Inspired by the meditation drawings by Moebius. 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 …
Category Archives: Blog
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 …
Children’s dormitory in Mae Khlong Mae
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 …
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 …
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A Tale of Salamanca Carvers at the Rising Sun
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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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 …
“The Thai Shophouse: a Bastard Typology” at ACE Journal
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 …
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St Xavier´s in StirWorld Magazine
My interview about the traditional Karen carpentry of St Xavier’s Oratory in Umphang has just been publiched at STIR. Very grateful to Jincy Lype for reflecting my ideas about the place of traditional crafts in the contemporary world. https://www.stirworld.com/see-features-the-organic-oratory-of-st-francis-xavier-in-thailand-raises-its-cross-up-to-the-skies
Got my Ph.D. Thanks.
Last Tuesday I passed the Final Jury of my doctoral dissertation about urbanism and contemporary art in Southeast Asian Cities at Universidad Politécnica de Madrid. The jury was presided by architect Jose Luis Penelas and counted with the assistance of Dr Satanan Channowana, who travelled from Bangkok to Madrid for the occasion. Very grateful to …