Another truly interesting highlight getting a lot of attention at the 2017 Baanlaesuan Midyear Fair is the craftwork on display at the “SACICT Concept” booth set up by SUPPORT Arts and Crafts International Centre of Thailand.
/// Thailand ///
SACICT Concept in “room Terminal,” room Magazine’s super-chic section of the Fair
SACICT Concept showcases contemporary and cosmopolitan Thai handicrafts, supporting craftsmen who adapt traditional folk knowledge to fit modern design trends. The work is beautiful, leading-edge, and these artisans have built careers from it. The work shown here comes from the original showroom at the main SACICT office in Bang Sai District, Ayutthaya Province. We hope you’ll come experience this beautiful detailed workmanship right here at the 2017 Baanlaesuan Midyear Fair at BITEC Bangna.
This year SACICT Concept has presentations in two locations, one at the Fair entrance, and the other in room Magazine’s “room Terminal.” Come along with Living ASEAN as we take you on a mini-tour of craft products, the beautiful décor of the main booth, and fascinating highlights created by five uniquely talented award-winning traditional artisans, notably:
“Phraewa cloth” woven in the Phu Thai tradition: Jintanapha Phonatha, Traditional Craftsman of 2014, learned the trade from her teacher, Wanida Phonatha. The intricate elegance of Phu Thai hand-woven silk originated in Ban Phon, Kham Muang District, Kalasin Province, where high-level knitting and weaving skills and contemporary design are taught. Products range from utilitarian household items to women’s accessories.
Old-fashioned toys: craftsman Thaweesap Namkhajonrote, 2017 Traditional Craftsman, creates charming and colorful Thai traditional toys such as tops, mobiles, wooden hammers, etc., all from an ancestral folk tradition that employs local knowledge to engage children in building and practicing physical, mental, emotional, social, and perceptual skills through play.
Lipao woven baskets: Noppharat Thongsephee, 2014 Traditional Craftsman, with contemporary products such as handbags and multipurpose storage boxes woven from the lipao climbing vine, using fashionable modern color and pattern design trends to create beautiful products that appeal to the international market.
Reed weaving: Phat Namphiwong, 2016 Traditional Craftsman, learned his craft from artisan and teacher Reuangyot Namphiwong. Phat puts great love and intention into his work, adapting and applying his knowledge and taking inspiration from Japanese woven fabrics to create new woven-reed products with soft textures. Formerly reeds were used only to make mats, but Phat’s creations include placemats, coasters, and bags.
Burmese Clay Pots:2017 Traditional Artisan Phongphan Chaiyanil brought pot-throwing techniques learned in Hanthawaddy, Myanmar back home to Koh Kret. Adapting his skills and expertise to a 200-year pottery tradition, he developed forms and patterns from everyday life that emerge as charming, artistic masterpieces of home décor.
Here you’ll find many more interesting works from the Innovative Craft Award competition held each year at the IICF (International Innovative Craft Fair), every piece beautiful and worth owning. If you miss this year’s Baanlaesuan Fair, they’re available at SACICT Concept, Bang Sai District, Ayutthaya Province.
You may also like…
SACICT Craft Trend 2018: Focus on the Community, Collaboration, and an Escape from Confusion
Highlights of the Baanlaesuan 2017 Midyear Fair “Living with Passion”
This 7-storey concrete house, blanketed with a refreshing green façade, has angles everywhere, with one especially remarkable section dominated by slanting red posts and beams.
Chatrawichai Phromthattawethi, interior decorator and owner of the company “Pro Space,” lived in a two-storey building for 15 years before finding it too small and building a new place on a nearby property. On that limited space he built upwards rather than out, in fact seven storeys up.
“Designing, we weren’t thinking primarily about style, but utility. The space was narrow, so we built tall.
“Then with a 4-storey townhouse next door we figured an ordinary building would seem too cramped, so we made the building structure visible: posts, beams and deep spaces into open walls creating dimensions of light and shade, adding panache with one section of oddly slanting posts painted red, set off with flowers here and there.”
Angular concrete building animated by the refreshing green of a quick-growing ivy.Spiral stair where people can come into the office on business without entering the house.Roof deck: garden spot with swimming pool, an outdoor living room.
