a free trade system triggered the transformation of the agricultural sector and led to the exploitation of land and labour. This phenomenon of commodification, observed by Marx, changed its value from ‘use value’ to ‘exchange value’. For instance, agricultural products changed from being an object used mainly for eating to an object to be commodified. Capitalism tends to concentrate resources and labour in the hands of a minority, in order to maximise profit. In many countries, those deprived by this economic apparatus create a system of solidarity to emancipate themselves from economic vulnerability. This solidarity economy creates an alternative system to the capitalist, neo-liberal economy. Rather than focusing on maximising private profit, it shifts its focus towards its members’ welfare and the environment41 .
The Solidarity Economy seeks to re-orientate and harness the state, policies, trade, production, distribution, consumption, investment, money and finance, and ownership structures towards serving the welfare of people and the environment42 .
RIPESS, Board Meeting, Montreal in November 2011
This thesis employs the concept of a solidarity economy as an act of resistance to the current trading system, which is dominated by a paradigm of monetary profit. Thus, it is oriented toward the cooperative and solidarity networks that already operate in the territory of Bangkok, in proximity but not effectively connected to each other. The networks involve the synchronisation of various sectors including private, public and cooperatives, who play a part in the process of food and crop production. They range from cooperatives of producers and distributors, to vendors and consumers. However, the lack of support from the current cooperative organisations creates a need for another type of welfare and care facility, such as healthcare, care for the elderly, and childcare, which would normally be provided by government support. Each group anticipates a unique type of assistance which will be expanded on later in this chapter, as well as a support network itself. This raises up the possibility of the architecture that allows such networks to to be concretised and beneficial to each other.
Origin of Cooperative in Colonial Siam
When colonial trade opened up the country’s economy and allowed for free trading activities, it transformed the system of trade for farm produce in two ways. Firstly, farm produce began to be sold
41 Yvon, Poirier, Social Solidarity Economy and related concepts Origins and Definitions: An International Perspective (Asia Solidarity Economy Council, 2014) p.11
42 Ibid. p.10
Fig. 27 Wat Jan Cooperative, the First Cooperatives in Thailand established in 1916 as a resistant to a colonial market system. Source: https://www.025798899. com/news/1710
in bulk, and had to meet the rapid production cycle in order for the producers to make profit. This enabled the rise of the middleman, who stepped into the system to help connect the producers and the consumers through logistical means. The market became more competitive because of the rising number of producers. For farmers to meet the rapid harvest cycle, they had to take out financial loans from private companies and fall into a debt economy. In 1914, the Siamese government started organising a cooperative system, taking Hermann Schulze’s credit cooperative system as a model. The credit cooperative is a member-owned financial cooperative that organises funding for its members. This cooperative system then became a national project implemented throughout the country.
43 The history of Cooperative Movement In Thailand, <https://web.cpd. go.th/buriram/index.php/ knowledge-of-cooperatives/ history-th1> [accessed 27 May 2021]
When Prince Pitayalongkorn, a Siamese technocrat, began to establish the Cooperative Society in 1914, with consultancy from an English secretary of the Bank of Madras in India, Sir Bernard Hunter, the Siamese government aimed to provide a low-interest fund for the cooperative members who were struggling to find financial support. The other agenda was to incentivise economic development through efficiency of production. In 1916, the first cooperative act, Additional Edition of Cooperative Society Act, was enacted to facilitate the establishment of cooperatives in the country. The first Cooperative group was founded by a group of 16 farmers in Pitsanulok. This particular territory was selected to implement the policy firstly because of its underdeveloped condition and, ultimately, to increase the production of rice, the major export crop43. Although the form of a cooperative is a member-owned organisation, the principal of the Rochdale Pioneer concerning the welfare and democratic decision of its members was not entirely introduced. The system of the cooperative was seen as an instrument for financial support and control of money-lending by the state, in which the state is active in the development of technology, know-how, education of members,
Fig. 27
and ultimately economic development44 .
The cooperative movement in Thailand is now facilitated by the Ministry of Agriculture and Cooperatives, and is widely practiced by millions of members across the country. Each of the cooperatives comprises a group of the same type of producers in the same area, such as the Lamlukka cooperative: a group of rice farmers in the Lamlukka district in the north of Bangkok, where a rice mill was constructed to support its members. Each cooperative specialises its service to serve a unique purpose, in accordance with the demands of its members. However, they still lack the power to channel their products directly to the consumer. In the context of Bangkok, most of the food that comes to the urban area passes through middleman traders and the wholesale market. The obsession with the cheapest price of products also has an effect on the production process; the rising amount of chemical fertiliser used to accelerate the amount of production per year, the exploitation of migrant labour45, and a large amount of energy consumption through the increase of food miles; the further away the food is produced, the lower the cost of production. This thesis investigates cooperative producers in the urban fringe as potential agents in the creation of a marketplace, facilitating distribution through both physical and online systems.
