Symposium Proceedings Now Available Online

A pdf of the Symposium Proceedings is available for download and includes academic papers, photos and student work from the (UN) ANTICIPATED FUTURES Symposium Hosted by Chulalongkorn University, February 16-18, 2012.

Download Here

VI World Urban Forum Panel Presentation

(reposted from The Observatory of Latin America website) 

September 1-6, 2012 · Naples, Italy

The participation of the Design and Development Program (D&D) at the VI World Urban Forum, organized by UN Habitat, includes:

• A panel presentation "Design and Development: Anticipating the Future of Bangkok, Buenos Aires, and New York", by The New School, Chulongkorn University, and the University of Buenos Aires;
• A side event on the Global Urban Futures Program of the New School;
• A media event presenting Margarita Gutman's book Buenos Aires: El Poder de la Anticipación;
• Daily seminar discussions in a booth organized by the New School in which the three universities will be represented with visual materials, projects, and publications;
• A workshop meeting on Urban Futures organized by the Research and Policy Branch of UN Habitat.

Panel presentation: Anticipating the Future of Bangkok, Buenos Aires and New York

This Networking Event will feature cross-disciplinary speakers from each city to discuss the innovative process of developing new urban knowledge(s) to influence and build inclusive and resilient urban futures in the global North and South.
The D&D Program links three fields: design, social science, and history, in order to more fully understand urban contexts and to develop city-specific solutions for the future. It focuses on three central questions for urban planning: climate change, inclusion, and quality of urban life. Strengthening urban resilience requires new and inter-connected approaches to provision of urban infrastructures, renewable energy, and environmental management.
Each challenge to the urban future has deep historical roots in patterns of urban growth and forms of professional practice. They are reflected in cumulative inequalities, forms of rupture and differences, dividing spatial forms, economies, and social lives. The historical component must be understood as the foundation of dynamic patterns of transformation. Acknowledging the linkages between these forms of knowledge is a first step towards identifying new solutions.
The three cities are grappling with environmental threats and deep patterns of exclusion amidst efforts to improve knowledge, management, and the quality of life. Through comparative, cross-disciplinary analysis, the D&D identifies new approaches to building knowledge and identifying solutions.

The Design & Development Program

A collaborative, multi-disciplinary team of scholar-practitioners from The New School, NYC, Chulalongkorn University, Bangkok, and University of Buenos Aires, identify new ways of anticipating urban futures. Unconnected urban knowledge(s) from different disciplines contribute to unconnected policies and partial solutions. Design, social science, and history can be combined to develop city-specific innovative proposals for the future, focusing on climate change, inclusion, and quality of urban life.
Populations, economies, and environments of all countries are increasingly urban as cities are the loci of economic growth and productivity, as well as sites of poverty and inequality. Knowledge of the city has been rooted in different disciplines and forms of practice, from architecture to sociology to environmental science, with the many forms of urban knowledge built on different concepts and languages. Rarely brought together, unconnected urban knowledge(s) contribute to unconnected policies and partial solutions, undermining the reinforcement of sustainability.

The World Urban Forum

The World Urban Forum was established by the United Nations to examine one of the most pressing problems facing the world today: rapid urbanization and its impact on communities, cities, economies, climate change and policies.
In the space of a few short years, the Forum has turned into the world's premier conference on cities. Since the first meeting in Nairobi, Kenya in 2002, the Forum has grown in size and stature as it travelled to Barcelona in 2004, Vancouver 2006, Nanjing in 2008 and Rio de Janeiro in 2010.
The Forum is one of the most open and inclusive gatherings of its kind on the international stage. It brings together government leaders, ministers, mayors, diplomats, members of national, regional and international associations of local governments, non-governmental and community organizations, professionals, academics, grassroots women's organizations, youth and slum dwellers groups as partners working for better cities.

Participants at the panel presentation Design and Development:
Anticipating the Future of Bangkok, Buenos Aires and New York

Chair:
Margarita Gutman, Associate Professor, The New School, New York; Profesor Consulta Titular, Facultad de Arquitectura, Diseño y Urbanismo, Universidad de Buenos Aires, Buenos Aires
Panelists:
William Morrish, Dean, School of Constructed Environments, Parsons The New School for Design, New York
Preechaya Sittipunt, Director, INDA, Chulalongkorn University, Bangkok
Adriana Clemente, Vice Dean of the Facultad de Sciencias Sociales, Universidad de Buenos Aires, Buenos Aires
Discussants:
Ariel Misuraca, Secretary General, Facultad de Arquitectura, Diseño y Urbanismo, Universidad de Buenos Aires, Buenos Aires
Robert Buckley, Senior Fellow, The New School for Public Engagement, New York; Former Managing Director, Rockefeller Foundation; Former World Bank Senior Advisor
Brian McGrath, Associate Professor of Architecture, Research Chair in Urban Design at Parsons The New School for Design. Founder and principal of Urban-Interface, LLC