Even closed in next to a small street, Chatrawichai’s design still provides nearly 1,000 square meters of usable space.
“Depending on use, each floor has a different height.
“The ground floor, with garage and kitchen, is moderately tall. The second floor is an office, and the third holds the butler & maid’s room, all normal height. We use the fourth floor for entertaining, so it’s spacious, with a higher ceiling than the others.
“The fifth floor has a guest bedroom and storage space, the sixth is my bedroom, and the seventh floor holds a living room and dining room set at different levels according to usage; the living room has a higher ceiling. On the roof is a deck, swimming pool, and garden.”
Chatrawichai agrees that this is an unusual design for him, with its red exterior posts at odd angles and interior ceilings displaying working utility systems, plus use of unusual materials such as metallic structural highlights in certain spots, creating a much different residential feeling than before and incidentally requiring a lot of detailed work during construction.
For the interior, furniture and décor mostly come from the old house, a mix of many styles – modern, classic, and antique – matched with exceptional taste because the colors were chosen in advance, primarily framed in a context of gray and black.
Colorful ornaments such as cloth or bright pictures hung on the wall add vitality.
“Coming from a two-storey house, at first living here took some getting used to. It was a tall building with the green façade, but definitely no condo; how to live in such a place? In the end, though, we found it wasn’t all that different,” Chatrawichai adds.
Design: Pro Space Co.,Ltd. by Chatvichai Phromthattadhevi
“Living with Passion” is the defining theme of the 2017 Baan Lae Suan Midyear Fair. To help you get the most out of it, Living ASEAN would like to point out some of the Fair’s educational, entertainment, and inspirational highlights.
High on our list is Room TERMINAL, a 580-square-meter space with a hip, straightforward and colorful design laid out in sharp lines and clearly marked walking paths to reflect the cosmopolitan world of ASEAN, mixing contemporary décor with fascinating local flavors. Don’t miss the SACICT CONCEPT booth, where you’ll see artistic modern Thai handicrafts from the most skilled artisans of the organization “Support Arts and Crafts International Centre of Thailand.” Stop and sip a cuppa at the charming little Laliart Café before attending one of the Design Talk symposia on design trends produced by Room Magazine and Livingasean.com and featuring famous designers. At the July 29 event, “Modern Tropical Re(Design),” you can interact with four of ASEAN’s leading architects.
Baan Lae Suan Publishing House Zone’s “My Little Farm”
This year Baan Lae Suan Publishing House has its collected books – on plant varieties, crafts, food, agriculture, etc. – on display under the heading “Urban Little Farming.” Here you can also enjoy shopping at an organic fruit and vegetable stand, the Little Tree plant shop, and a handmade jewelry booth. There’s also a coffee shop, and every day through July 30 you can join in workshops on pastry-making, plant cultivation, and do-it-yourself activities.
Kitchen lore at “Cooking Mania Home”
This zone has a display for home cooking aficionados designed by a Baan Lae Suan team to suggest various kitchen ideas and ambiences visitors might be inspired to apply to their own home cooking. It features a reproduction of the wood-and-charcoal-stove Thai kitchen of earlier eras, with kitchen implements hung on the wall; then there are a “pantry-style” urban kitchen that’s small but with full functionality, a spot where bakery-lovers can make pastries, and an outdoor kitchen with a large barbecue pit.
Greenhouse Zone for plant-lovers
People who love gardens and plants will be totally entranced with this zone and this year’s concept of “plant mania.” Here you’ll see decorative ways a person just crazy about plants might set up various spots in the house. One area is like a science lab, full of experimentation equipment. There’s a space bedecked and festooned with all sorts of species: ferns, sago palm, carnivorous plants, etc. Nearby is a courtyard designed to support practically all garden uses in all situations, with a small greenhouse showcasing how to cultivate and organize a plant collection.
Find that perfect piece of craftsmanship at“My Craft Zone”
The crafts zone this year is bustling with a wide variety of merchandise, producers, and craftsmen. Visit adorable shops selling clothing, handmade ceramics, leather shoes, and traditional Thai products, just for starters.