A Market for Vendors and Producers
Almost 50% of the vegetable sold in wholesale markets come from more than 200 kilometres away from the market itself 46, as the cheaper land price in these areas lowers the cost of production. However, in the vicinity of the city of Bangkok, there are many producers and productive land which could be organised to connect the consumer to these local producers. It is important to suggest local producers as a main source of food provision in the city because
Fig. 28
Fig. 28 Lamlukka Cooperatives
Annual Meeting in the Rice Mill
Source : http://www. sahakornthai.com/lamlukka/
44 Masahiro, Yamao, Cooperative Movement in Thailand: Towards the Establishment of Cooperatives Society Act in 1968 [南太平洋研究=South Pacific Study, Vol.13, No.2] p. 186
45 ‘Open to exploitation’: Migrant workers in Thai agricultural sector, 2020 <https://www.licas. news/2020/02/03/open-toexploitation-migrant-workersin-thai-agricultural-sector/> [accessed 27 May 2021]
46 Suteethorn, Kanokwalee, The Impacts of Food miles on The Pattern of Footprint of Bangkok’s Food supply, Environment & Landscape Architecture. ELA no.279 1107. Korea. (2011) p.4
47 Kazuaki Tsuchiyaa,∗ , Yuji Harab, Danai Thaitakoo, Linking food and land systems for sustainable peri-urban agriculturein Bangkok Metropolitan Region [Landscape and Urban Planning, Volume 143, November 2015] p.197
48 Food Soverignty refers to the right for the people to determine and govern over the system of food production, in which orient toward local producers instead of relying on agricultural corporation and mega-food company, further reading: Pimbert, Michel. “Food Sovereignty and Autonomous Local Systems.” RCC Perspectives, no. 1, 2015, p. 38 JSTOR, <www. jstor.org/stable/26241305.> [Accessed 26 May 2021]
49 Nirathorn, Narumol, Report : How to manage “street vending” for the advantage of “city-dwellers” <http://www.knowledgefarm. in.th/report-thailand-streetvending/> [access 3 January 2021]
their proximity helps reduce time and energy consumption in the distribution process. In suburban areas of Bangkok, wet markets play a huge role as a food hub for local producers. Around half of the producers in the peri-urban area deliver their products to the wet market,47 as this type of market can be closely embedded in the neighbourhood within walking distance.
Inviting local producers within 50 kilometres into the market would cover a great variety of products, including vegetables, fruit, livestock, fisheries, seafood and a great many other variations of product. Different types of crop are produced in different areas: in the North and West of the city, a great number of vegetables and fruit are farmed, whereas in the Eastern part, the main products are rice, poultry and fisheries. In the Southern territory, where the land is adjacent to the Thai gulf, many prawn and fishery farms can be seen. Not all the producers belong to a cooperative, but many small-scale farmers do join cooperatives in order to buy cheaper materials. Each cooperative is organised based on the administrative district it operates in. Thus, a sub-district, or Tambon, might have 1-4 cooperatives depending on the type of products they sell; this is to facilitate the proximity of its members to the cooperative. While this project is focused on the urban area, it could have reach and spark discussion beyond the urban territories.
As this project creates possibilities for urban and rural cooperatives to encounter each other, in this case, a cultural exchange between the local cooperative community and agricultural cooperatives in the surrounding area could take place. This gives the rural producer a channel through which to initiate a conversation with the urban consumer. It kick starts the first step toward food sovereignty48 when people acknowledge the root and route of the food they eat, moreover eating local produces reduce energy consumption in the transportation system. The consumer could reflect to the producers what type of food they want to eat and how it could be produced. On the other hand, the producers can gain concrete information on what the consumers need, rather than dwell on the demands of the market which is dominated by the food company.
Apart from the two major actors of producer and consumer, there are further stakeholders that should be recognised and invited to create a discussion in the project, which is informal trader. There are more than 20,000 vendors operating in urban Bangkok, most of them selling cooked food for a living49, and often getting into conflict with the authorities for encroaching on the public walkways as they sell. In the eyes of the authorities, these street vendors are parasites on the public space. However, street vendors play a major role in providing affordable cooked food to people in the urban area, especially in an area where the high price of land means that affordable restaurants cannot succeed. These informal activities are convenient to customers, as they can strategically choose a location that is easily reachable to them. This project recognises street vendors as a vital part of the food system in the urban area. As such, they could be invited to sell cooked food in the market hall in
Fig. 29, 30
Sam Koak Cooperative
Klong Luang Cooperative
Pathumthani Cooperative
Lam Lukka Cooperative
Sai Noi Cooperative
Bang Bua Tong Coop
Bang Pa In Coop. Pak Kred Coop.
Bang Yai Coop.
Tawee Wattana Coop.
Nong Kham Coop.
Bang Kun
Nonthaburi Coop.
Taling Chan Coop.
Tian Cooperative
Sakla Cooperative
Siri Ruam Sap
Tung Song Hong Community
Meen Buri Cooperative
Nong Jok Cooperative
Lad Krabang Cooperative
Klong Jan Community
Bangkapi Coop.