The delegations to the World Urban Forum

Buenos Aires Delegation
Adriana Clemente, Vice Dean of the Facultad de Sciencias Sociales, Universidad de Buenos Aires, Buenos Aires
Javier Fernández Castro, Professor and Architect, FADU, UBA
Mónica Lacarrieu, Professor of Anthropology, FCS, UBA
Carolina Mera, Sociology, Professor, Director of Research of School of Social Science, FCS, UBA
Ariel Misuraca, Professor, Architect, Secretary General, FADU, UBA
Ariel Carlos Pradelli, Secretario Operatativo, FADU, UBA
Juan Pablo Scaglia, Associate Professor, Architect, FADU, UBA
Ileana Versace, Assistant Professor, FADU, UBA
Bangkok Delegation
Bundit Chulasai, Dean, School of Architecture, Chulalongkorn University
Scott Drake, INDA, Chulalongkorn University
Pirasri Poyatong, Professor, Chulalongkorn University
Preechaya Sittipunt, Director, INDA, Chulalongkorn University
New York Delegation
Robert Buckley, Senior Fellow, The New School for Public Engagement, New York; Former Managing Director, Rockefeller Foundation; Former World Bank Senior Advisor
Michael Cohen, Director of The Observatory on Latin America, Directory of the Graduate Program in International Affairs, The New School
Mandy Goodgoll, Coordinator, The Observatory on Latin America, The New School
Margarita Gutman, Professor, FADU UBA & Associate Professor, The New School
Brian McGrath, Associate Professor of Architecture, Research Chair in Urban Design at Parsons The New School for Design. Founder and principal of Urban-Interface, LLC
William Morrish, Dean of the School of Constructed Environments, Parsons The New School for Design

Workshop: Mapping the Post-Flood Landscape of Bangkok

Instructors: Kerrie Butts & Nilay Mistry

    The devastation from the 2011 flooding of the Chao Phraya River and neighboring watersheds has brought to international attention the desperate need for coordinated water management practices throughout Thailand and across political borders.  Global sea level rise and land subsidence amplify the perils to Bangkok metropolitan area and surrounding infrastructure.  Modern settlement patterns and construction in the region has neglected traditionally respected rhythms of the annual rainy season and ensuing swelling of the Chao Phraya River. New landscapes of occupation must account for flooding with site-­specific strategies, which will in turn alter the engagement people have with recurring water. An interdisciplinary approach via architecture, landscape architecture, policymaking, and urban design is needed to addressing issues of this magnitude. Designers need to respond.
    The first portion of this ongoing studio project has focused on inventory and mapping of the territories connected to the Lower Chao Phraya River, in effort to explore the confluences between physical elements in the landscape and cultural artifacts.  This workshop will incorporate issues and topics raised in the paper presentations in mapping and visual representation of the Chao Phraya River.

Khanittha Torchareon

Ployphan Saengporm

Nuphap Aunyanuphap

Natta Srivatanachai- Symposium Mapping

Natta Srivatanachai- Midterm Site Analysis

Somruthai Vipaswatcharrayothin- Symposium Mapping

Somruthai Vipaswatcharrayothin- Midterm Site Analysis

Narat Atsawarat- Symposium Mapping

Narat Atsawarat- Midterm

Narat Atsawarat- Midterm

Workshop: Superskywalk

Instructors: Scott Drake & Preechaya Sittipunt

    In February 2011, the Bangkok Metropolitan Administration announced that it would construct a ‘Superskywalk” system, consisting of 50 km of clutter- free, elevated walking space. The project, with an estimated cost at Bt15 Billion, and a construction schedule spanning 4 years, would make Bangkok more pedestrian friendly.  Most sections of the project would link to the existing BTS skytrain, extending existing pedestrian skywalks such as that between Chit Lom and Siam stations. 
    Curiously, a year after the announcement, little more has been said about the project.  Clearly Bangkok’s pedestrian network needs attention – sidewalks are in bad repair, cluttered with vendors and food carts, and filled with obstacles such as fire hydrants and low level signs.  Street crossings are dangerous, with cars and motorcycles seeming reluctant to wait for green lights or give way to pedestrians.  But are pedestrians likely to ascend above street level to avoid such obstacles? Yes the streets are cluttered, but this is part of their attraction – cheap food and an endless parade of characters for entertainment.  In contrast, the existing raised walkways are mainly circulation spaces – clean and corporate, engineered to be safe yet without provision for pedestrians to linger or enjoy the city. 
This workshop will explore possibilities for a Superskywalk – how could it be designed to be inviting and interesting for pedestrians? How could it be filled with vendors and food carts without becoming cluttered and dangerous? How could it link to existing areas where street culture is lively to make a multi-level pedestrian experience? The workshop will reflect on another design for a Super Skywalk, created by Supermachine Studio, comprising a giant ‘mega-compound’ raised above a city overcome by flood.