You may also like…
Tropical Ways at the 2017 Baanlaesuan Midyear Fair
Highlights of the Baanlaesuan 2017 Midyear Fair “Living with Passion”
East Timor: charming newly independent Southeast Asian country, heaven for divers and a lot more. Follow along as we take a look!
Story & Pictures : Suwimon Sanguansat
Quiet, peaceful Timor beach, still in a fully natural state.Timor-Este flags sold in the tais market for national day celebrations.Woven cotton from different Timorese tribes.Sharply sweet-tasting banana water is sold at almost every shop.Some Local Food.
The Democratic Republic of Timor-Leste, known as “East Timor” or simply “Timor,” is a land of ponies, off the beaten track of all but a few tourists. Many won’t even be able to tell you what part of the world it’s in, since it’s only been around for fifteen years. Anyone familiar with Timor should recall battle scenes from the recent Indonesian occupation, and might wonder if there’s anything at all good left there. Nowadays, though, Timor is becoming ever better known for the beauty of its undersea world
Travel to Timor is both easy and difficult. It’s easy to travel by air from Singapore or Bali. The hard part is that with only two flights a week from Singapore you’ll have to overnight. Bali has daily flights out, but even then you’ll probably have to sleep over, plus take a chance on the airline not being up to safety standards. And delays are par for the course.
Soak in the atmosphere at Balibo Fortress as the sun disappears over the horizon.Sitting and chilling by the beach.Clear water, thick with sea anemones, heaven for the diving aficionado.
Undersea World
This trip we’ll go diving with Aquatica Dive Resort. SCUBA diving in the country is picking up like wildfire, let’s jump in! It’s too expensive to rent a boat, so we travel by van or pickup truck over difficult roads. Potholes here, construction there, hey, you’re already carsick! Now down to the beach for a dive. It’s unbelievable how perfectly beautiful the water is everywhere along here, even as we walk past a graveyard. The fact that Timor hasn’t yet been seriously developed for tourism means that only serious diving groups come here, so it’s truly heaven for divers. You like tiny fish? Enjoy the amazing variety of those. Whales and dolphins? Come at year’s end, that’s the blue whale migration season, and sometimes hundreds and thousands of dolphin schools are swimming along with them.
Our trip is six days chock full of diving, averaging three dives per day, really great fun. But Timor has a lot more to offer than just this. Take the city of Balibo, for instance, over near the Indonesian border.
Timor roadside vendors selling fish the way Thais sell garlands on the street.Wonderfully refreshing atmosphere at our Balibo City resort.Resort dining area.Balibo 5 Museum, where you can see Australian national flag and the word “Australia” as written by the unfortunate journalists.Cristo Rei mountaintop sculpture of Jesus, second only to Rio.
Balibo, city of companions, full of history
As advertised, the Balibo road is chaotic, steep, high, and full of curves, so we have to hire a local driver to take us by four-wheel drive vehicle, and it takes about three and a half hours to go about 120 kilometers. Balibo is in the cool, comfortable mountain air west of Timor. on one side are mountain ranges heaped one above another, and on the other our view reaches down to the ocean. The city is so small it takes hardly any time to explore on foot. The Balibo Fort Hotel, a converted fortress originally constructed when Timor-Leste was a Portuguese colony, is a great place to stay which became a worldwide point of interest in 1975. You can learn a lot about that time in Timorese history with a visit to the Balibo 5 Museum.
“Balibo 5” refers to five Australian journalists who had come to report on the Indonesian invasion of Timor. Their first televised reports of the violence were sent back to Australia, but all five journalists disappeared before there could be a second report. They had painted an Australian flag and the word “Australia” on their lodgings in hopes the Indonesian soldiers would leave them alone, but locals say they were simply killed to keep them quiet, and their videotapes destroyed. Indonesia has always denied this, so until this very day the families of the journalists have had no formal closure. However, their fate is commonly shared knowledge among the locals.
Tais cloth in Dili, saleslady chewing betel.Resistance Museum, or Timor National Museum.Restaurant in Dili.Another food dish.
