Khlong Toei: Vibrant Grounds for an Ingenious City
Year: 2024
Studio: Bangkok Porous City
Instructors: Anita Berrizbeitia, Ignacio Bunster-Ossa, Kotchakorn Voraakhom
Housing approximately 100,000 unregistered persons, the
forty informal communities within Khlong Toei are hardworking and
self-organizing. Despite the inaccessibility of basic services and their
exposure to environmental risks, the informal sector of Thailand accounts for
58% of the GDP. In the forthcoming development of the port district, existing proposals
exclude affordable housing and disregard the informal sector. Rather than displacing
these long-term residents, this project urges stakeholders to build upon the local
wealth of skills and ingenuity, proposing a mixed-use enterprise district for
Khlong Toei.
The shophouse typology, seen all throughout Bangkok, hybridizes
housing and production for low- to middle-income families. Leveraging its
unique relationship to the ground, the proposal deploys the shophouse model for
all housing sectors to interrogate the ground at scale, forging both indoor and
outdoor spaces that unify business, recreation, and domestic life.
91% of informal workers rely on the ground level for
their income, working directly out of their homes or moving through the city as
street vendors and motorcycle taxi drivers. In 2021, daily rainfall during the
monsoon season was 224 millimeters. Without permeable pavement or canalized
water networks, floodwater becomes an economic impediment for local families. Reintroducing
a canal network to the local landscape, the ground not only reduces flooding
risks but also facilitates the delivery of goods and services to local businesses.
The canal networks’ adjacency to production-based housing provides a necessary mutualistic
system for environmental adaptation and economic resilience.