Columbia University Architecture School: GSAPP

Status-Appropriate Spaces:
How Bangkok’s architecture negotiates
formal and informal Thai values

Graduate students of the GSAPP Architecture School of Columbia University, New York, made a field trip to Thailand. I gave the opening talk of their trip, which was to create the final project of their masters degree.

The talk looked at how Thai architecture expresses cultural values, giving both traditional examples and showing how those values continue to underpin contemporary architecture. The values shown were not just conventional values of high culture, but included values from popular culture, the avant garde and observations by me and other pundits on Thai architecture and urbanism.