Right before the pandemic, Thailand was excited about the belated environmental campaign “No plastic bags.” as the country played catching up with the world’s situation. AP as one of Thailand’s leading real estate developer, attended Bangkok Design Festival 2020 challenging the event attendances with the campaign “AP SUPERMARKET”. The core activity of the event is to give away a super durable paper bag for people to use when they do their typical supermarket shopping. Moreover people can also customize their bags with free stickers and rubber stamp.
We create a half circular pavilion using a mixture of steel and wooden structure with 1,200 arms jutting out to hang the paper bags themselves. So the skin of the pavilion is an primitive installation that move and interact to the wind and surrounding. On the front side, the pavilion act as a white backdrop of the Thai post founder’s monument. On the back it is widely opened as an opened-door for people to come in making their unique bags. In one of the wings, it is compartmentalized into a staff capsule that manage the paper bag giving-away event .
It is our 2nd time this year to get involve with HIP-HOP. Now we have already believe that it is a big HIT here in Thailand. We are in charge of designing all big and small elements in the festival including main stage, mini stage, street dance space, landmark and showcase spaces. It is a mini project that we take a chance to catch up with today’s teen culture that sometimes we have to admit that it is not very easy.
Design team: Pitupong Chaowakul with Sujinda Kawkham, Hutsama Juntaratana and Rachanone Thaikaew
Year of completion: November 2018
Location: GMM Live house, Bangkok
Client: GAN
Never Say Cutz is a popular gentleman barber shop started in 2008 by a famous Thai Hip-Hop singer, Way Thaitanium and his wife. It has been expanding to have more than 10 branches around Thailand. For their 10 years anniversary, they want to organize a Hip-Hop concert + a barber service + a basketball together in one event to thank to their fans as well as get the staffs together. The event is to take place in an indoor concert hall, GMM Live house at Central world, downtown Bangkok.
With this unique combination, we take on the project starting by combining barber space+concert and basket ball stand. Placing a row of barber station on top of the spectator platform is to create an unusual way of cutting hair while watching performance of artists at the same time. The barber stand is placed near to audiences’ entrance to divide a foyer zone where people can get drink and socialize.
The stage design goes very simple and clean. A single tilt frame full of moving lights is placed covering the stage. We would like to create concert scenes painted by beam of lights in different colors as this is an indoor venue where the environment is easy to be controlled. With this simple configuration of lights, performance scenes can be vary from monumental to aggressive or even pop.
Design team: Pitupong Chaowakul with Hutsama Juntaratana, Nattaphon Worawanitchaphong and Krit Parephan
Location: The Ocean, Nakornratchasima, Thailand
Completion: Dec 2018
Client: Gan & GMM Grammy
Using Khmar cloths to build a pavilion’s roof is not new for us, neither creating a hammock space. But combining the 2 ideas is our first time and it is meant to be here in BMMF9. We are happy to see this element re-appearing in the event as it is one of the original elements created since the 1st edition of Big Mountain Music Festival back in 2010.
Khmar 9.0 pattern design
Day time testing
Checking Khmar 9.0 sample at our office
The unusual color thread used for Khmar, ‘fluorescent green’
Typically our Khmar market have been built using bamboo tided with PVC rope, a very traditional temporary way of erecting such structure. But because of the site constraint, we have to change it to a steel scaffolding and pipe system which save time and damage ground condition less. 1080 pieces of cloths are hung in pattern creating shading for 72 hammocks below. UV lighting is installed to create a dim atmosphere where fluorescent stripes on the roof shine. The Hammock market is placed in front of food stalls making it a space for people to relax after eating. A lot of people spend the whole night here after long days of music.
Design Team: Pitupong Chaowakul with Suttahathai Niyomwas and Rachanone Thaikaew
Location: The Ocean, Nakornratchasima, Thailand
Completion: December 2018
Client: Gan & GMM Grammy
Many times our designs start from silly ideas… Rumwong stage is truly one of those cases. Born to house a traditional dance activity widely popular in Thailand’s villages, the stage has a very unique set up. The musicians usually play folk music and their audiences dance around in circle. Sometimes there are dancers on stage whom people can go asking to dance with. These days, Rumwong is not easy to find in big cities of Thailand, therefore having it in Big Mountain Music Festival is an eye opening for for a lot of young audiences.
