Supermachine studio can design a house too!!!! It might have been a wrong perception that we don’t design residential project. Looking back at the works in our 10 year portfolio, there is only one villa completed among big array of public space projects. We are still in love with great aspects of living diversities.
Project: J-Garage
Project size: 300 SQ.M. (Aprox.)
Project type: Architecture and Interior
Location: Bangkok
Client: un-disclosable
It was the same time when our director about the turn his small house in Bangkok into a garage, we were approached by a client, who has crazy lifestyle, to design pretty much of the same program but in a much crazier degree.
The 300 SQ.M. living garage is a house for our client’s hobbies. It should accommodate spaces for a collection of his motorbikes and exotic cars as well as a small private recording studio and some corners to party with his friends. And all should be done in relatively low budget.
Our design of the garage is combination of simple geometries criss-crossing on each other and covered by a single simplistic tilt roof. The overlapping masses create different kind of open and semi open space in the project, ie; a pool, a party balcony or cliff climbing space. The 2 main high-light spaces are his motorbilke and car garage where we propose a large glass doors and aDark Knight style, fully illuminated ceiling. On second floor are space for a record room and a naturally ventilated party balcony.
Looking back at our proposal to build a super compact studio and office in 2016. All pre-fab concrete panel designs have been studied to achieve time and quality requirement of the project. Unfortunately, this is again stayed in computer.
2 years ago, we proposed the conceptual idea for another type of meeting place in Thailand as people are more glued to their smart phones these days.
“It is typical in architect office to have work on something and not able to complete it for different kind of reasons. Time have been spent… Ideas have been tested (to a certain degree)… We will now share of some of the past proposals that have never been realized on our blog”
Office-R is a pretty typical small size office taking space in a typical row building existing through out Thailand. They rent out the upper floors that they don’t use for other firm while the one on the ground planed to be rent to the bicycle shop. Every inch of the surface is money, the western facade is their existing commercial billboard. Our task is to come up with the new look that merges all that have said with in the limited budget. We proposed the new aluminum facade in a composition of crises-crossing turn. Some vacant spaces between the brick are the windows bringing light into their working spaces.
Design team: Pitupong Chaowakul with Theerayut Somtua
Design Team: Pitupong Chaowakul with Korakot Meesathien and Sujinda Khawkam
Ru-Yerb (inverse in Thai of Love-You) is a conceptual project of ASA Change 2013 aiming to address the contemporary urban problem in Thailand, in our case the electrical lines and pedestrian trees. With our long frustration on the city’s easy attitude on cutting down trees that are taller than electrical lines, we come up with an idea that allow the lines to go through the trees more safely. Ru-Yerb is a double skin insulator in which the inner skin shield group of wires from touching tree leaves while the porous outer skin attached to tree branches allows small animals access for inhabiting. By creating network of safe passages for wires to go through city trees, big city in Thailand will be able to see big trees growing along side with skyscrapers.
To be exhibited at Thailand Pavillion, La Biennale di Venezia 2013. These are the extracted model from the King Museum competition we did in 2011.
Sectional model of Superbowl Project showing conceptually how people live in the multi-story linear city.
When it comes to flood…Stop blaming nature… We are the one responsible. Supermachine studio expresses our view towards different future with Superbowl Project.
Design team: Pitupong Chaowakul, Nuntawat Tassanasangsoon, Wattikon Kosolkit, Yupadee Suthvisith, Suchart Ouypornchaisakul, Peechaya Mekasuvanroj, Sthapat Soichampa and Supanna Chanpensri
Imbalance
Thailand is a country at risk of water disaster both draught and flood. Considering its size, the country has a great length of rivers in its water network, specially the central delta. Together with monsoon behavior around the region, Thailand has always been worried about more than less water to use. But delirious sprawl of cities and irresponsible agriculture lands trigger huge imbalance of water flow; insufficient to use during dry season and larger scale flood during rainy season.
New tools
We have to change the way we live with WATER, but more than that, we need far larger and more efficient tools to manage it. We need network of hydraulic device big enough to manage 6,000-10,000 million cubic meter of water that spill out of the rivers every year. “Dams won’t work.. They are managed by politics.” We need new tools that are more human related. The PEOPLE’s tools. The tools that make us more responsible and enable us to live with WATER in the new way all together.
Nakornsawan
In this proposal, we use Nakornsawan as a location to implement our vision of a giant hydraulic tool in the network. The city is a typical Thailand’s city locating by 2 rivers Ping and Nan. It is usually flood every year but in 2011 the water broke the protecting levee into the city’s center. The whole town of Nakornsawan sank into one meter plus deep water. Our vision is to place the new WATER city in between the two rivers and slowly generate new way of living for Nakornsawan’s people.
Super Bowl; Half a million city
Can we build a massive hydraulic tool that is populatable as an extension of our own city or as a new city itself that all of people in the old city can move into? We propose to build a 20 km. long soil hill in closed shape in between 2 rivers in the East of the city of Nakornsawan. The 150 meter high hill will form a giant water reservoir capable of managing 1,500 million m3 (15% of Bhumipol dam) water. The massive water device will work together with other devices in the network sucking in water from the rivers during monsoon season with 3 giant pumps at 180million m3/day. It will slowly release the water out during dry season keeping the part of the water for 5.85 million m2 agriculture on the inner surface of the reservoir itself.
The outer surface of the bowl will be 40% covered with forest of diverse species. In time, people will populate and urbanize the outer surface of the hill in specific area without harming the fully grown forest. The new city will be thin but continuous one running up and down the surface of the hill allowing the residents to be close to the forest. In our vision, the city is one continuous architecture netting on the giant water device. Its structure will be standing on the soil to strengthen the reservoir as a whole. The new architecture is a vast 28.3 million m2 of mix-use programs (from house to school, cinema, market to government facilities) able to inhabit half a million people, the size of downtown Nakornsawan itself.
Super bowl is a sustainable city of its own as it has power sources from wind turbine, water, hydro-generator, bio-gas and dye-synthesized solar cell installed on all of its surface. Hydroponic planting system is also a built-in element on the whole building skin. People will plant their own consuming vegetable while traditional terrace rice planting will be allowed one crop a year inside the reservoir. In this city, agriculture still exist but in much more responsible and water-efficient way.
Less cars are allowed in the new city, parkings are distributed along the band in nodes. The residents use cars just to travel to other cities. In Project kingkong, they will use 3 lines of in ground Metros. 3 levels of public transportation connect people in the city via 3 interchange stations on each side of the peripheries. On top level, which is the water level, people will travel with boats. Public facilities like parks or sport stadiums are floating elements on water including airport.
Our vision for Thailand’s “Living with WATER” condition in the future, Superbowl Project, will be exhibited at Architect’12, Challenger Hall, Bangkok 24-29 April 2012. The exhibition is organized by Association of Siamese Architects.
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