Rom Klao Community
Muang Paan Cooperative
Bang Bo Cooperative
Bang Plee Cooperative
Tung Song Hong Community
Klong Jan Community
Rom Klao Community
Bang CooperativePakong
Fig.29 (Above) The Map Show the Location of the Cooperative Offices in the vicinity of the city
Fig.30 (Below) The map show the type of Production in each area
Rice
Rice (8 sq.km.)
Vegetables
Fruits
Flowers / Trees
Fisheries
Prawn
Beef
Pork/ Lamb
Poultry
50 Harvey, David, Rebel Cities from the Right to the City to the Urban Revolution (Verso, 2012), p. preface xvii
51 OTOP stands for One Tambon (sub-district) One Product, which is a government policy to support any group of people who want to start selling products based on their specialisation. The policy helps them access funding and start their business.
complement to the raw food which is already established there. By inviting vendors into the market, they could start to take ownership of the market hall as their own infrastructure: they could store their belongings in the storage during the night or use the market hall itself to sell in the evening when the market is closed.
In general, street vendors in Bangkok do not organise as a cooperative,. However, some may organise as a group in order to resist eviction by the authorities. One significant case of cooperative organising is the Moo Baan Nak Kila Community Service Cooperative, which is a group of street vendors who work together to resist eviction from their usual selling location. They also managed to rent a site on public land in the same area to construct the market called Moo Ban Nak Kila Market. Despite ongoing conflict with their landlord, the National Housing Authority, they still demonstrate the possibility for success for vendors to self-organise into a cooperative and claim their rights. The group still face a continuing harsh reaction from the authorities, which includes eviction and displacement from the current market they have fought for. The collective organisation in this case play a crucial role in this battleground, claiming their right to the space of the city50.
Another complementary actor in the project is the OTOP group51, initiated in 2000, which is a group of low-income people who have organised into a cooperative that produces a value-added product from agricultural materials. The project fosters communitylevel self-reliance and offers the opportunity for an additional income. Many groups consist of a small group of unemployed women with a certain skill of craftsmanship. Various groups form based on their expertise, local knowledge and skill which could turn raw materials into alternative processed products such as shampoo, soap, oil, cloth and so on. Many OTOP groups in urban Bangkok sell their products via online channels and occasionally join weekend markets, though, rarely, some will also have their own shop. The benefit of inviting these groups to the project is the potential transfer of knowledge, both from the farmers - as a producer of material they use - and from the buyers they wish to sell to.
Fig. 31 Street Vendors in Downtown Bangkok photograph by Christopher
Fig. 32
Fig. 31
These precarious labourers, namely street vendors, not only face the absence of their right to the city, but are also denied by the government the right to access welfare facilities. As their occupation is not considered legitimate, nor recognised by law, they cannot access social insurance or bank funding52. This is not only the case for informal vendors, but also relevant to most people in the food supply chain system who mainly operate as individuals. The development and expansion of Bangkok has been influenced by the private sector, while public institutions steer clear of procuring welfare facilities. This results in a privatisation of welfare services such as child and elderly welfare, healthcare and education that is highly costly even for the middle-classes. Cooperatives are now providing a certain amount of welfare services to their members, such as supporting child tuition fees, costs for delivering babies or arranging funerals for their members. However, the accessibility of other necessary welfare facilities such as elderly care, childcare, and vocational schools depends on government funding or private business CSR policy. To counter this, the proposal suggests connecting already established cooperative solidarity networks that are a part of the local agribusiness as well as serving their members a higher standard of welfare facilities.
Childcare centres primarily operate under the Department of Social Development and Welfare, which is majorly focused on vulnerable groups such as orphans or young offenders, as well as constructing childcare centres in low-income communities. Elderly care is a recent issue to Thailand, due to a gradual increase of elderly people in the entire country: thus the problem of providing health care facilities to the elderly, especially in low-income communities. This infrastructure for low-income communities functions; however, it is divided rather than working in collaboration.
Source
52 Ms. Sarah Orleans Reed, Ms. Ana Carolina Ogando Women in Informal Employment: Globalizing and Organizing – WIEGO [ Women in Informal Employment: Globalizing and Organizing (WIEGO), September 2017] p.46
Fig. 32 Nakkeela Cooperative Meeting for English Study
: Nakkeela Cooperative Facebook Page
Educational Benefit
Intergenerational Relationship
Economically Benefit
Temporal Benefit
Indirectly Link
53 Abate, Carolyn, Here’s What Happens When You Combine a Day Care and a Nursing Home <https://www. healthline.com/health-news/ what-happens-when-youcombine-day-care-andnursing-home#The-riseof-intergenerational-care> accessed 7 April 2021
Market
Food Hall
Communal Room / Assembly
Adult School
Library
Cooperative Office
Childcare / Kindergarden
Elderly Care
Sport Facilities
A Conglomeration of Cooperatives and its Friction
This thesis argues that bridging these various groups could create a potential benefit both to each other and to the community. Proximity is the key factor in this agglomeration, which could create potential direct and indirect advantages. For example, apart from the location of the market that could attract people in the neighbourhood, the market could attract more customers when combining with other daily routine functions such as nursery and daycare, where they could serve lunch to the users. People who come to exercise could pass by and enter the market, increasing the everyday traffic in it. On the other hand, the intergenerational atmosphere for elderly people is far more enjoyable as they can have some activities with children, which could reduce any isolation and loneliness they might be experiencing53. Simultaneously, children could learn social skills when encountering people outside the family structure and could start to gain some knowledge from the elders.