Typical Rumwong dance
From our observation, Rumwong dance needs a central pivot as one of important elements for people to dancing around (almost like a camp fire dance.) Back in 2014, we came up with a silly idea of putting “Monster” in the center of the stage and let the audience having activities around it. We learned it from a typical Japanese super hero series where gigantic monsters invade the world and always triumphed. The 6 m. high inflatable green monster was made following a 2D sketch and placed as an emblem of this stage for the last 5 edition of BMMF.
This year sees a return of many items from previous BMMF celebrating its 9th edition. We place the UFO (from District 9 stage) above the Monster in Rumwong stage making this stage even more fun… A giant abduction. Rumwong stage, ran by a famous rapper, Jeoy Boy, has always been full of fun mixing different genre of Thai music together with folk song.
Design team: Pitupong Chaowakul with Theerayut Somtua, Rachanone Thaikaew, Krit Parephan, Rachanone Thaikaew, Suttahathai Niyomwas and Nattaphon Worawanitchaphong
Light plotting: Duckunit
Location: Big Mountain Music Festival 9, The Ocean, Nakornratchasima, Thailand
Client: Gan & GMM Grammy
Photograph: Supermachine Studio
Big Mountain Music festival is truely meant to be for every one. In its 9th edition, there are music from almost all Genre across 10 stages. One of the stages that emphasizes this mindset is a stage called “Secret stage” ran by Trasher, a Thai party organizer famous among LGBT group. The model of this attraction is an evolution from Soi 2 stage appeared in BMMF3-BMMF6, a dance show-based stage with DJ in the center.
Ref image: A poster of 1966 American film “Fantastic Voyage”Ref image: Scene from Fantastic Voyage, a shrunken crew travelling inside the body
The design is largely inspired by 1966 American Sci-fi movie, Fantastic voyage which is a story of a shrunk microscopic submarine that travel inside an injured scientist. In the movie, there are scenes showing the crews traveling into human’s vain and organs fighting with unwanted entities that cause disease.
Our idea is to hide the enclosed stage behind the toilet units as main idea is to make it a hidden attraction. Once entering the toilets door, people will go through a tunnel of stretched fabric flooded with dimmed black light. Then they will be directed to the main pub space where the stage on the other end is the main focus.
The main entrance of the stage is a 3 standing toilet units put in front of a corrugated zinc wall.
At our garage, our test mock up of the stretched fabric for the tunnel
During day time, a stand up comedy show filled up the tunnel
At night, “A Secret Fantastic Voyage”
Ref image from SB furniture ads: A Typical LI-KAE stage set up“DJ ฺBANANA”
For the stage, it takes a very primitive approach referencing a stage construction of Thailand’s traditional play, LI-KAE. It is composed of multi-layered painted curtain. With painted graphic on it, the backdrop creates an perspective illusion of a grand room in palace suiting LI-KAE stories. Our version of Secret stage back drop is printed with intestine graphic simply to suit a voyage into the body theme. However lighting placement is configured not in LI_KAE’s way but clubbing configuration. DJ booth is set in the center decorated with fresh thousand of bananas making it feel like he is performing in a pile of fresh fruits.
During day time Stand up comedy performanceNight time Trasher’s show
Design team: Pitupong Chaowakul with Sujinda Kawkam, Katanyoo Angwatanapanich
Location: Big Mountain Music Festival 9, The Ocean, Nakornratchasima, Thailand
Client: Gan & GMM Grammy
Light plotting: Jiro Endo
Light operation: T Lighting
Final diagram
Hip-Hop stage is a brand new stage at Big Mountain Music Festival 9, 2018, making it the 10th stage in the event. Corresponding to the sharp rising popularity of the Genre in Thailand, the stage has to accommodate quite a number of Thai hip-hop fans. We made it an open stage following Big Mountain stage design fashion… a hip-hop crowd in a green field (but because of the unusual heavy rainfall on the first day, it became a stage on a mud field.)
