PORTFOLIO.
Design and Architecture
Santhila Chanoknamchai
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Santhila Chanoknamchai Santhila is an architecture student, currently studying her fourth year at INDA (International Program in Design and Architecture), Chulalongkorn University, in Bangkok, Thailand. Santhila has always been interested in communities and urban studies, considering architecture as a medium for collectivism and social engagement, while reflecting on the socio-political and cultural aspects of the society. Other than a design and architecture student, Santhila is working as a graphic designer and art director in several social organizations.
santhila.ch@gmail.com (+66) 87 562 2236
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Education 2010 - 2017
Amnuay Silpa Bilingual School 2018 - Present
Chulalongkorn University Bachelor’s degree, Architecture and Design International Program in Design and Architecture (INDA)
Work Experience
Publications
A CADEMICS
DEZEEN (Architecture and Design Magazine) Journey to the Self
FIELDWORKS
Rethinking the process of gentrification Rethinking the process of gentrification
May 2018, INDA Parade
Food Fiction Manifesto
PLAY LEARN EAT Canteen
Rethinking the process of gentrification Rethinking the process of gentrification
May 2018, INDA Parade
Skills
Hedonistic Infrastructure
MUTUALPLUS.CO
Rethinking the process of gentrification Rethinking the process of gentrification
May 2018, INDA Parade
R ESEAR CH T OOL S Geographical Information System (GIS) D ESIGN T
OOL S
Adobe Illustrator Adobe Photoshop Adobe Premiere Pro
COMMUNITY AND SOCIAL INTERESTS Art Director and Graphic Designer
Tact Social Enterprise
Rethinking the process of gentrification Rethinking the process of gentrification
May 2018, INDA Parade
Adobe Indesign
In-hall Production
TEDxChulalongkornU 3D MODELLING
May 2018, INDA Parade
Rethinking the process of gentrification Rethinking the process of gentrification
SPACESALOON Satellite Lab
Virtual Research Lab
Rhinoceros 3D WO RKING SKILLS
Rethinking the process of gentrification Rethinking the process of gentrification
May 2018, INDA Parade
Graphic Design Architectural Design Communication
Virtual Research Lab
MUTUALPLUS.CO
Rethinking the process of gentrification Rethinking the process of gentrification
May 2018, INDA Parade
Academic Writing Research and Analysis Academic Writing
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May 2018, Museum of the Present May 2018, Metabolizing Territories
KOOZARCH (Experimental Architecture Platform) May 2018, Metabolizing Territories
Contents
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pg. 6 - 27
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pg. 28 - 37
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pg. 38 - 55
Museum of the Present
Mining The Invisible
Metabolizing Territories
Urban Revitalization and Architectural Design
Tactical Urbanism
Urban Acupuncture
(2019)
(2020)
Citizen Centric Ecological Regeneration (2019-2020)
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pg. 56 - 67
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pg. 68 - 83
A Food Fiction Manifesto
Urban Distruptive Infrastructure
Ephemeral Festival and Pavillion Design
Rethinking Public Infrastructure
(2018)
(2018-2019)
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Museum of the Present The Customs House, Bangkok Urban Revitalization and Architectural Design (2019)
In the increasingly privatized city of Bangkok, are we again losing our riverside public space and a historical and cultural reference to Bangkok? The project rethinks the process of gentrification as a constant reconfiguration of everyday culture. A political framework is proposed in which the Old Customs House in Bangkok, currently in a state of transition, becomes a prototype for an alternative approach to urban renewal. The street becomes a route through the building, the existing character of the neighborhood is activated and celebrated. If gentrification is taking ownership The Museum of the Present is giving back ownership.
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เมธี ธรรมบรรเทิง < Mr. Meti Thammabunturng> Fireman inhabited The Old Customs House for more than 20 years
ยศพล บุญสม <Mr. Yosspon Boonsom> Director of Shma Company Ltd.
จเร วิทยาสุข <Mr. Jare Wittayasuk> Member of the Haroon Muslim Community 8
ทนงศักดิ์ ดุลยธำ�รง <Mr. Thanongsuk Dulyathumrong> Member of the Haroon Muslim Community
ยศพล บุญสม <Mr. Yosspon Boonsom> Director of Shma Company Ltd.
Member of the Haroon Muslim Community
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For over 30 years, The Customs House in Bangrak district became an informal social housing for more than 50 firemen and their families and a riverside public space for the city and the nearby by Haroon Muslim Community. The decaying physical state gained its digital existence online, while its historical and cultural value, resulted in the building being deeply ingrained in the collective consciousness of the city. The project is envisioning an alternative political framework for the redevelopment of the Old Customs House in Bangkok. Currently this building is a paradigmatic example of gentrification, whereby the local communities are displaced by the influx of more affluent neighbourhoods.