Dili, charming seaside capital
In Dili a confusion of cars, motorcycles, and microlet mini-buses fly busily back and forth. To a Westerner this feels scary, but the adventurous can make a nice bicycle tour around the city. A great cycling destination is Cristo Rei, a mountaintop statue of Jesus considered second in grandeur only to the one in Rio. The route winds alongside a beautiful, peaceful beach for a round trip of about 22 kilometers, and in early morning you’ll encounter people out running and cycling before work. Along the way you can stop in at the famous Letefoho coffee shop. Coffee is the single economic crop Timor is famous for, and coffee bean exports account for a good portion of the country’s income. A great late morning activity is visiting the local tais (woven cotton) and handicrafts market, followed by a visit to the Santa Cruz Cemetery, where Timorese are memorialized who were massacred by Indonesian soldiers during a mourning ceremony in 1991. Also worth visiting is the Timor National Museum, or “Resistance Museum,” where you can learn about this rarely visited little nation’s struggle for independence.
Tourists can eat local food prepared in amazing ways at the Agora Food Studio. Timor has to import most foodstuffs and ingredients, so local dishes are made from local vegetables and other products and use very little meat. And even surrounded by the sea on nearly every side, fishing is still local and has not been industrialized.
Peaceful, quiet twilight atmosphere.Daybreak in Dili City.Peaceful, quiet twilight atmosphere.
Beachside life
If you like beachside life, you’re guaranteed to fall in love with Timor. Just a ten-minute drive takes you to where you can swim out to see manatees. The beach here is actually a bit messy, since Timorese garbage management isn’t highly developed. In general, though, Timor presents a beautiful, mostly pristine natural environment, since to this point there’s been no serious tourist development. Living in Dili is like having ocean and beach for a front yard. Get outside and run, cycle, sit and chill, do work-related activities, or go diving, just for starters. The manatee live where the undersea landscape holds full, perfect beds of seaweed, so you can swim with manatees almost the whole year round. This is extremely rare, especially in the capital city of a country.
Two young women putting their cloth on display.Oceanside handcrafts shopRisa, décor store owner: she makes each piece by hand.Cool-looking cloth bag, makes an interesting souvenir.
Timor’s future
Some see Timor as having a “false economy,” meaning the cost of living can’t be accurately measured because there’s a large foreign population working in international assistance, a high rate of unemployment, very low average income, dependence on imports, and poor production of livestock and agricultural products. There are oil resources, in this the country has been taken advantage of by Australia and Indonesia. The fundamental infrastructure needed to support tourism isn’t yet there. Still, Timor has a lot of potential for development, probably nothing that will happen in leaps and bounds, but gradually, through long-term attention to resources and sustainability.
Santa Cruz Cemetery, where Timorese massacred by Indonesian soldiers are memorialized.
Travel Tips
Timor probably isn’t for everyone, but if you love adventure and just “going for it,” you’ll fall in love with this country.
On arrival in Dili you can obtain a visa for 30 dollars US.
US dollars are used here. Bring enough cash, because few shops accept credit cards. Also, don’t bring a lot of hundred dollar bills, because many places have no change.
This is a Christian country (Roman Catholic). If you want to attend services, you should dress well.
The local language is Tetun. In some places Timorese people still understand Portuguese and speak Indonesian (Bahasa Indonesia)
The cost of lodging in Dili averages150 dollars/night, and you should budget about 25 dollars/day for meals.
With its tropical plants, products developed from traditional knowledge, fragrances, even innovative Thai kitchen formats, the 2017 Baanlaesuan Midyear Fair offers many perspectives on life in the tropics.
/// Thailand ///
Under the theme “Living with Passion,” you’ll encounter tropical ways of life through household items, garden ornamentation, foods, and many other elements. For an enhanced Fair experience, Living ASEAN here distills some of the essence of the tropical lifestyle found in the exhibits.
– Thai Kitchen –
Traditionally, a Thai kitchen stands separate from the house, since Thai food preparation gives off pungent, spicy scents. Nowadays modern Thai kitchens are designed within the house, for food preparation and dining in the same area. This open-style kitchen is great for welcoming guests or proudly showing off to anyone.
– SACICT Booth –
The public organization SACICT has a brilliant exhibit of products from projects aimed at developing handicrafts for the contemporary marketplace. Through adaptation of local materials to create an interesting narrative, each piece of work clearly reflects the folk knowledge of its region of origin.
