INDIVIDUAL AND COLLECTIVE DWELL- ING CRITERIA The question that predicates the design is: to what extent can each and every particular need, requirement and criterion be fulfilled? And to what extent can each inhabitant conform to the collective living within the community? Both individual and collective dwelling criteria were established before the design began. COOPERATIVE DESIGN TEN does not result from the design of a single creative genius. As TEN frames the design, a community is formed and coopera- tive dwelling has begun. Architects do not determine and control, rather architecture is the fruit of cooperative design where ar- chitects are clients and clients are architects. Each design is a result of laborious negotia- tion with others as it is shaped and reshaped collectively, and as the requirements of each inhabitant are reconstructed. The result is a unique collective project whose sense of total- ity is marked by the diversity of each individ- ual design. Cooperative design may work if it also allows individual identity to emerge. DIFFICULTIES As a pilot project, TEN faces various difficul- ties. Its novelty and experimental nature means that TEN doesn’t fit pre-established programs. TEN has to establish new relation- ships with restricted financial programs and new understandings with existing building regulations. These difficulties have become the creative and productive challenges for TEN. They urge the project to examine all possible alter- natives so TEN can become a flexible housing project that is capable of fitting into today’s changing life styles. WHAT’S NEXT? TEN Bangkok is currently at the very begin- ning of its construction process. Yet, the ultimate goal of this project is not to serve only a single group of people. Both TEN Osaka and TEN Bangkok set themselves up as an experimental project in search of alternate housing visions. This also opens doors for possibility. It may provide choice and oppor- tunity for those who are sympathetic to TEN’s
working method and concept. Thus TEN may become the kind of housing suitable to both individual requirement and universal applica- tion as well as particular location. c
Tonkao Panin currently teaches at the Faculty of Architecture, Silpakorn University, Bangkok. She is a practicing architect in Bangkok and a member of CASE Thailand.
Architecture is no longer the familiar cult of objects. (Sanford Kwinter)
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