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Caffeine Man
Lounging
Supernatural
Beware the Falling Planks
Love Letters
Keep Out
130 Years Apart
Unnatural Vines
1988 - 2019
1970 - 2019
1888 - 2019
1965 - 2019
1968 - 2019
1985 - 2019
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1888 - 2019
1999 - 2019
Smokers
1988 - 20176
Informal Adaptation Study (Study of existing conditions: Plan and Axonometric) 12
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Materials Forensic, The Old Customs House (Photography and Analysis)
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On an urban level, the project challenges the current urban zoning and allocation map of Bangkok, which is organised in a radial pattern around the ChaoPhraya river and thereby accelerates the rate of urban renewal in central areas. To propose an urban intervention: a grid of Special Exclusion Zones, so called â&#x20AC;&#x153;no zonesâ&#x20AC;? describing black holes on the zoning plan distributed across the commercialized and the high-residential zones.
As a future projection, within the exclusion zone; the Old Customs House becomes A Museum of the Present, an urban catalyst of an alternative to gentrification.
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Evolution Projection (Urban Evolution Mapping) 17
A SPECIAL EXCLUSION ZONE The regulation engages with all three stakeholders of urban renewal: Government Sector, Public users and Local Communities, taking into account Economic, Social and Cultural development. These networks of liberated area serves as public space in the increasingly privatised city.
A Special Exclusion Zone Strategy (Bangrak district, Bangkok) 18
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INTEGRATED BIOPHILLIC INFRASTRUCTURE As a response to the endless flood cycles and the sinking situation in Bangkok, the ecological strategy aims to create an integrated green infrastructure, a systematic approach for providing comprehensive eco-services with multiple benefits. The riverside space is designed into a resilience flood retention and utilize riparian spaces, an integrated landscape was created based on the existing topography:activated and celebrated. A buffer platform was created between the city and the river. However, unlike the high flood walls, the contemporary urban life can still be enjoyed and celebrated.
Ecological Strategy (Strategy mapping) 21
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Museum of the Present (Sectional Program)
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CIVIC-PARTICIPATORY APPROACH Through a strategy of a Bottom-up urban practice, The old and the new is woven together to create an intermediate public space in our daily life; where the character of the neighbourhood is activated and is celebrated. The street, the characterization of the neighbourhood is transplanted into the building. The found moments and placemaking objects were translated into architectural elements. To preserve the memories and history of the building, minimal operations were implemented through spatial strategies and
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Unlike an inclusive experience where the history and the context were excluded, this alternative process of gentrification connects between the past and the present.
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Throughout the transformation process, a collective ownership is formed.
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Mining The Invisible The Green Mile, Bangkok Tactical Urbanism (2020)
We are now living in a fast-moving world, where the city becomes a passive place of movements and flows. This project proposes an alternative way of unfolding the city through the perspective of time, as the moment pauses that are revealed through the Mining of the Invisible. The Green Mile, a hidden 1.3km linear bridge that stitches across central Bangkok, creating a Threshold between living the everyday life and the city - interacting through the creation of intermediate spaces of different nature, activity, and ownership. Within the urban voids, a series of Mining Instruments were designed to reveal the invisible sensory observations: unseen, unheard, untouched in our everyday lives.
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The Green Mile, Bangkok: Site Study (Site Speculation and Analysis)
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Throughout the day, The Green Mile was adapted to different use by different people, creating a synchronized ensemble that defines the everyday moment of pauses.
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Fast Landscape (Site Analysis) 32
THE GREEN MILE, BANGKOK The Green Mile exists as an Interstitial threshold, experienced as a temporary halt in the city, offering moments of pauses and ephemeral encounters. The site can be perceived as both a fast and slow landscape. Fast is represented through Rhythms, and Slow represented through Tempos. Rhythms are defined through the order and repetition of the Horizontal, linear landscape. While Tempos are identified through the unexpected and ephemeral moments of the Vertical intersections.
Slow Landscape (Site Analysis) 33
Mining Instruments Components (Modular System: Plywood and Acrylic)
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Metabolizing Territories Ban Chang, Rayong Urban Acupuncture: Citizen Centric Ecological Regeneration (2019-2020)
Amidst the rising petrochemical industries in Rayong, Thailand, the exploitation of heavy metal substances had influenced a new underground invisible environment: the Aquifer, questioning confinement strategies on the landscape, and proposing a network of systems that responds constantly to seasonalities and fluctuations. The project imagines a plausible future cohabitation between the interrelated scales of humans and microorganisms, performing two main complementary strategies to Metabolise and Visualise this â&#x20AC;&#x153;guiltyâ&#x20AC;? landscape, through a series of Inter-surface Artifacts. Rethinking the notion of natural preservation, a repetition of cycles and patterns of dynamic and temporal reclamations would emerge, adaptable to seasons and anomalies.