Fig. 33
Fig. 33 Diagram Showing Potential Relation and Benefits to Each Stakeholders
Agricultural Cooperatives
Agricultural Cooperatives provide logistic of agricultural product from each cooperatives
OTOP Group
OTOP is a form of credit cooperatives. They provide alternative way to add value to a raw agricultural product.
Trader Cooperative
Cooperative of Street Vendors
Credit Cooperative
Credit cooperative organize as a credit and saving cooperative for members, and other welfare, such as funeral, birth money
Elderly Care Organization
Elderly care organization is a public institution with collaboration with the community cooperative and volunteer caretaker.
Farmer’s Leader
Logistic Staff
Agricultural Trainer
Cooperative Officers
Logistic Staff
Skill Craftsman Trader
Food Vendors
Cooperative Officers
Nursery Caretaker
Nursery Officers
Physical Therapist
Volunteer Caretaker
House Caretaker
Retail Area
Loading Area
Accommodation
Study room
Activities Room
Workshop
Assembly Room
Assembly Hall
Reading Room
Canteen
Exercise Room
Locker Room
Physical Therapy Area
Playground
Fig. 34 The Diagram of Space that Respond to the Need of each Stakeholders
Knowing the amount of production and be able to sell in fixed price, not in risk of price fluctuation influence by market
Provide high quality products to customers in the city.
Pictures of cultural activities that existed
Parade, a ceremony to remind to the ancester https://www.facebook.com/%E0%B9%82%E0%B8%94%E0 %B8%99-329224517997495/photos/pcb.384351259151487/384349782484968/
Fig.36
in Klong Jan Community (Above left) Religious Ceremony (Above Right) Flee Market (Below left) Annual Dancing Show (Below Right) Sartra Duen Sib
54 Lund, Margaret, SOLIDARITY A MultiStakeholder Cooperatives Manual as a Business Model, Cooperative Development Center at Kent State University (2011) p.20
The conglomeration of cooperative organisations could play a role in challenging the current market system, which is dominated by private companies, instead exploiting the solidarity economy in which the whole ecosystem of food production, distribution and consumption is maintained and managed by the cooperatives. This type of economy, instead of competing with each individual organisation in trying to maximise profit (in line with the capitalist mode of production), its objective is to maintain the operation and sustain business, jobs, welfare and care to its members54 .
To achieve this in Thailand requires a legal and organisation management transformation that could facilitate the solidarity economy. According to the Cooperative Act 1999, the cooperative organisation in Thailand is one of the entities governed by the state. The government is conceding a lot of power in regulating and managing the cooperative businesses. It has the right to discharge the cooperative’s committee, monitoring, and intervening the cooperative operation at any point if it sees that the cooperative is not making profit for more than two consecutive years55. In this sense, the cooperative is competing to strive for profit, but not collaborating to maintain the whole system. Moreover, they govern in a top down manner by enacting policies, not involving the members’ decision. This has to be transformed to shift back the power of decision making to the cooperative itself, allowing them to articulate their network in order to achieve solidarity economy. In addition, running the project also requires an establishment of entities that will organise the project. This could be helped by the Cooperative League of Thailand, which functions as a wholesaler, buying products and selling to the cooperatives. It should play a part in organising the establishment of the project, in multiple sites in the cities, and be the management body of the market.
Reclaim the Body: Cooperative Cultural Identity
The proposal challenges the notion of the market hall as an architecture that - as shown in the history - is used to control over the body. The project opens up the question of who should be in charge of the production of this space, and for whom. The project could accommodate the cultural activities they already perform in their everyday life. Leisure is also key to the space of the project, where members can gather for no purpose other than to sit around. The producers of such space could claim the power over not just the production of it but also of their body, where they can use it as an expression of culture and tradition.
In Klong Jan, the members of the community are highly active and involved in various cultural activities. Different groups of people live in the community, which consists of many internal and external immigrants, temporarily dwellers who rent the flats. There is a great variety of different cultures living in the place, each of whom possess their own cultural values. For example, the elderly people often throw a Buddhist religious ceremony on Buddhist holidays in the communal sport fields. They also celebrate the national holidays such as Father’s Day and Mother’s Day: as well as religious activities in the morning, a cultural performance usually takes place, such as traditional dancing, or a concert by the younger groups. A smaller group such as internal immigrants who travelled from the same region, such as in the Southern part, also tries to express their cultural identity through Southern style events like a Satra Duern Sib, a traditional ceremony held in October to celebrate the harvest season and to commemorate predecessors56. People hold a parade during the daytime and gather in the evening to see the traditional show. These activities take place in many different communal facilities scattered around the whole area, disallowing the possibility for different groups to encounter each other. For instance, elderly groups would take more time in a Pe-tong sport field, while the children would only play in their confined school area.
