Bangkok Project Studio

I feel truly honored to have been invited to join the Fireside Chat at the Hong Kong International Cultural Summit 2026
as part of the welcome dinner where Suraya Al-Hassan, Director of M+,
introduced me and shared the reason why I was invited to speak

She said that in a time when the world is facing uncertainty

what we need
may not simply be architects

but humanitarians

those who think deeply about
the relationship between humans and nature and our responsibility within that relationship

While I was in conversation on stage
with Shirley Surya, Curator of Design and Architecture at M+,

the dialogue brought me back
to the beginning of my work

Elephant World
did not begin with an idea of material

but from a simple necessity
that “the elephant is hungry”

Architecture, therefore,
was not planned in advance

but slowly emerged
through learning
and living together

The three buildings
were not created as objects but to fill a gap of understanding

and to make visible the relationship between humans and elephants
that has existed for more than 400 years-a way of living where humans and elephants grow, work, and depend on each other as one

This is not something new but something that has always been there
only that we have not seen it.

And later, elephant dung bricks
were introduced to extend the architecture
not as a new material
but as a result of coexistence

In this process, many things I thought I already knew
had to be “unlearned”

so that I could “ relearn”
how to live together again

This conversation,
therefore,is not about giving answers

but about asking in a world like this

“ how can we remain human
and live together”

When I first arrived in the Kuy village, I thought I was there to design buildings for elephants. Later, I understood that I was there to learn from a culture.

At the beginning, I approached the project as an architect , thinking about structure, materials, and space.
Later , I realized that the center of this work was not architecture.
It was culture. What I found there did not need invention.It needed recognition.

Elephant World was not built only with concrete and brick.It was built with relationships.

Administrations may change.Policies may shift.But culture remains.
The elephants remain.The people remain.

For me, the real foundation of this project is not its buildings ,
it is the knowledge carried in everyday life.

I feel deeply honored that Shirley Surya, curator at M+, has finally visited Elephant World in person, especially as several works from this site have now entered M+’s permanent collection.

I would like to share some of the thoughts and reflections Shirley offered, which continue to resonate with me.

Visiting Elephant World is not a romantic experience in the way it is often presented through widely published photographs. Many structures have aged: wooden panels have fallen away, concrete pavements have warped as the soil eroded, and parts of the site have been reprogrammed beyond the architect’s control. This leads to an essential question: how should we assess a project that was completed five years ago, under strict budget constraints, in one of the poorest regions of Thailand?

Amid the realities of a project’s fate beyond the architect’s hands, what felt most heartening was witnessing the continued coexistence of the Kuy people and their elephants. The community’s sense of ownership and their use of the structures, for as long as circumstances allowed, remains deeply meaningful. Equally important is the steady stream of visitors to the observatory tower, which continues to provide economic support to the local community.

Most delightfully, Shirley spoke of sensing the remarkable thermal comfort within the heat, and the recovery of land use through the work, not as an image, but as lived experience.

For me, this visit is a reminder that the value of architecture does not lie in permanence or pristine conditions, but in enduring relationships: between people, animals, land, and time.