– Perfume –
This perfume is used to wash sacred objects, but also makes for a refreshing bath or shower, and can be used as a perfume or for massage. Made from natural rainwater boiled with the alyxia herb and fragrant pandan mixed with stone powder for a sweet, refreshing scent and rash-relieving qualities, it’s a natural, non-allergenic perfume that uses no alcohol.
Drink coasters from Thxful are made from four types of wood – oak, beech, maple, and walnut. The design is inspired by a fish-tooth pattern: when a drinking glass is placed on the coaster, water doesn’t spill out the sides, but gathers in the middle. Vases are carved in Thai krajang patterns with hand tools before a final artistic touch-up.
Organic coffee from Laliart comes from Doi Mae Jam in Lampang province. It grows well in the moderate forest shade. This environmentally friendly coffee is grown naturally without chemicals or pesticides and in harmony with the ecological system. The beans are fragrant, tasty, with no toxic residue. You’ll find it at the room Magazine Pavilion.
“Uncle Group” is an association of seven “new age” farmers experimenting with organic agriculture. “Organic” refers to nature-based agriculture, using no synthetic or contaminating chemicals, respecting the ecological system, and not harmful to the soil, water, or living things. Organic produce is clean and safe. You can meet members of this distinguished collective in Baan Lae Suan Publishing House’s Highlight Zone.
Plants suitable for growing in the tropics thrive in the heat and don’t require a lot of care. Examples are shade-giving trees such as common palms, areca, water jasmine, fan palm, and bird-of-paradise, as well as ornamental flowering plants such as ferns and orchids. The Fair offers a wide selection of these, and in the Greenhouse Zone you’ll find an inspiring show garden that features many of them.
– Vegetables and Herbs –
Vegetables and herbs such as pepper, lime, and holy basil are hardy kitchen staples that grow well in the tropics and are great for home cultivation and use in traditional recipes. Many also have medicinal qualities and promote good health.
You may also like…
Room x Living ASEAN Design Talk
Highlights of the Baanlaesuan 2017 Midyear Fair “Living with Passion”
Transparency International (TI) has published its Corruption Perceptions Index (CPI) for 2016. Among the very clean, Denmark and New Zealand shared first place scoring 90, followed by Finland, Sweden, and Switzerland at 89, 88, and 86, respectively.
///ASEAN///
Eight out of ten ASEAN member countries fared miserably indicating endemic corruption in the public sector. Cambodia was the region’s worst performer, while Myanmar, Laos, Vietnam, Thailand, the Philippines, Indonesia, and Malaysia each scored lower than 50 out of a hundred.
TI is a global civil society organization that has led the fight against corruption worldwide since 1996. It collaborates with 12 non-governmental institutions, including the World Economic Forum, the World Bank, and the Economist Intelligence Unit (EIU). High CPI scores reflect the general public’s perceptions of transparency in government, while low scores indicate the tangible impact of corruption that a country is facing.
As for the ASEAN region, Singapore scored the highest at 84 ranking number 8 in the world. Brunei made it big above the midpoint at 58, while the remaining eight ASEAN members didn’t make the cut. Malaysia almost made it scoring 49 on the Corruption Perceptions Index. Within the CLMV Group, Cambodia got the lowest score of 21, ranking number 156 out of 176 countries on the world chart.
Interestingly, Laos made an impressive 5-point gain to stand at 30 points, while Thailand’s score went down big time by 3 points to stand at 35, the same score as that of the Philippines. At 35, the two countries rank number 101 on the world chart.
At the very bottom of the index were North Korea scoring a despicable 8 points, Somalia 10, and South Sudan 11, while Libya, Sudan, and Yemen each scored 14.
TI defines corruption as the abuse of public power for private benefits. Obtained by expert assessments and opinion surveys, high CPI scores reflect transparency in government spending while low scores indicate high levels of ill-gotten gains and the tangible impact of corruption that citizens are facing.
Steel framed homes can be stylishly fashionable. Building with steel is preferred for speed, strength, and durability. It is capable of encapsulating any architectural design and style, and adapting to any personal needs and tastes.
