Nakornsawan Superbowl

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.

 

Supermachine Studio’s research on Thailand water enduring architecture

It took us a long while with big effort to complete the research for publication, but finally we have done it. Together with many other qualified architects and researchers in Thailand, we collect information, travel, photographs analyze them and put them in line hopefully to construct a public platform for relevant debate on WATER issue in Thailand. These are some sneak preview of the books before they are finalized. The book, WATER BRICK, will be out at ASA Architect’12 expo at Challenger Hall, Bangkok, 4th week of April.

Supermachine Studio working team: Pitupong Chaowakul, Nuntawat Tassanasangsoon, Wattikon Kosolkit, Yuppadee Sutvisith, Suchart Ouypornchaisakul, Peechaya Mekasuvanroj, Supanna Chanpensri and Sthapat Soichampar

With special thank to: Dr. Ornsiri Panin and Dr. Sumet Jumsai Na Ayutthaya for inspiring interview. Boonchai Tienwang for enthusiastic help with interview. Wison Tungthunya for letting us use those beautiful images, Association of Siamese Architects for seeing that this is useful and endless support.

Supermachine’s Pangolin House; Our answer to the flood

Pangolin House; Vision for future house in Thailand for Wallpaper Magazine (Thailand Edition)

Design team: Pitupong Chaowakul, Wattikon Kosolkit and Yupadee Sutvisith

Text: Peechaya Mekasuvanroj

Reference image: Pangolin

Our vision for the future Thai house is an Architecture that is composed of different levels of resilient segments. This includes 100% resistance with facility space that allows water to flood on the entire area without causing damages. The ground level is a semi living space connecting to the outdoor terrace where the house skin can open up letting the house harmonize with water during the flood season and perform as exposure as desired in the dry season.  The top area is the main living and resting area, which is elevated and twisted providing shadow for the spaces below.

The pangolin house skin is comprised of smart windows consisting of thousands of windows programmed by the intelligent software that can control the level of openings depending on the climatic situations along with the owners’ wills. In the case of flooding, the solid skin on the ground level can become completely open for water to penetrate through to avoid structural damage. The middle and top levels’ windows are made of dye-sensitized solar panels, which is tomorrow’s technology for energy generation where the solar cells use colorful fruit’s dye instead of silica. The translucence of the solar panels make them possible to replace the role of conventional glass windows. With this future technology, Pangolin house can supply sufficient electricity for survival in the case of disastrous emergency.

In the future, it is likely that natural disasters will be more and more unpredictable thus we will never be certain of how high the water is going to be. Therefore the roof is a detachable element that can become an emergency floating component once the water gets too high for residents to survive in the house. On the regular situation, it is a rooftop terrace with a garden for the residents, which can be a nice green escape during the flooding times where the residents are unable to leave their homes.

Layout plan
Section

During the dry season

During the flood situation

Supermachine’s Super Skywalk

We participate in Bangkok Art and Cultural Center’s latest exhibition “Let’s Panic” as one of the artists. Our piece is called “Super Skywalk”, a visionary mega compound building merged with network of elevated pedestrians. The Super Skywalk is a building for Bangkok in the future where ground surface has been reclaimed by WATER.

Water Brick project

Water rising, Singhburi, September 2011 Photo: Gorthong Thongtham Na Ayuthaya

“Wake up Architects” We should take part in this…!!

With our long frustration about WATER situation, Supermachine Studio ask for Architects’ commitment in finding new comprehension to the problems. Series of researches, photography and projects will be done in collaboration with other teams of architects and researchers. Together we will show the project to the public in April 2012 in a form of book and exhibition during ASA exhibition 2012 in Challenger hall, Bangkok.

Villager’s house on what supposed to be their rise field. Bangrakum, Pitsanulok September 2011 Photo: Pitupong Chaowakul

Flooded village, Bangrakum Pitsanulok, September 2011 Photo:Pitupong Chaowakul

Inside the villager’s house, Bangrakum Pitsanulok, Septerber 2011 Photo: Pitupong Chaowakul

Snake way city, Sena Market, Ayutthaya, Photo: Pitupong Chaowakul 04 Sep 11

Life goes on, Sena Market, Ayutthaya, Photo: Pitupong chaowakul 04 Sep 2011

Life goes on II, Sena Market, Ayutthaya  Photo: Pitupong Chaowakul  04 Sep 2011