Research Method, Problem, Aims and Questions

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.