KRISTEN A. FOX

After a two-week research trip to Bangkok, Thailand, three University of Maryland Architecture graduate students and four University of Pennsylvania Integrated Product Design graduate students were tasked with designing a community center, an ecologically conscious low-income housing solution, and income generating product ideas.

As students and designers, we visited and studied three informal settlements within the Huay Khwang district of Bangkok.  There we listened to the community and discerned needs for a culture very foreign to ours.  After our time with the Thai people within these communities, we established a list of four ideals that each design should incorporate into their design:

 

Income Generation
Growth and Adaptibility
Urban Environmental Improvement
Communication and Connectivity

 

The community center, which I was focused on designing, needed to embody these ideas.  We wanted the design to remain adaptable to possible other sites in other communities, so we built upon the concept of housing all utilities and storage in a vertical core, and attached a multi-purpose space to that core.  Because the space is lifted off of the ground, the mass of the building provides much of the shade necessary on the site while allowing the entire ground plane to be utilized.  Sun shading panels made from split bamboo ties the two elements of the core and the flex space together.  

 

After the project I helped to write, design, and edit a book entitled “Building on Community: Recognizing the Potential of Bangkok’s Informal Neighborhoods.”  Watch the promotional video for our project here.