Workshop: The Architectural Apparatus

Instructors: Narin Paranulaksa & Pannasan Sombuntham




Thailand is the country where 95% of population follows the Theravada tradition of Buddhism. According to the article, “The Role of Buddhism in Enhancing Environmental Philosophy and Psychology in the West Today” by Phil Brown, the author stated that “Buddhism provides all the essential elements for a relationship to the natural world characterized by respect, humility, care and compassion.” Thais are not different from other lay Buddhists around the world. Thais of different generations have been taught to understand, adapt, and appropriate themselves passively to both the constructed and natural environments. The slow and simple approach to Thais’ way of living can still be seen outside of the metropolitan areas. In this light, one cannot deny its deeply rooted influence of the Buddhist teachings and philosophy on Thai people.

The various forms of informal settlements can be found all around Thailand for more the reason of adaptation to different environmental conditions than financial reason. The three seasons of Thailand present its people with substantial shifts in temperature and humidity level within the cycle of each year. Thai architects and builders have long been on the quest to finding architectural solution which appropriately adapts to the environmental flux and serves different functions of the people.

Traditional Thai-house typology is a great example of architectural solutions which deals with the issue of environmental shifts in Thailand. Raised floor, high pitched roof, semi outdoor spaces, and kit-of-parts construction are the main features which boast the success of the Thai house. However, the Thai house typology has unfortunately lost its regards due to the changing values and ideals of people in the society. For this workshop, students will be asked to investigate the downscaled architectural typology which shares similar philosophy in its capacity to adapt to the environment as the Thai house. Vendor’s carts of distinct characteristics and properties will be the workshop’s subject of investigation

The economy of Thailand has long been driven by transactions which took place at these small mobile units of architecture. Universally, the vendor’s carts are vehicles which incorporate spaces to store and display products while commuting to different locations. Not only have these small vehicles hosted the transactions between sellers and buyers on streets of Thailand, the lesser formal nature of these “shops” have also shaped the more contiguous social structure between individuals within communities of Thailand. Perhaps, the most apparent proof is in the way Thais generally address strangers as their family members including the vendors who pass by their front doors.

Process

Stage 1: Research of different vendor’s vehicles categorized by products and (or) services
Stage 2: Selection of the specific vehicle to analyze
-Students shall study:
a) Environments at which the selected vehicle travels and adapts to, b) The physical properties of the selected vehicle, c) The different function(s) which the selected vehicle can accommodate, d) The cycle(s) involved in the operations of the selected vehicle.
Stage 3: Documentation of the findings
Stage 4: To imagine and speculate on the possibilities of how the selected vehicle can evolve in different context(s) and perform different function(s) in future time of each student’s choice. For this stage, students will have the freedom to visualize environmental and cultural conditions that are dissimilar to those found in reality of the selected vehicle. Students shall also propose new or additional usage(s) of the selected vehicle.
              

                                                                                                            

Workshop: The shape of things to pass

a 1-week workshop lead by Moe Ekapob & Camille Lacadee

following an idea by Francois Roche & Camille Lacadee 

http://www.new-territories.com/BKK/unanticipated/

    Anticipation is a form of critical paranoia where given or made up logics have to be pushed to their extremes. One by one. In order to be pursued, these logics are necessarily (to a certain degree) blind to each other.
But if anticipating is to have a broadly open mind on what the possible futures could be, (un)anticipating is admitting the role that abstruse fate and human (mis)behaviours also have in the play.
Amongst the iconic structures of Bangkok megalopolis are vestiges of previous disillusions. As our site for researches and speculations on the anterior futures to pass, we chose the Sathorn Unique, an abandoned child of the 1997 Asian Financial Crisis, the never-completed residential skyscraper located near Saphan Taksin.
Our workshop will explore the forms and organisations of plausible futures. Starting from researches on animals and humans behaviours in emergency situations, we will give shape to at least one scenario. The development of each scenario will include digital tools and fabrication. Our workshop will be hosted on and presented as a blog. This blog is opening now and could be used as a platform for further researches and ideas’ development.