36
56 Thairath TV, Klongjan Community made merit in Satra Duern Sib annual ceremony, 17 Sep 2017 <https://www.youtube.com/ watch?v=sNbvLybCrCU> accessed 16 Apr 2021
Fig.
Isometric Drawing Fig. 37 Isometric Drawing of Klong Jan Cooperative Market
Market architecture, as argued in Chapter 2, can be read as an architecture of control of trading activities, in which it represents an authoritative power enforced by the government through its hygiene protocols and standardisation. It ignores the form of community and life that happens during everyday activities. The thesis recognises the form of social solidarity networks as a form of power that could operate as a resistance to this authoritative form of control and propose an architecture that would support the activities and social interaction between different groups. These groups which are part of multiple cooperative organisation could be recognise as a subject that each project in different sites would tailor to the community. The project is not arguing that it could help in forming a sense of community as architecture are not capable to do so, but it tries to encourage social interaction through the idea of communal infrastructure. Eric Klinenberg argued in his book, Palaces for the People, that the social infrastructure is a spatial condition that create the possibility for the people to physically interact57. This face-to-face relation could happen in a communal space in the neighbourhood like playground, park or school. Moreover, the interaction between community helps generate connection, mutual support and collaboration between different groups of people, far away from private individual life.
It is first important to clarify what is the power in control of spatial production of the market hall. In Henry Lefebvre’s book The Production of Space, he argued that the space is not static, but it contains a certain meaning which could be read, write and rewrite58. In reading of spatial formation of market hall, it can be read as a controller, or regulator over the traders and the transaction activities by the authority. Meanwhile, traders who occupy the space and farmers who supply the goods, the two main subjects of the space, are devoid of power to involve in this spatial production. The communal infrastructure which crafted by the users themselves is not merely talking about the ownership, but it should involve a protocol of sharing of spaces, management, and participation by the collectives to maintain the communal infrastructure59. Thus, the current typology of market is not capable to facilitate such social structure; this raises the question what is the typological and formal spatial condition that could accommodate and support the process of commonning.
The site purposed is in Klong Jan Community in a public land as part of a national housing program by NHA consist of around 5,000 inhabitants. By selecting this site, it starts the possibility of collaboration between the government and the cooperative. The existing community in organize as a credit union, in which its member is committed to save money each month engage in a collective manner and be politically active. Although the cooperative is mainly initiated by the economic purposed, the present of current social interaction through public gathering, sports, and religious events could be seen in multiple area of the community. The sense of the
57 Klinenberg, Eric, Palaces for the People: How Social Infrastructure Can Help Fight Inequality, Polarization, and the Decline of Civic Life, (New York, Crown, 2018) .p.9
58 Lefebvre, Henri. The Production of Space (Blackwell, 1991) p.5
59 Stavrides, Stavros. Common Space: The City As Commons (Zed Books; 1st edition, 2016) p.32 Fig. 38
Fig. 38 Site Analysis at Klong Jan Community Showing the existing Social Infrastructure in the Area
39 Isometric of the entire Klong Jan Community neighbourhood, showing space of activities (blue), connection (Orange)
Fig.
community has already established, however, is not well endorse by spatial framework. In this site the proposed scheme used the strategy of courtyard that organize programs and activities between various groups. It is not selected as a result or an ultimate answer to the question of market hall typology that support communal life, but as a testing ground for the project to raise a discussion.
