absolutelyBangkok archive · Business & Economics
Originally published Aug. 24, 2009
Dreaming of your own home in paradise? Your dream may come true. Thanks to ingenious Thai designer Chutayaves Sinthuphan of Site-Specific. Creator of small container homes that not only need hardly any land. Khun Chutayaves’ homes are small, mobile, minimalist, cheap — and best: fully functional and habitable. Just put some designer furniture in there and you even exponentiate the whole idea behind it.
A collaborator of the designer cum architect recently built the small container home R-2×20
(top right)
with one bedroom, one bathroom and a living area. Big enough for a young family. And there is much more to it than meets the eyes. The two twenty-foot containers and a prefabricated bathroom on the outskirts of Bangkok are an “exercise in the making of a good, affordable housing for Thais which our government cannot seems to manage,” Khun Chutayaves writes on his website.
Will his prefab concept catch on? Or is he an utopian at the right time at the wrong place? Seems so. Because he has been studying the container housing scene closely and added significant contributions to the genre. Take his recent design around the theme of “Green Home Effects” for the Bangkok Baan Lae Suan home show. What his team came up with was a concept that circled around the 4R’s — reduce, reuse, recycle, renewable:
The Eco Living 101 model home featured many examples of earth-friendly living including the use of gray water, growing your own food and being car smart. It was constructed of four reused shipping containers and prefabricated modules, designed for a family of three with roughly 100 sq.m. living space.
The designers main aims: “Investigate who we are as human through the means of architecture and gastronomy.”
First two images show Khun Chutayaves’ R-2×20 small home project, images further below the Eco Living 101 model home.
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