References
films
docudramas    Peter Watkins,  La Jetee   
Chris Marker (story of a post-nuclear war experiment in time travel = “to call past and future to the rescue of the present”), Waterworld    Kevin Reynolds
(science fiction) novels
Distress    Greg Egan
(The political intrigue surrounding a mid-twenty-first century physics conference, at which is to be presented a unified Theory of Everything. The action takes place on an artificial island called “Stateless”, which has earned the wrath of the world’s large biotech companies for its pilfering of their intellectual property.)
The World Inside    Robert Silverberg (The novel is set on Earth in the year 2381, when the population of the planet has reached 75 billion people. Most of the action occurs in a massive three-kilometer high city-tower called Urban Monad 116. Life is now totally fulfilled and sustained within Urban Monads (Urbmons), mammoth thousand-floor skyscrapers arranged in “constellations”, where the shadow of one building does not fall upon another.)
science, thought experiments, and other
Uncertainty Principle             Werner Heisenberg
Schrödinger’s cat             Erwin Schrödinger’
The paranoiac-critical method        Salvador Dali
stories, facts
Noah’s ark in the Museum of Jurassic Technology in Los Angeles,  Exodus , Rats, spiders and cockroaches behaviors during last flood in Bangkok
gardens, places
Rock gardens in China (fake/anticipated erosion - cf Baltrusaitis Depraved Perspectives), Desert de Retz near Paris

 

(UN)ANTICIPATED FUTURES SYMPOSIUM 2012 Chulalongkorn University February 16-19 BANGKOK, THAILAND

(Un)Anticipated Futures is an international Symposium bringing together research from three universities – Chulalongkorn University in Thailand, The New School in New York, and University of Buenos Aires in Argentina. This international collaboration brings together historians, social researchers, and designers in a context of unprecedented economic and ecological uncertainty.  As financial crisis and environmental disasters appear around the globe, cross-disciplinary and international approaches are urgently needed to address design and development in urban landscapes increasingly in flux.

The Symposium is part of a four-day workshop, from 16-19 February 2012. The first day will consist of fieldwork in development sites throughout metropolitan Bangkok. The Thai-Ministry of Foreign Relations, expanding on the Thai-US Creative Partnership Seminar for Green Building and Design held at the Ministry in September of 2011, will be co-hosting the second day of the symposium, which will be open to the public. On the third and fourth days, a workshop with visiting academics, faculty, and students from the International Program in Design and Architecture (INDA) at Chulalongkorn University will take place. This symposium is the first of three collaborative events within the Design and Social Development Program which will be held in Buenos Aires and New York in 2013.

Through the analysis of similarities and differences across cities from different disciplinary perspectives, the Design and Social Development Program focuses not primarily on the disciplines themselves but rather on how to build a common language. The program works at the intersection of design and social science in an effort to identify innovative ways of interpreting urban phenomena,

The Symposium Handbook can be downloaded here.

Contributors:

History

BKK: Pirasri Poyatong, Assistant Professor, Chulalongkorn University
BsAs: Adriana Clemente, Vice Dean of the School of Social Science (FCS), University of Buenos Aires (UBA), Margarita Gutman, Professor, School of Architecture, Design and Urbanism (FADU), UBA & Associate Professor, The New School; Ileana Versace, Assistant Professor, FADU, UBA; with the collaboration of Martín Gromez, and Lucila Pugni Reta
NYC: Bill Morrish, Dean of the School of Constructed Environments, Parsons The New School for Design

Social Science

BKK: Amorn Wanichwiwata, Professor, Chulalongkorn University
BsAs: Carolina Mera Sociology, Professor and Director of Research of School of Social Science, FCS, UBA; Mónica Lacarrieu, Professor of Anthropology, FCS, UBA
NYC: Vyjayanthi Rao, Assistant Professor of Anthropology, The New School for Social Research

Design

BKK: Danai Thaitakoo, Instructor, Department of Landscape, Chulalongkorn University
BsAs: Javier Fernández Castro, Professor and Architect, FADU, UBA; Juan Pablo Scaglia, Associate Professor and Architect, FADU, UBA; Pedro Senar, Assistant Professor and Industrial Designer, FADU, UBA; and Ariel Misuraca, Professor, Architect, FADU, UBA
NYC: Brian McGrath, Research Chair in Urban Design at Parsons and the founder and principal of Urban-Interface, LLC
Chairs and Commentators
Bob Buckley, Fellow, Graduate Program in International Affairs, The New School
Michael Cohen, Director of The Observatory on Latin America, Directory of the Graduate Program in International Affairs, The New School
Mandy Goodgoll, Coordinator, The Observatory on Latin America
Ariel Misuraca, Professor, Architect, and Secretary General of FADU, UBA


For more information, please contact:
INDA (International Program in Design and Architecture) Tel: 02-218-4330-1
Contact: Dr.Kanwipa Methanuntakul or Pannasarn Sombuntham