As the project challenge the notion of market architecture as a mere controlling device of trading within the food logistics, its post the question: how could the market hall could potentially be reorganized and root itself to the both inside and surrounding community to facilitate a communal form of life? In this sense the site selection is strategic to this question. When Ildefons Cerda proposed a masterplan for a new developed city of Barcelona in mid-nineteenth century, the archetypal masterplan in modern era. He used the term ‘urbanization’ to describe a new paradigmatic change in urban design that use science to determine the logic of city expansion that orient around a new value: city efficiency and living prosperity that involve improve of social, education and sanitary amenities60. In which these social infrastructures were embedded into the urban expansion in the Eixample, including a hospital, school and market, while all people in city could access to the amenities in their neighborhood within 30 minutes by walking. This is a very simple idea, but could achieve a great success; 39 municipal markets still operating (after degraded for centuries and surpass a renovation) and became the main tourist attraction which, on the one hand spur gentrification around the area, but on the other deeply route within the everyday food shopping of Barcelona dwellers and keeping the small business alive in the urban. In the Klong Jan Community the site was select based on the proximity to the residents who can either walk or using small vehicle like bicycle, or motorcycle to access the market. Proximity is the key to the factor of success of the market that it is convenient enough for the buyers to come in their everyday routine61
60 Pallares-Barbera, Montserrat, Badia, Anna, Duch, Jordi, Cerdà and Barcelona: The need for a new city and service provision, Urbani Izziv, Vol. 22, No. 2 (2011) p.131
61 Fuertes, P.; Gomez, E. La forma urbana del menjar fresc. “Quaderns d’arquitectura i urbanisme (Ed. trilingüe)”, 2018, About Buildings & Food, núm. 271, p. 100
Fig.40 Plan of the Eixample development in Barcelona (1859), by Ildefons Cerdà. Illustration: Archives of the Kingdom of Aragon, Barcelona/Ministerio de Cultura/Ministerio de Cultura Source : <https://www. theguardian.com/cities/2016/ apr/01/story-cities-13eixample-barcelona-ildefonscerda-planner-urbanisation>
Fig. 40
Fig. 41 Diagram of relation between market hall and the social infrastructure
O-Shape
O-Shape
U-Shape
L-Shape
I-Shape
Fig. 42 System of Diaphragms: Strategy of Division
62 Idea of social condenser originally promotes by constructivist architects in 1920s Moscow, it is an architecture that aims to ‘electrifying people in to communist way of life’ Murawski, Michał Revolution And The Social Condenser: How Soviet Architects Sought A Radical New Society, Strelkamag, 2017, <https:// strelkamag.com/en/article/ architecture-revolution-socialcondenser> [accessed 26 May 2021]
Design Objectives
1. The Project aims to challenge the current standardisation of market architecture enforced by the municipality, that prioritises regulation and control over trading space.
2. The Project intends to facilitate an alternative food distribution system, operating through the organisation of cooperatives in the urban fringe, to challenge the current industrialised system which is dominated by mega food companies.
3. The Project aims to secure the operation of welfare facilities, leisure activities, educational and vocational facilities provided by cooperatives within the suburban area of Bangkok.
4. The Project will promote collaboration between various social groups, urban/rural, producers/consumers, young/old, logistic labour/immaterial labour working under the cooperatives, juxtaposed in a space that enhances collectivity and correlation.
Architectural Elements as Strategy
Fig. 41
The communal form of life sought after by this project could be addressed by a typological transformation, from a traditional market hall to a courtyard type as the main strategy. Thus, the market, logistic facilities and collective facilities including nursery school, elderly care, library, assembly, co-working space and adult school are oriented around a central courtyard. The project follows the idea of the social condenser62, a spatial condition that promotes alternative values beyond economic interest, where the community can come to express cultural activities or simply for the purpose of leisure. It creates opportunities for informal meetings between different group of people and empowers a sense of solidarity and network. So, the courtyard acts as both connector and separator. It needs to divide the two spaces, which could potentially interrupt each other: for instance, through smell, noise, or vehicle traffic. The courtyard also acts as an interface which could facilitate spillover activity from each building, for example event markets or public sport events. The courtyard is paved with stamped concrete, which is durable enough to endure the weight of logistic traffic by vehicle like truck or motorcycle, but also could turned into a communal space for public use in gathering events like wedding, sport events, or concert.
The project intends to bridge the gap between different groups of people in the neighbourhood, as well as a surrounding agricultural cooperative in the vicinity. The cultural activities held annually by the producers could be invited onto the site, to create a cultural crossing that promotes an urban and rural collaboration, not only by means of a conventional traveling of goods but a possibility to mutually learn from different cultural route. The space acts as a communal
area allowing each group to meet people who hold different values, do different business, and learning and joining different events held by various group of people, and as well as a crossing of food cultures, bringing up local species to the urban consumers, away from a mass industrialisation of food that is provided by modern trade business.
To achieve the multifunctional condition of the project, the strategy of architectural elements is proposed to alleviate the discrepancy of potential contradictory needs between each program. For example, a public program like the market allows non-members of the cooperative to visit, in contrast to the childcare and day care facilities which need more privacy. This could be relieved on two scales: firstly, separation, which divides the two programs by courtyard and, secondly, the system of diaphragm, which could be place in accordance to each program. The program that needs high privacy such as childcare and elderly care would be less open with a smaller window, while the more public program like market hall and food hall are more penetrable and inviting. While, space and wall are a separator of the space, the potential connector is the circulation. It acts as a potential meeting place in which people could start a
Fig. 43 Implementation of Diaphragm
Fig. 43
Fig. 42
conversation during their free time. Each type of circulation could be designed to suit different purposes and for different people as the project could potentially be crowded with various types of people from young to old or people with disabilities. This follows the aim to make the project inclusive for the community, and circulation is crucial to guarantee accessibility to all part of the project.
The traditional value of the market as a meeting place has recently faced a radical challenge with the onset of Covid-19, which has greatly spurred the purchase of food (both cooked and raw) via online platforms. To follow this trend, the project proposes a distribution centre facility that would be managed by the cooperatives, and supported through online purchasing, which can be conveniently delivered to the customers via motorcycle riders. This small and local logistic is highly effective to permeate in the organic urban form of Bangkok.
