Spanish Bangkok Design Week

Some insights of the Spanish Bangkok Design Week (Nov-24) where the unexpected team formed by father Reynaldo, Tra Kamun and me had chance to publicly present the singular circumstances involving the creation of the Oratory of St Xavier in Umphang. Good days in Chinatown, organized by Myriam Rueda and Mesa312.

Visit us at the Bangkok Spanish Design Week ’24

The first edition of the long-awaited Bangkok Spanish Design Week took place near Yaowarat in Bangkok on 21-24 November. The show was curated and organized by Myriam Rueda and Studio Momo. The Oratory of St Xavier in Umphang was featured next to the architecture sketches and models that helped conceiving it, together with an all-starts …

St Xavier’s nominated for Construmat’24 Awards

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 …

Christopher Dewolf for Zolima City Mag

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 …

Venturing into Meditative Drawing

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 …

Framing my dip pen drawings

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 …

Published: “White Palaces over Rice Fields”

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 …

Birdcages in Soviet Estates

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 …

“The Liquid Mandala” published by RITA

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 …