Existing in Place

 

My professional practice in spatial design led me to recognize how significantly space can influence its inhabitants physically and mentally. This practice-based research explores ways to form a friendship with a place that may establish awareness of its presence and make the invisible visible. The project studies my response to the familiar and unfamiliar spaces that shape memory and experience where childhood memories and fresh experiences embody the practice.

In schools, particularly in Thailand, the pedagogy of standardized education tends to provide every child with the same set of knowledge and a similar school layout. I’m interested in how children do form unique relationship to space and what can we as designers and educators learn from this?

 

The project is divided into two parts: The first part took place in this studio, an educational space with which I was not yet familiar. I adopt the idea from a drawing class where close observation and imitation are the basic greetings to an object. In this case, the building is perceived as the object itself, not as a mere background. My drawings draw attention to the overlooked traces, marks, and accidents.

 

The second part took place at my home in Bangkok, Thailand, where using my own body as a tool, the direct touch to building marks, cracks and textures stirred up my memory as if I was just playing with them yesterday.

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