Diagram of System of Division and Connection : Strategy of Circulation
Fig. 44 System of Circulation: Strategy of Connection
Fig. 44
30m Layout
Fig. 45 Layout Plan
Fig. 46 Ground Floor Plan
Fig. 47 First Floor Plan
2nd Floor Plan
3rd Floor Plan
Fig. 48 2nd and 3rd Floor Plan, and Section
When it comes to the temporal dimension of the usage of the urban market, it is intrinsically a flexible space where multiple activities are held in one day. The market itself can operate only in the morning, due to consumer behaviour concerning the freshness of the products. This creates a possibility for the market space to be appropriated for other purposes later in the day, with the incoming of other actors in the cooperative network. The market is designed as a binary between permanent and flexible space: the permanent stalls lying on the perimeter of the market, and rented by the vendors, could be closed, while the flexible hall could be appropriated according to the users’ need.
Morning
In the early morning, around 3 am, when the market only is in operation, there is a need for the building to facilitate the incoming of people and products: vendors, buyers, pickup trucks, motorcycles. The courtyard is turned into a drop-off space for the trucks to deliver products. The empty hall starts to be filled with light-weight movable tables that are easily installed and dismantled. Customers could arrive on foot, by bicycle, or by car, which they could park in the adjacent parking lot. The food hall is not fully opened due to the small numbers of buyers in the morning.
Morning - Market
Fig. 49 Scenario 1, Events Happening in the morning
Afternoon
When the market is closed, the building allows other activities to unfold. In the afternoon, when schools, day care centres, offices are used, cars are prohibited in the courtyard and the school children and elderly people can start to use the space for exercise, playing sport, or leisure activities. The market hall, with its wide span structure, can accommodate large assembly events for the cooperatives by setting up chairs and a stage. The food hall is fully opened to support school children and office workers around the area.
Noon - Food Hall / Sport / Auditorium
Fig. 50 Scenario 2, Events happening at noon
Evening
In the evening, the ritual of the night market could take place. In the context of Bangkok, where people tend to eat out more often than cooking at home, the night market is a good choice for the destination in the evening. The night market could open everyday while occasional events such as concerts could make use of the raised platform as a stage. People could install a gallery space on the higher building, with stepped seating to increase visibility to the show in the courtyard. The open-air communal kitchen could start to cook left-over ingredients from the market to distribute to groups of vulnerable people in need.
Evening - Night Market / Food Vendors Market
Fig. 51 Scenario 3, Events Happening in the evening
Events
Other cultural events could take place in the market, while the raising platform could be used as a stage for multiple occasions such as weddings, religious ceremonies, sports events, and assembly events, all of which are regularly held by the Klong Jan community members. The project is well supported for the incoming of large number of people, with functions such as a kitchen, washing area, storage space and toilet.
Event - Wedding Ceremony / Religious Ceremony
Fig.52 Scenario 4, Annual Events
Fig. 53 The space inside the market looking from the livestock stall
Fig.54 The courtyard and Community Social Service Building
Fig. 55 Network of Community around the Ring Road
63 Lak See Municipality, the information of the community settlement established in accordance of Bangkok regulations, Demographics from surveys and community summaries And household information from Tung Song Hong Housing Community Plan, Bangkok: Community Development and Social Welfare Department, taken from Panmean, Benjamin, Usage and Attitude toward Community Garden: A Case Study of Public Housing Community Garden in Bangkok Metropolis Suburbs (unpublish Master of Landscape Architecture thesis, Silpakorn University, 2016) p. 64
Cooperative Market as a Model
The project does not claim to be an absolute answer to ‘this’ particular site but a system that could be repeated and apply in various possible sites. The market building components consist of a stall which can be strategically planned through various zoning depending on the product types, and the roof covering which is detached from the particularity of the floor. So, the roof composition is designed to be prefabricated, which can reduce the cost of construction through mass production and achieve time efficiency both in fabrication and construction. The project suggests the operation as a network of space, connected with the ring road, when which connected well to the productive landscape.
Tung Song Hong Cooperative – High-Density Condition
Tung Song Hong Community is situated in the northern part of the city, next to the Pahonyothin Road, the main road that connected Bangkok to the northern part of the countries. This makes the sites effectively connect with the source of the product and its logistics. The community consist of around 10,8000 people63 , which is managed by the municipality. The design takes advantage of the modularity of the prefabricated roof, applied the roof structure in a linear form. It creates a linear type of logistic area similar to the first scheme that it can turn into a communal space for everyday activities like an outdoor market, an area for children to play, and sports activities. As the community lacks access to sports activities, using this strategy could turn a single function into a flexible multipurpose space, create efficient use of facilities. The site is a part of public housing, that the National Housing Authority erected, sold and managed the property, which could subsidize the project to the cooperatives. This could create a possibility for the residence working as vendors to remain working in the neighbourhood. As the site is in a dense area that creates proximity to the community, the condensed infrastructure is logical, so the users can come with multiple purposes or even non-purpose.
