A Talk With Ekaphap Duangkaew - Leong Jiang Ling 1001436853

Posted by Unknown October 15, 2017

A Talk With Ekaphap Duangkaew - Leong Jiang Ling 1001436853

"...combining science and art together to bring out proper design efficiency to create a sense of place..."

Today, we are pleased to have an architect sharing with us, Mr. Ekaphap Duangkaew. He is the Founder of EKAR and co-founder of NOTDS (none other than design studio) with architectural design experiences in various typologies both public building and residential projects.

Ekaphap Duangkaew

He also graduated in Architecture at Chiang Mai University, and he is now the principal of EKAR. We are pleased to have a talk with him, "The Other's Place".

He came from Thailand and his project is way more creative than we thought. He has usually mixed the beautiful aesthetic senses and functional usabilities into his design. This is the interesting part of him.

So, here comes his first project, "T-House".

"An office, a warehouse, plus a residence for family expansion"

The main function of this building was created to support the owner's family business, a cloth wholesaler. To maintain the circulation and routine of the old house, a new building needed to be not just only a residence for an expanding family plus a small garment storage but also needed to include an additional space for a new office and prepare an area for a further phase of family extension.

It is an idea of mixing together with Thai living habit and Western ideal; a mixture of a Tropical Architecture with Modernity, to form a simple structure.

There is a staircase functioning to connect all rooms on the second level, to performed itself laying on a T-shaped layout.

The exterior appears the pure geometric form (cube) to reflect each function straightforwardly inside out. The building shape follows to the weather condition, to protect the house from receiving the direct sunlight and heat from the West. This building is an idea of life at work and personal life.

After his first project, here comes the second one, "Multi-Place"

"How could I transform the middle of pollution, noise and messy context to be a home?"

It is a building that two siblings with the background of pharmacist and veterinarian, living together in this narrow building. This building is also used as to live and work.

The main problem of this building is that the shophouse sat along the main road, which needed to be concerned are the legal restriction of buildings as well as dust and noise pollution.

Started with the legal restriction which a length of the building could not be over 20 meters, the architects divided the building into two; front and rear. The split area was converted into a garden which can bring the natural sunlight into this building and acted as a natural boundary between public area and private area.

Due to the client's need, their privacy between each other, this garden used to be a relaxing linkage between two detached residential spaces. The garden's wall is made of glass blocks to allowed sunlight to shine through creating dynamic shadow effects.

To fulfill the condition of client's privacy and from by seeing the dust and noise pollution, concrete screen blocks became the best solution for the facade.

The third project, "ReGen House"

"Under the ground"

It is a perception of under the ground, a building that connects to the green. A lot of green surround the building to make us connect to nature.

When you stand on the second floor, you will feel like standing above the ground. It is building that one box of the building living with one family. Total of 3 families living in this building.

Now comes the last project that he shared, "Temple"

"Where is the place that is important in a public place?"

Mr. Ekaphap started to build a temple project that is a public place project that can let everyone to enter. But the biggest problem of this public area is the toilet.

The toilet of public place if important that everyone will try to access and so, it needed to be easily accessed by everyone.

After sharing his project, a Q&A section started, few people stand up and started some question.

James : How does Chiang Mai influence for your design?

Ekaphap : The Different country will be having a different condition of the site and the most influential part is that the context of the site.

Random Girl : How do you organize your work with your partner, with EKAR? Is there are some people doing this work and other people working for different things?

Ekaphap : There are 9 of us in EKAR, and not to say organized the work, but all people of EKAR have to do all the works.

Due to the time limit, the talk has end after the photography section. It is a very impress section that we were very enjoy, and leanred some other country's condition. A very big thanks to Mr.Ekaphap.