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ECOLOGICAL BUFFER ZONE Rayong is becoming the new industrial province of Thailand, with petrochemical industries emerging significantly due to the EEC development. The industrialization and urbanization led to the reduction and fragmentation of Rayongâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s few watershed forests. As the new Land Use map came out, the protected and exploited landscape of Rayong came closer in proximity. By drawing a 5km impact buffer zone between the industrial and protected zones, I projected a possible conflict zone.
Ecological Buffer Zone Study (Site Analysis) 46
BanChang District: Project Conflict Zone (scale 1:100,000 | ArcGis) 47
AQUIFER EXPLOITATION This in-between landscape became unproductive, and was exploited as wasteland from the industrial estates, where physical boundaries are blurred Water and soil becomes the main element that is shared between the edges, and heavy metal from the petrochemical industry was carried throughout the borders. The most found heavy metals were Cadmium, Chromium, Lead, and Mercury As land became invaluable, the local people were losing their land ownership, and selling their land off to the estates. The exploited resources and lack of local infrastructure Resulting in the encroachment of industrial areas throughout the landscape.
BanChang District: Project Conflict Zone (scale 1:10,000 | ArcGis) 48
In-between Landscape: Heavy Metal Mapping (Mapping and Site Analysis) 49
Gradient of Adaptation and Mitiagation Study (Site Speculation and Topographic Studies)
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Operation: Aquifer Manipulation Strategy (Geographic Section of Aquifer Level)
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Aquifer Flow Analysis (Geographic Plan of Aquifer Manipulation)
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Urban Acupuncture: Inter-surface Artifacts (Macro-level and Micro-level Strategy)
The project imagines a plausible future cohabitation between the interrelated scales of humans and microorganisms: an Experimental Living Protocol of Coexistence, performing two main complementary strategies to Metabolise and Visualise this â&#x20AC;&#x153;guiltyâ&#x20AC;? landscape, through a series of Inter-surface Artifact. 54
Strategically located on the landscape, the proposed network of temporal and constant artifacts creates ephemeral ecological regeneration zones while weaving the reclamation process into the regenerative development of the Ban Chang community through a civic participatory approach.
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The constant artifacts revive the sense of ownership towards the landscape, through the visualization strategy of the invisible contaminated flow that was integrated into the communityâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s collective intelligence of tie-dyeing. 56
The landscape was documented on their daily basis, reflected through pigments and microbial patterns that responded to specific geographical locations: a Geographical Indicator.
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The reclamation process consists of the Temporal artifacts serving as metabolizing devices, responsive to the fluctuating hydrological cycles. The process of bioremediation was recreated on the existing collective intelligence of local technologies. 58
The heterogeneous construction materials reflect the industrialization and the scarce condition of the landscape. The repetition of details and modular connectivity reflects the repetition of the collective intelligence of the Ban Chang community. 59
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A Food Fiction Manifesto Hubei, China Ephemeral Festival and Pavillion Design (2018)
A Food Fiction Manifesto: This festival is an annual event; a temporary pavilion that travels from place to place to host the activities. It is a living organism: it grows, breeds, and dies. Human performs as pollen in this artificial-natural cycle helping to propagate forward. The pavilion exaggerates the relationship between man, nature, and machine and celebrates it. Adopting the idea of social relationship between Chinese people and food; social dining is the main event to bring people together.
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CELEBRATING MODIFICATION AND EVOLUTION OF FOOD The festival promotes the celebration in modification and evolution of food. The festival serves as a medium to suggest a new possible alternative of food cultivation and improve the current condition of the gap between producers and consumers; fiction and reality. A speculative world, creating a moment in between the fiction and non-fiction to embrace and raise awareness of the reality. It is a vision of when human, technology and nature comes together for one goal, which is to improve food sustainability.