Our design approach is to make a very subtle backdrop in triangular shape yet can be transformed to an aggressive/active scenography that suit hip-hop genre. The backdrop is simply composed of 2 pieces of stretched black curtains over-layed on steel scaffolding system. The blackness of the fabrics is enough to hide presence of lighting fixture and translucent enough for light to emit through. During daytime the stage is almost like a black pyramid standing on a green field, while during the night, energy is transmitted to audiences in the form of lights.
Design Team: Pitupong Chaowakul with Kasidis Puaktes, Hutsama and Supermachine team
Lighting and Motion graphic: Duck unit
Lighting Operator: Lightsource
Client: Gan & GMM Grammy
For 9 years in a row, Cow stage has been featured in Big Mountain Music Festival. In fact, it is the only thing that is redesign and built in all 9 editions of the event. 9 years old, Cow stage has evolved from hand-powered mechanism into a fully digitally control installation that enhances performances of artists on stage. Nostalgically, we still miss those days when a bunch of stage men had to control movements of the Cow’s head, its mouth and changes of eyes expression. But life goes on… Today’s edition of the Cow has totally embraced new spirit.
One week before the event
Installing Cow’s head
Completing the crown
Not anymore that the making of cow robot is a redesign of its skin on permanent structure, it has been forced to be a total temporary installation due to venue’s constraints. The whole thing is design based on the modular steel scaffolding system. The Cow’s design is our interpretation of BMMF organizer’s team, “Extravaganza”. The theme for the stage is an “Egyptian Pharaoh”
Diversity and technology: As mentioned before, the Cow robot’s performing mechanisms like eyes and hand have been replaced by digitally controlled LED panel, they are the main means that create diversity for the shows. Mainly, artists playing on this stage are pop to easy listening genre, communication design is also meant to be easier to comprehend rather than experimenting.
Design Team: Pitupong Chaowakul with Theerayut Somtua, Krit Parephan, Suttahathai Niyomwas and Nattaphon Worawanitchaphong
Completion: November 2018
Client: Fungjai
Location: Metro Live Park Rama 9, Bangkok
Photo: Supermachine Studio
Fungjai, Thailand’s indie music streaming service, organises their first international indie music festival in Bangkok. Their artist line up includes many interesting bands from UK, US, Japan, Korea as well as up coming bands from Thailand itself. With in the festival, we help Fungjai designing supporting elements in form of installations including welcoming entrance, main landmark, resting area and VIP zone. Each element exploit the idea of using typical scaffolding modules and “easy-to-find” banal objects.
“Rice bag wall” Thai people are so used to cheap woven plastic bags as they are typically used for rice export or making sandbags protecting flood water coming in. Little old fashion graphics on the bags are somewhat unique for this type of plastic bags, so much so that we think to hang a few hundreds of these rice bags at the entrance can create quite an unusual situation. 650 pieces of custom made graphic are hung to create giant curtain can create a festive feeling in an empty hall way of the existing building which is somewhat an abandoned retail space.
“Scafolding 10 Cal Tower” We were ask to create a landmark of the festival and a relaxing zone for audiences to spend time in during and between artist performances as the event takes place from noon to midnight. We decided to combine 2 programs together making a landmark that people can spend time in. With setting-up time and budget constraint, we chose to base our design of the landmark using typical steel scaffolding models and its stair/platform system. After a few testing schemes, we chose to create version 2 of our 10 cal tower assembling the scaffolding of 8 meter high platform and labyrinth passage way for people to go up and down. Navigating along hundred of combination routes people can enjoy different angles of the event as well as performances of the main stage 80 meter away. Underneath the passages, we cladded them with stretched fabric to emphasise the continuity of the walkway.
We have been obsessed with designing architecture as a public domain where people can come exploring different ways of meeting each other. This installation is designed for a 1st edition of a funky music festival in Bangkok, Mahorasop Music Festival 2018.
Supermachine Studio 