Naphat Whaichana
Department of Interior Design
Montfort del Rosario School of Architecture and Design
Assumption University
Contemporary Micro-living Design
Bangkok is one of the metropolitan cities in the world where urban density is increasing. Recently, a living concept called “micro-living” has been growing in the city to fulfill the high demand for housing. A studio unit in an urban condominium has adopted this type of micro-living space by providing a comfortable and practical living concept for the occupants within an area of 27 to 37 square meters. To create a functional and comfortable living area in such a small space, synergy in interior design is a powerful weapon to be utilized.
This studio unit is in a condominium located in the downtown of Bangkok. The owner is a retired dentist who bought it for his son who is an undergraduate student. To satisfy both residents, the idea of synergy in design seemed to be a mindset and an approach for creating a design concept.
The design concept is the unity of 2 different generations. Contemporary design is employed to reflect the concept by borrowing shapes and forms from modernism and minimalism style combined with classic materials like wood, tweed fabric, leather, and marble. The built-in furniture designed with modern clean lines and rectangular silhouettes contrasting with ‘Retro’ loosed furniture can add a sense of playfulness. Black, white, wood, and gray colors are composed in the space to create unity.
The concept of ‘open plan’ is applied for furniture arrangement to create a seamless flow of activities. Minimal furnishing is used to maximize the space usage and the spatial demands of the residents. Concealed storage is designed as built-in furniture to make the space neat and convenient for the residents.
Perspective 1
Perspective 2
Perspective 3
Schematic Design
Furniture Planning
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Wasana Sitti-issara
Department of Interior Design
Montfort del Rosario School of Architecture and Design
Assumption University
The Synergy beyond Function and Form in Spa
This spa project is located in an alley of Sukhumvit 60, Bangkok. The owner envisioned the building not only as an extraordinary spa for post-pregnancy woman but also as a unique wooden building. This building is an extension from a typical one-story house in the alley. In terms of form, the building needs to have a nice welcome facade in the traditional style to reflect the treatments that have been secretly kept for generations.
In terms of spa functional design, a transitional space is needed from the first step through the entrance and the corridor in order to create serenity in each treatment room, which is divided into a garden and a pond area. This small project acquires a consultation from the engineers in bringing water heated by the air conditioner’s condensing units to be used in the treatment room. The key treatment includes bathing and massaging in a tub that needs a demanding amount of water for each treatment.
The building itself is a combination of old and new part plus components of doors and windows from another old house that the owner recently bought from Bang Kra Jao area. Some window components were brought to be a part of the treatment room and were designed to set them 90 degrees different from how they used to settle in the old house. The synergy of this unique spa will not succeed if there is no dedication of the contractor from Ayuthaya who lived at the site until the building’s completion. Ironically, during their stay, the contractor won the lottery many times. As a result, the spirit house of this site is always full of offerings as if to thank all kinds of cooperation whether or not they are visible.
The front of the spa showing the entrance and pond.
The plan showing the owner’s residence in the left area and spa area in the right part divided by a small enclosed garden.
The interior of spa reception: Waiting area.
The treatment room: Pond area. A window component was brought and designed to set in 90 degrees different from how they used to settle in the old house.
The suite treatment room: Garden area.
Peeraanong Wongtanakornchai
Department of Interior Architecture
Montfort del Rosario School of Architecture and Design
Assumption University
The Renovation of Private Residential Project
“Architecture. It’s more meaningful than just a place to live in.”
The buildings which are more than 24 years old were combined with the modern design that accommodates the modern lifestyle and transformed into an Architecture that is lively and refreshing.
The personal needs and preferences of the occupants who are living in the building are different from the aforementioned theory (basic needs and usage) and beliefs. These personal needs and preferences are the factors creating and shaping space/architecture to be unique through self–expression of ideas and designs which, in this case, exceeds the basic needs for the building.
1. Open and Airy Interior Space gives the visual freedom to the eyes which leads to the freedom of thoughts (creative freedom) and feelings. When applying the ideologies into the real space, an appropriate space would need to be reserved and sometimes, space allocation is necessary. For this project, big and clear sliding doors with multiple design potentials have been used, every door is slideable. The open plan allowed the users to be able to see each other in the space.
2. Design Fit with Existing Architecture looks modern because of the recognition of the compatibility which creates a sense of peace. The owner appreciates beauty and has a passion for this type of architecture. Therefore, the interior space has been designed as Modern.
