Nested in a private residential neighborhood of Bangkok, house KT is oriented towards the canal at the back and the garden at its front.  Activities are simply divided into two groups of “private” and “public.”  Yet there is never a clear line between them as both the garden and the canal allow both parts to participate in any daily activities that may occur.  Designing this house can be seen as a task of transforming the place, merging different activities into a unified whole.  The “public” space of the house integrates distinct settings into one ensemble: the kitchen area, the space for dining, the living room and the study.  Each is defined by its own equipment.  The extended porches enveloping the spaces simply bind together settings for various and interrelated activities.

The climate has brought forth the design equipped with verandahs and porches enclosed with both aluminum screens and glass doors.  This makes it possible for inhabitants to live both inside and outside the house, and also in the in-between areas.  Shadows for residing are produced by the brim of solid slab, under which daily domestic activities could unfold.  In so far as the Thais are still the same people and the climate had not changed, these types are still valid, no matter how traditional or “modern” the house appear.  By means of open-air covered spaces, interior and exterior could be bound together. 

In this house, the notion of participation allows the connection between interiority and exteriority, as well as the transition between distinct activities.  The connection is both spatial and actual.  The extended terraces around the “interior” space are the means by which the vision could be led beyond the walls and the house could sustain the sense of free flow.  Yet, the physical connection between inside and outside is always a choice, never was there an opening without closable devices.  The hints of threshold are thus given but the actual separations are delayed.

As for the outward appearance of the house, it is simply silent, shaped and reshaped by specific circumstances and situations. It is not designed to have its own distinct identity; rather, it is being built as a framework or background of daily lives, containing specific activities whose relationship is transformative. 

Thinking of the specific situation of daily lives as well as its possible adjustability allows one to witness more clearly the play of its different forms of articulation.  In this case, both the architect and the owner created the preparation of both participation and transformation.  The presence of the context is never obtrusive, on the contrary, it remains in faint traces that allow current situations to perform.  In this house, material, spatial as well as participatory quality is not an accomplishment, but a task, for both tradition and current situation to stay alive, they must be remade.  Thus both the owner and the architect allow the house to withdraw from object-like situation in order to transcend itself into the conditions of the lives it accommodates.