In Barcelona on 23rd May, receiving the nomination of St Xavier’s Oratory for the Construmat’24 Sustainability Awards from the hands of Albert Cuchí, Manuel Enríquez Jiménez and Justo Orgaz. A recognition that I must share with Father Reynaldo Tardielly and Karen carpenter master Ren Sulee. Very grateful also to Asociación Sostenibilidad y Arquitectura and Foundation …
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Nice to read “The Lost Cityscape of Do-It-Yourself Hong Kong” by Christopher Dewolf in Zolima City Mag, which has been, for many years, one of most interesting digital outlets about Hong Kong urban culture and history. Very thankful to Dewolf for inviting me to contribute based on the facts and ideas I presented in “Life …
Inspired by the meditation drawings by Möebius. Seeking a state of mindfullness, forgetting about everyday’s petty issues and letting the hand flow. Same as other skills like road driving, once you have fully internalized the mechanics, while keeping the see-forward ability that allows you to build a composition, the process goes almost automatically. The resulting …
During last years I have accumulated dozens of dip pen drawings that I would like to exhibit someday —some of them are quite nice, to be honest— and I though about getting some picture frames and start experimenting with displays. However, nearly all frames I’ve seen in malls and photo shops of Thailand are beyond …
New project in the making. A dormitory for fifty Karen refugee children in Mae Khlong Mar Village, Northwest of Thailand, run by St Xavier’s Catholic Mission. The dormitory will stand 10 km away from the border with Myanmar, facing directly the areas under armed conflict. During my stay in MKM, hosted by the hospitality of …
Here is my article “White Palaces over Rice Fields” about 1970s corporate architecture in Thailand. With the rise of Thai Farmer´s Bank (today Kasikorn), new and modern bank branches were built in every provincial town. While resembling the bank’s logo —a rice plant—, these buildings also looked half-way Gothic and were, after the spires of …
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We just received a printed copy of “Stone Carving for the Rising Sun: A History of the Japanese Replicas of the Salamancan University Façade and New Cathedral Nativity Portal“, an article I’ve written about a very singular project in which my dad took part. During the mid-90s, the Plateresque buildings in my hometown were reproduced …
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Another stunning research paper. In July 2019 we had chance to visit 17 of the old KTT neighbourhoods in Hanoi. The KTT were socialist apartments built with prefabrication techniques introduced by Soviet and North Korean advisors (NK was quite good at it) that evoke the classic USSR khrushchevka apartments. However, after the 90s reforms, a …
Now published “The Liquid Mandala”. Sametr Pattanapornchai, —known by the Thai media as the “mad professor”— used to fill the streets of Bangkok with mysterious hieroglyphs. Probably victim of some obsessive-compulsive disorder, Sametr was a homeless person at drift through the underground spaces of the Big Mango capital. His characteristic graffiti merged vaguely technical diagrams …
The “hongthaew”, the Siamese shophouse, is the most iconic architecture typology of modern Thailand. It is an extremely versatile and robust design that has survived two hundred years of urban transformations. The “hongthaew” is a mixed-breed dog, an architectural nomad, a born survivor that originated in South China and was travelled to Siam via British …
Continue reading ““The Thai Shophouse: a Bastard Typology” at ACE Journal”