3. Function Suitability would happen conveniently and with ease. Typical usage for this house has been renovated and re–designed. The third- and fourth-floor spaces have been allocated so that when the door is open, the first thing to be seen is the reception room. As for the kitchen, it will be the first area that the users can encounter and interact but not the first feature or element that the guests see. Therefore, the kitchen is located in the left–hand side area. As for the laundry area that is entirely different from other typical Thai house layouts, the designer believes that doing laundry will be more convenient if the room is located on the same floor with wardrobes, walk–in closets or dressing rooms.
4. Individual Friendliness is taken into the design for different users to live according to their preferred lifestyle. The usage of space will vary depending on individuals and this can be observed through the habits of each personal behavior in regards to cleanliness and tidiness as well as the usage of each space.
5. Satisfying Aesthetic Value familiar images caused by living in the city are complex images with many components and context. Therefore, the owner wants these images that are in the foreground of the interior to be calm, smooth, tranquil, and still, which would create and increase the rates of concentration. Having said that, color is necessary to create a sense of liveliness, influence souls, and the colors will be the tool for improving the imagination and help with mind healing therapy.
The building before renovation
The building after renovation
Interior space after renovation: Staircase hall and Living area
Interior space after renovation: Entrance
Interior space after renovation: Dining Area
Santhita Phayungphong
Department of Interior Design
Montfort del Rosario School of Architecture and Design
Assumption University
Another Hound Pop-up
This pop-up shop is an exemplary case of design synergy. Twisting from the brand identity of Italian classic to the authentic Thai tasty flavors, this food kiosk represents a collaborative integration of ‘local’ and ‘luxury.’
During March 2019, the client, the owner of Another Hound café, wanted to utilize its open space on the fifth floor of the Central Embassy to make it become more attractive to Bangkokian office workers during their lunchtime. The proposed menu was their popular ala-carte dish, the chicken rice (Khao-mun-kai). The design inspiration drew from Thai local food stalls specialized in Hainanese chicken rice. Adapted to the brand characteristics, the location’s settings and on-site infrastructure availability, the design solutions were two folded. First, the new opening created a more welcoming approach to the sitting area. Second, the wooden showcase and marble top counter were designed to face toward the main circulation of the shopping mall’s walkway.
With a hint of curved glass and metallic copper trimming details, together with its polished white marble top, the wooden cabinet showcasing the whole chicken hanging inside brought a new sense of original chicken rice dish to this indulgence and tantalizing menu. Moreover, instead of the brand’s monochromatic design traditions, the dark blue-green color was chosen in order to uplift the brand personality as well as to become more energetic and appealing for its customers’ dining experience.
Site and existing conditions
Design inspiration and concept
Design visualization (perspective)
Pop-up counter
Project Completion
Wannida Nivartwong
Department o Product Design
Montfort del Rosario School of Architecture and Design
Assumption University
Synergy Drives the Design
To work in the multifunctional organization, it is inevitable that designers encounter complicated organizational structure with not only a long range of chain commands but also the time constraints and law restrictions. The key emphasis given to the designers is the acknowledgment of the interrelation of various components which make up this work. Therefore, synergy is the answer to success.
In the case of CP Retailink’s projects, the clients required to change their brand images and also wanted to renovate all of their interior design stores which are Café Muan Chon brand and Arabitia Café brand. To achieve the completion of these two-brand projects successfully, it was necessary to set up good teamwork, which is comprised of a project manager and team members. In the past, the project manager must be all-round but at present, under the synergy keyword, the project manager and all team members are equally indispensable because every team member must be skillful in their own area. The project manager must be able to supervise and manage to optimize team efficiency. It is generally known that the personalities of the group are stronger than that of any single individual. Nevertheless, the qualification of the team members is of the most important. The necessary qualification of the team members in these projects is as follows:
- Management skill: To fulfill the role of a manager, it is necessary to have the conceptual skill. This is the ability to have a mental representation of various manners of supervising the work, which is an intellectual skill. The team manager must have a sense of trying to achieve the goal set forth and contribute in some way to the end. Further, the team manager needs an identity of the sought-for accomplishment of the group members. If there is no purpose of directing, developing, counseling, and motivating members of the team, there is no justification for being a manager.
- Communication skill: the capability to transmit, brief, and explicate information or ideas between the client and team members. Furthermore, he/she must be able to interpret keywords, key visuals, and concepts from imagination into a verbal and visual presentation.