Operation Strategy (Plan of Pavillion and Strategy) 64
A FOOD FICTION MANIFESTO A celebration in modification and evolution of food I like to think (and the sooner the better!) of a cybernetic meadow where mammals and computers live together in mutually programming harmony like pure water touching clear sky. I like to think (right now, please!) of a cybernetic forest filled with pines and electronics where deer stroll peacefully past computers as if they were flowers with spinning blossoms. I like to think (When will it come!) Of an equal world Where no man is hunger And no animal is suffering No laws restraining us But machines that joins us A balanced, egalitarian planet. I like to think (Oh, please, letâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s make the change) of a new religion A mechanical religion Where there is no culture, no politics, no money Just one belief in borderless food for all Where human, nature and machines Are embraced as one. I like to think (it has to be!) of a cybernetic ecology where we are free of our labors and joined back to nature, returned to our mammal brothers and sisters, and all watched over by machines of loving grace. Inspired by; All watched over by machines of loving grace, Richard Brautigan,1967.
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At the beginning of the festival, consumers are encourage to particiapte in a virtual farming. One person, one plant.
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The relationship between human and nature initiates the start of the festival and to first create the connection between consumers and producers.
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Form Exploration Study (Study Model: Bamboo)
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The model presents how the component-based system is adaptive to any landscape, creating an overlapping space between inter-species of human and chickens and it allows a high level of freedom in aggregation and configurations in expansion. The construction is mainly constructed from bamboo, inspired by Kagome weaving which is a traditional weaving style for Chinese food storage. The pavilion promotes the materiality of bamboo, which allows distortion and deviation through tension and compression.
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Urban Disruptive Infrastructure Siam, Bangkok Rethinking Public Infrastructure (2018-2019)
Freedom of self-expression or free speech is essential for a democratic society, yet spaces for public expression seems to become harder and harder to find in the city of Bangkok where we work, live, and play. The Urban Disruptive Infrastructure, through the interpretation of the punks subculture liberating philosophy and its celebration in individual freedom. It is a place of encounter and can facilitate political mobilization where individuals are free to express their identities, creating an environment for interactions and exchange of ideas where the freedom of expression is safely exercised. A public space serving for the hedonism in freedom of self-expression is created.
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BKK PUNKS Throughout history, freedom of expression has often been associated to street protests and youth culture. In the 1970s, when Britain faced economic crisis, a new subculture emerged. Punks, a rebellious youth, a reaction against socio-political inequalities and conformism, using their bodies and music as a silent protest. Meanwhile in the same time period, in BKK, we faced the Thammasat massacre event, which saw the rise of the Bangkok punks. â&#x20AC;&#x153;This country has no freedom!â&#x20AC;? said a group of Thai punks in 2018, as a reaction against the military dictatorship and authority censorship.
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ANTI-CENSORSHIP TOTEM The Anti-censorship totem is a mobilepolitical disruptive device that allows an autonomous public space to be created anywhere in Bangkok. Here, social media is used both to express and protect them. This totem is constructed out of existing politicized devices that are then ironically reconfigured to contradict their original purpose, such as police barricades as protection barriers, and cctv reverting surveillance back towards the authorities.
Anti-censorship Totem (Operation Strategy and Stakeholders) 78
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Site Study: BTS Siam (Sectional Analysis) 80
Site Study: 14 October 73 Memorial (Sectional Analysis) 81
This hedonistic infrastructure, media is combined with architecture to create a permanent autonomous space. The feedback loop now extends beyond punks as political actors, now everyone could become a punk, now everyone is able to safely occupy and freely express their political opinions. 82
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“That this ain’t exactly real Or it’s real, but it ain’t exactly there From the wars against disorder It’s coming from the silence” - Democracy, Leonard Cohen 84
“Organize, centralize. It’s time for us to fight for our lives. Destroy Babylon. Oh there is a way.“ - Destroy Babylon, Bad Brains 85
There is no right. There is no wrong. Only the hedonism of self-expression. Welcome to the death of the Age of Hypernormalisation. I am built upon the identities and memories that have been lost through censorship. Where human thoughts and actions were expressed through a landscape of media. There is no edge. There is no boundary. Only the ephemeral spaces, movements, and events flattened into an urban public screen. In a time where the possibility of active participation in the production and experience of lived reality were eluded; I serve as an interface, mediating between the physical and digital world as a platform for the public.
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The tensile netting represents the punks expressive visual identities, hacking onto the existing infrastructure and expands edgelessly. Its flexible quality allows different activities to be adopted on one surface, non-conforming to the urban grids. Flattening the multilayered infrastructure of Siam into one continuous surface where the participants can move freely. Where it meets the ground creates a space for squatting, a peaceful act of protest, here, the urban furniture creates a space for physical occupation. A platform for interaction and exchange. From the site analysis, the urban furniture is each designed specifically to the site and context of leisure, active and performance spaces.
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Thank you.
SANTHILA CHANOKNAMCHAI Santhila.ch@gmail.com (+66) 87 562 2236 90