/// ASEAN ///
Where time is money, steel construction offers many advantages over traditional construction technology. Steel is a versatile material applicable to all structural uses, from framing to floor joists to roofing materials. Steel structures are ideal if you like loft style homes. Here are 10 cool steel framed homes that we like.
These identical homes belonging to brothers in the Changprasert family are built on a trapezoidal lot with the wide side in front. “The original 30-year-old houses were seriously deteriorating, so the question was whether to renovate, or completely rebuild. In the end, demolition and rebuilding won out. This gave us all the functionality and the appearance and décor that we were looking for,” said Win (Totsawin Changprasert), the young IT professional showing us his house.
“From my reading I already liked the modern minimal style, and so looked online for architects who do this. Office AT seemed to be a perfect choice, so we invited them to design our new houses.”
With identical façades, the houses each have 350 square meters of usable space. Considering property size limitations, the architects set the houses next to each other in back, on the narrow side of the trapezoid. The wide front is dominated by a lush green garden, and a walkway connects Win’s and his younger brother’s house before extending out to the fence.
Since there had been serious flooding here, the architects created a modern adaptation of the traditional Thai house, raised above a lower space (known as a tai thun). This helps with air circulation while also providing a utility area and a room for the housekeeper.
Photo : Office AT
Even though it’s very private, the 3rd floor of Win’s house has no dividing wall, just a continuous flow of space.
“These two houses are similar, but differences reflect the owners’ personalities. Win’s “double-volume” ceiling makes his living room feel really spacious. His brother has a wide private balcony on the third floor giving a “void” spatial effect for viewing the surrounding greenery through wide-panel glass windows,” says the Office AT architect.
Although their staircases are on opposite sides, the houses have the same functional setup. The second floor holds living room, dining room, and kitchen. “A unique feature of Win’s living room is the wall framing the flat screen TV: it blocks the view from outside, with high glass walls to the right and left letting in light and offering great views. There’s also a skylight for natural illumination of the indoor staircase. Rooms on the third floor are directly connected, no separating walls, which makes for a natural flow of space and a relaxing feeling.”
Photo : Office AT
The staircase up to the third floor in Win’s younger brother’s house is enclosed in clear glass panels, dispersing natural light all throughout the house, relaxing to the eyes.
“Before, when there was such a clear separation of house and garden, it felt dark and dull inside. For a taste of nature we had to walk out from the house into the garden. Now, with glass walls opening wide on the greenery in front, we can hang out here, watch TV, work, whatever, it’s just more relaxed,” Win adds with a smile.
Photo : Office ATPhoto : Office AT
The younger brother’s staircase, enclosed in clear glass.
The Hla Day Shop in Yangon is no ordinary crafts store. It sells works of skilled and authentic craftsmanship produced and marketed by a community of over 400 people working in an integrated, sustainable way with a product development team.
///Myanmar///
Story: Samutcha Viraporn
At the beginning of July Hla Day celebrated its first anniversary at the Pansodan Street location in Yangon; but in fact this group has been working since 2012 to support small community businesses in Myanmar in developing local products and bringing them to the international market, with an emphasis on quality and social sustainability. Hla Day was successful almost from the very start, its goods so well received that it was able to expand. With Ulla Kroeber as its leader, the team now works with communities in Yangon and many rural areas, giving recommendations to craftsmen on product types, materials, and production processes. Among other benefits, these efforts provide work and income for women who have contracted HIV.
The Hla Day Shop, on the upper floor of building no. 8, Pansodan StreetUla Kroeber, Hla Day Team Leader (right)
Products include pillow covers, scarves, ornaments, cards, and dolls, and usable items from recycled materials. Besides being finely crafted work, a core goal is that products be contemporary and useful, and success in all this has resulted in project support from the AirAsia Foundation. “Hla day” in Burmese translates as “beautiful,” and the beauty here runs deep in the creation of true utility and value for crafts communities, buyers, and society as a whole while never forgetting to help the people at the back of the line.
Marketing/Advertising Cookies – used to remember and process the relevance to your website visit in order to personalize contents shown including optimization of commercial advertising placements. For instances, we use this type of cookies to display commercial advertisements related to user’s attributes and interests as well as to limit how many times should a user see repeated advertisement in order to optimize and measure marketing activities. อ่านเพิ่มเติม