Rom Klao Cooperative – Low-Density Condition
Rom Klao community is in an eastern fringe of the city, with a short distance to the international airport. The location of the community is quite far from other public infrastructures like railway, train or even bus. This creates a required space of a city within a city in which the community have to be able to sustain itself, because of the difficulty of commuting to the city. As the fabric of this area is lowdensity, where the many land plot in the area still used for farming, it is logical to implant a cooperative market to the site. In this site, the design approached differently from the previous one, by introducing a cluster type, in which the system of condensation of the program is more scattered around the area. By removing the hierarchical order of space: corridor, vertical circulation, and using the street as the main circulation. The community could enjoy various program while wandering around the neighbourhood, using the streets as the communal space. Creating an ambiguous boundary between the interior space of the project and the exterior space of the city.
Fig. 58, 59
Fig. 60, 61
Tung
Fig. 56 Isometric of Spatial Stretegy in Three different sites
Fresh Product Market
Dry Product Market/ Rental Space Storage
Logistic Area/ Courtyard
Care Facilities
Educational Facilities Office
Public Facilities
Assembly Hall
Sport Facilities
Fig. 57 Spatial Organisation of Programs, Accessiblity, Communal Space
High-Density
100m
Tung Song Hong Community Layout Plan
Fig. 58 Layout of Tung Song Hong Community
Tung Song Hong Community Isometric Community Communal Program
Social Service Market Logistic/ Communal Space
Fig. 59 Isometric of Tung Song Hong Cooperative Market
100m
Rom Klao Community Layout Plan
Low-Density Cluster
Fig. 60 Layout of Rom Klao Community
Rom Klao Market Isometric Community Communal Program
Social Service Market Logistic/ Communal Space
Fig. 60 Isometric of Rom Klao Cooperative Market
Conclusion
Many developing countries which have come into contact with the free trade system of a capitalist economy, have also engaged with multiple problems. Firstly, the over-dominant power of the modern trade system that dictates the entire agriculture supply chain and suppress the competitiveness of small-scale traders. Secondly, the rise of informal trading activities bringing about conflict between traders and the authorities, giving rise to the market architecture as a place to organise them, in which Bangkok could represent as a case study of such circumstance.
These circumstances equally applied in the mid-nineteenth century period, when the city opened itself up to the international commercial system and markets were seen as a more civilised way of trading, in comparison to street trading. With this agenda in mind, the market architecture tends to operate under the paradigm of control, in order to enhance the vendors’ and the buyers’ activities. This thesis termed this type of architecture as a generic plan, in which the specificity of the vendors is not considered as a factor in the design standard. The study of everyday life of various type of vendors who sell different products is conducted in Bangkok. This valuable information is used to determine the design decision of both the stall itself and the overall system of the market. It also reveals the insufficiency of the current standard, which could be challenged: for example regarding the dimension, the zoning of wet and dry spaces and the flexibility of the space.
Market hall architecture cannot be detached from the logistic system which works under the larger umbrella of the economic structure, favouring those dominant players who possess and therefore control capital. The proposal in the final chapter recognised the underprivileged groups under current cooperative solidarity network in the system and invite them as a potential user. It proposed 3 different types of market to fit within different urban forms, and in different communities. The thesis argued that the market can broaden its purpose to serve different users under the solidarity network as a form of communal infrastructure. The different typology of the social condenser is meant to be a testing proposal, not as a solution of how the program could operate differently as respond to a different context and urban fabric. The strategy of the void between each program is the key to avoid disturbance happen from a different activity that takes place in the same area. The design would be a part of a discussion between the cooperative, the community, and the public institution. However, to realize the project it should step forward in discussing the amendment of the legal framework according to cooperative responsibility. It is crucial to offer for the cooperative to be self-govern to be able to initiate the solidarity economy and the project.
Some further question could be raised involving this topic of market architecture for the solidarity network, that the protocol of negotiation between each group could take place and become a main source of data that drive the design. Different organization which could be invited that would be out of the scope of this dissertation, but could be a complementary to the project, for example, a public organization such as school, vocational training, or religious institution who could collaborate and manage to organized some activities in the space. Moreover, questions of location are also relevant to the project, as the project is socially rooted with its context, in this case Klong Jan community, a completely distinct discussion could happen in a different site with a different social group.
Although this proposal is strategically placed in the context of Bangkok, the problem of the discrepancy between small-local and large-global traders and the problem of the deficient market standard could also be relevant to many other contexts, since these problems are mainly tied to the boost of global capitalist market systems in the past two centuries. The strategy could be adjusted to fit with the local context, in terms of typological transformation, structural technology, social diagrams, legal framework and, most importantly, monetary funding routes. It is explicit in the proposal itself that the typological transformation of the market fundamentally raises the question of who has the power of the production of the space, and who is it for? Then, what is a type of space that could properly respond to these users, as a space of negotiation, a space where different lives could mutually take place and benefit each other?
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