- Design skill: space planning skill is a must in these two projects because of the constraint of the project’s area. Every process and details of interior design also need circumspection which includes the knowledge of a variety of materials’ specification.
- 3-D Rendering skill: Skill for using 3-D rendering program in terms of virtual reality and detailing is the time limit. Some adjustments from the client in the middle of the process could happen, thus promptitude is essential.
- Technical drawing skill: Technical drawing must be accurate for the further construction process. It requires know-how and good understanding in every detail of the process, otherwise the drawing cannot be accurately and precisely designed.
- Financial skill: A team manager of the project needs not to be keen on economics or finance, but it is necessary for him/her to understand the cost-volume-benefit relationship. Thus, he/she can know at the beginning that the cost consists of money, manpower and time. It is the duty to manage the cost efficiently to produce the benefits for the team.
The combination of the skills mentioned above will produce the output effectively under the terms of synergy.
Café Muan Chon
Arabitia Café
Terasak Kuharungroj
Department of Interior Architecture
Montfort del Rosario School of Architecture and Design
Assumption University
Interior Design for Thai Beverage Can Head Office Building
PROJECT FACTS
The Thai Beverage Can Training Center, which is a part of Thai Beverage Can Ltd. (TBC), is a Thai-USA joint venture between Berli Jucker Public Company Limited located in Nongkae, Saraburi. The company is a leading manufacturer of two-piece aluminum cans and ends for beverages and beer. The company was founded in January 1997 and since then, the head operation office has been situated on a 56 Rai of land in Hemaraj Saraburi Industrial. The requirements were to design the main office building within the factory facilities. There are 100 staffs who occupy this operational office building within a total area of 2,085 square meters, which includes all main eight departments and executive office, employee’s lounges, main conference, meeting rooms, and main lobby area.
DESIGN PROCESS AND CONCEPTUALISATION
During the interview, the client had mentioned several ideas to create the sense of place that would last for years to come and also the idea of sustainability by the way of materials being used as the “truth of the material”. He strongly believed in an institutional atmosphere that could make people feel secure and welcome. Consequently, we have researched and proposed the idea of industrial design and figured out how this design can be applied to the working environment as the style can be expressed through different lighting atmosphere for working as well as easy maintenance materials, colors, and choice of furniture.
Finally, we proposed the concept of “Working with Pleasure” applied in some non-working areas through the warm and low light atmosphere and in the working area through the standard lighting with warm color furniture choices. We redefined the meaning of industrial design by toning down the style to be more appropriate for the working environment.
1st Floor Plan
There are two separate entrances to access the office area for staffs and guests. The left entrance leads to the HR department and clock-in and out area for all staffs and then provides access to the main factory.
The middle entrance leads to the main lobby and planning and operation department, which requires main access to the factory for machine operation. This idea for the layout plan is to give a feeling of a hall within the lobby area because the seats and waiting area for guests are kept at a minimal. As the planning department requires factory access for staffs to use the machine, open-work stations with lower partition are considered for all staffs with private rooms for all head managers arranged at the front side of the building.
2nd Floor Plan
There are also two separate access points from the 1stfloor for staffs and guests. From left side building, staffs will use the main corridor to enter all departments after clock-in and out from the staff entrance. The main middle staircase is provided for guests to enter from the 1stfloor main lobby area and arrive at the lounge area as well as the pre-function for the main conference.
The layout of the 2nd floor is designed to have two wings. The left wing contains the finance department and executive office, which are mainly supervised by the executives. On the right wing, there are sale department, IT department, and graphic department within the closed and opened layout plan. Due to the working style of the sale representatives, open work station with low partition is suitable for group discussion while private offices are designed for all head managers.
Wipawan Laitananont
Department of Product Design
Montfort del Rosario School of Architecture and Design
Assumption University
Fashionity
Fashion and clothing may appear to be the same thing, but they are different from each other. “Fashion” is aspirational, visionary, fantasy, content-rich, contextual, innovative, challenging, new, unique, and strong in narrative and artistic; while “Clothing” is generic, homogenized, undefined, dull, common, incoherent and lacking in specificity. Fashionity Collection is inspired by “deconstruction” in which it meant to challenge the traditional perception of beauty – the making of unfinished, decomposing and reassembled clothes. Nowadays, people around us are not symmetrical, therefore asymmetry and incompleteness have influenced the collection’s theme. To transform this into design collection, the following characteristics have been applied to each item: unstitched seams or seams, darts, and/or hems on the outside of the garment raw or frayed edges, dropped knit stitches, unfinished aspects, exposed linings, ignoring body proportion norms, use of non-traditional fabrics, broken and dilapidated, scruffy, adding clothing parts in an atypical way asymmetry, irregularity, overlapping, imperfections, shredding, and fading of gender-specificity.
