“Bangkok Bastards”: Art or Shed?

“Bangkok Bastards” are works of everyday architecture created by everyday people to solve everyday problems. From temporary construction worker houses to illegal shantytowns to underground sex-motels, these vernacular spaces are scattered throughout Thailand’s capital. Bastards are constructed with inexpensive, locally sourced, and often scavenged materials in simple yet ingenious ways. Due to their illegitimate origins and “cheap” appearance, Bastards are dismissed as low-brow, unrefined, dirty scars in the city, unworthy of serious research. However, Chuenrudeemol sees them as honest, clever, and improvisational responses to the city’s challenges, and perhaps the most authentic and relevant examples of vernacular architecture in Thailand’s urban landscape. Chatpong Chuenrudeemol’s “Bastards research” is the foundation on which his office, CHAT Architects, develops its projects. Through a process called “Bastardizing the Bastard,” CHAT creates new, locally rooted hybrids by crossbreeding, transforming, and combining existing Bastards with newly invented programs and other urban, social, and ecological dilemmas. This lecture will also explore the firm’s recent efforts to expand its research into the Thai countryside, in search of “Rural Crossbreeds.”

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