Fashion has to do with ideas, knowledge of color principles, research and development of theme, the use of inspiration in design process, the understanding of different properties of fabric and what is achievable with them, the understanding of techniques of garment construction and what type of garments to develop and for what season, who to design for, fabricating, pricing, sourcing, and distribution. Since it seems to involve a lot of expertise and technical skills, the synergy of design plays an important role in the design process. As a fashion designer who is responsible for the design of each collection from inspiration through production, the success of the fashion design process is not only about fashion designer alone, but also the collaboration of other specialists such as pattern maker, fabric researcher and developer, computer design specialist, and technical designers.
Klairung Attanatho
Department of Product Design
Montfort del Rosario School of Architecture and Design
Assumption University
The Power of We
For centuries, people all over the world are amazed by the most sophistication of human capacity manifested through the works of, to cite a few, the Great Wall of China, the Pyramid of Giza, and Machu Picchu. It goes without saying that the ‘efficiency’ in creating these works made all structures right, and the fact they could sustain and remain to date reflect the accuracy and perfection.
However, it is not only the human being who works to possess, sustain and express that capacity, but also other natural creatures from the smallest bees or ants to the largest sizes such as killing whales. Capacity of those creatures exists and manifests collectively with impeccable efficiency through their works toward protecting themselves, building their own dens, hives, nests, lairs, or burrows. Obviously, these works could not be achieved individually. The efficiency in the exertion and manifestation of our ability is the key toward that achievement.
How does ‘efficiency’ work?
‘Efficiency’ can be achieved in many ways. One of the ways is achieved through ‘specialization’. Bees are a great example of this category of achievement. They cooperate among themselves systematically with a clear recognition of the sophistication of their works and the need to have ‘a division of labor’ among them. The multiple tasks were digested and divided among different groups of workers. Each task is attributable to the wholesome of success. The key explanation of this cooperation is simple – ‘synergy’.
‘Synergy’ usually happens when two or more workers or two or more groups of workers with different skills cooperate in a complementary manner. The term ‘synergy’ is long rooted back in the 17th century reflecting in an old expression of “The whole is greater than the sum of its part”.
The presentation of this sculpture work presents through the group work of ‘sparrow’. Although there is no evidence that sparrows are known in terms of working as teamwork like ants or bees as above mentioned, the sparrows are all around and are common natural creatures in our lives. They obviously have social lives among themselves and their conversation is not privy to them as we always hear them too.
Who knows, sparrows may synergize among themselves in their own way?
Apinataya Bua-iem
Department of Interior Design
Montfort del Rosario School of Architecture and Design
Assumption University
Illusion in Interior Room
While there are many factors affecting our society and resulting in lessening down childbirth rate nowadays, fertility clinics expand fast in many cities in Thailand. With a high rental rate-per-square meter in a prime location in Chonburi, the clinic in this project has limited space to fulfill customers’ relaxation. This provides an opportunity to create the interior design within a 10-square meter room for a relaxing sperm-collecting function in this fertility clinic. The designer has an opportunity to propose an interior design with the concept of “illusion in space”.
Once step into this small space, the patient will get into a dramatic illusion scene. The room seems to be larger in eyesight. Some corners trick our eyes to deceive extra extended space. The trick of eyesight is created by locating black oblique line inlayed at the right position in surrounded white tint glass walls designed continuing to white ceiling chamber as a gate of illusion. Artificial light is designed as an exaggerated part of the scene as well. The room comfy ambience is created by shine reflection of indirect light. Warm tone indirect light in ceiling slots creates infinite wall space to the ceiling. It also can be dimmed for further scenes effect.
Furniture design is made suitable for the limitation of space. The TV screen is attached on one side of the wall against a declining leather armchair which is located rare against the entrance door hidden from suddenly-surprised eyesight from the intruder.
In short, the “Synergy” in design is expressing through the whole of the illusion space in its atmosphere.
Wittawat Charoenpong
Department of Architecture
Montfort del Rosario School of Architecture and Design
Assumption University
Loburi Hideaway: Synergy of Existing and Natural Merge the New
Remarks: Please see attached file PDF_merged lopburi h.
(Under Construction)
DESIGN LITERACY FORUM 