Nisama Lawtongkum Portfolio

NISAMA LAWTONGKUM

TOONG

TOONG: Cooperation + Community + Prosperity is a design inspired from “Toong Sai Moo” a traditional decoration used in prosperous ceremonies. Toong is used as a symbol in our design. It connotes the cooperation of the members, and staff internally and externally of the department. It also reflects the family-like relationship of the community from the staff to head of departments and members of the cooperative. Toong brings prosperity as if celebrating a fortuitous event whilst relating the design of savings and credit cooperative back to the wealth and prosperity.

The main value of the Toong Building design is “WELLBEING”, bringing happiness and health to office workers who do not usually have time to look after themselves in their daily lives. This building encourages simple conversation and connections throught stairs and improve the workflow. We focused on incorporating nature into the passive design of the building.

MAEMOH MINE LANDSCAPE RECLAIMATION

In the year 2053 the Maemoh coal mine will have completely stopped its production of digging lignite and producing energy from coal. To reach the world goal of carbon neutrality within 2050, we are here to pitch conceplines in which to keep the economy of the community running through the production of clean energy from alternative sources and finding a use for the vast space of the old mine to be educational, livable and still is able to bring income into the local area. Most of the area will be reforested with various land types such as wetlands to filter the high sulphur waters affected by the lignite to provide a clean water source in the future.

We seek to highlight the unique geological heritage of the layers of soil and lignite and bring that into an educational musuem. Other spaces may be encouraged into tourist attractions such as botanical gardens for the north thailand local flowers. Lastly for the future where green hydrogen is more easilly distributed, Maemoh mine may become a hydrogen valley with its own hydrogen fueled trams and hydrogen and nuclelar energy stations instead of the coal boilers.

LANDSCAPE DESIGN FOR RESIDENTIAL PROJECT

A squirrel run was pitched for this project. With the wide forest areas within this residence comes an existing ecology of squirrels, birds and insects. Parralell with the design of the human path around the forest, a seperate squirrel path is set above. The highest tier in the network connects all the large trees that may be too far within reach for the squirels for them to free roam and choose a living habitat, the lower tier is for safe escapes from ground up to the trees.

The laundry art is designed to reflect light of the acrylic sheets and the flow of the clothes shadows, a surprising piece hidden in the depths of the forest pathway.

The parking lot at the back of the private art gallery is paved with black stone and cobble stone for the purpose of large trucks to unload arts and scupltures. The property is hidden behind a green wall. The green wall is designed to be 3/4 the height of the art gallery building and grown in with local thai ivy plants.

THE GREEN MILE

The Green mile is the degradation of the city and its infrastructures and bring back what was once the flourishing bkk by inflicting and allowing the nature to speedily decay the existing thick concrete and asphalt and reclaim back its space. allowing both humans animals and plants to live in unison as a community and changing ways of transportation to be unique of and only of the space its in with endemic biodiversity.

With thailands monsoon seasons and occasional floods in bkk, the nature will speed up the process with water and wind erosion to create cracked landscapes that allow the reclamation of plant species

Nature is uncontrollable, nature will spread and continue to decay the city from its starting point to all of its connected areas, creating new connecting areas and bangkok, a dry concrete city will be decayed by nature,the most powerful force on the planet, bringing back once its unique jungle like identity and complete the missing puzzle in the green ecology of this region.

UNDISCOVERED SAMUI

This project explores into the depth of samui to discover the hidden gems of samui. To preserve these sites so that its kept hidden from the ever growing tourists and only exclusive for the locals so they have a space for themselves to lounge and explore set up as a private members club. Chillies is a private members club for the local samuians who has a free spirit, easy going and wants a slight adventure in exploring their own home island. Once you are in the members clubs you’ll have free access to the hidden spots, designed light weight architecture with dual fuctions for public and private uses

The tennis court room is where you can watch people play tennis while you take a break and talk business deals. The budbeach is simply for chilling, swimming and smoking weed, The soi has pull down seats to become a small concert hall for the music band on the other side. The waterfall structure lowers down to let you chill and eat some bbq and the military becomes a full climbable structure and workout platform on top for yoga with a scenic view.

The headquarters of the chillies private members club is a building that poses as samuis main tourist center. And as you dive deeper into the building it concludes the samuis society that is highly based on the tourist economy but people who run that economy isnt just the tourists but also the locals.

Therefore having this project both the headquarters and lounges allows the two worlds to have t a change to travel and explore this beautiful island to its fullest it their own distinguished areas and then come together in unison to better samui’s tourist economy.

PARASITIC CURE

I was personally interested in, not the structural qualities of mycelium but rather the more subtle sensory qualities such as its soft texture, changes in colors and patterning. This project provides a space for doctors to rest from 24/7 stress, desensitivity and risk of burn out. The program separates into ones that serves physical needs which are a bedroom for sleep or quick naps, gym for physical health and cafe for topping up their energy. Then theres mental or psychological needs which are a garden atrium, media room for enjoyment, therapy room for mental connectivity and recharge room for destressing and just taking a moment for themselves. The form is from gutting the interior of an abandoned health center out and introduce mycelium as a parasitic language

The mycelium grows over the required areas, in some rooms extruding out more and eats over the surrounding pathways and spaces . A mix between human and nater to improve the mental health of doctors whom we may sometimes look over but who needs it most.

MEDICAL CLIMBING WALL

Doctors achievements isnt always just physical awards and statuses. I realised that medical students should be able to improve in empathy and sympathy, decrease their ego, see the strengths in other fields and listen more.

This new curriculum and designated rooms focuses on three aspects, Self Assessment, Social Skills and Career Performance. They will do a MBTI test, discussing their personalities, understanding and become more mindful.

Bar : Break the barrier of the formal hospital space with an extreme informal space allowing them to be carefree, make inappropriate jokes and melt down the barriers of sotus hierarchy.

Drama room : A free space for acting out short skits and character development. This will put them on the spot and deal with how to improvise in a space without responsibility and hence can deal with sudden situations that they have to responsibly improvise.

Meeting room : Themed meeting room for different levels of formality. Has drawing pads, colors, like a nursery room also built in with console game players and a large tv screen.

Business Pitch : They will have to pitch that artifact to senior leadership team in which they will have to use their persuasion skills and argumentation to prove that the artifact is worth investing in.

Gym : Running track, to get to know people in this course better, get chosen a topic and run and talk or yoga and talk or cycle. The goals of exercise is set by the topic of discussion and what you want to know more about your movement partner.

ARTIFICIAL ECOLOGY FARM

Specifically focusing on the far end of the river, the Tonle sap lake. As Cambodia is one of the last countries the river reaches, it will highly suffer from the unpredictable water levels. The Tonle sap is unique for its communities of people who, for their whole lives, live in the waters. They migrate along the river every month, to allow the land people to use the water for agriculture.

My initial proposal is to reuse old tankers in the sea and implement modern methods of urban farming to create an alternative farming space for the community when there are scarce resources for food production in the future. I then designed an artificial ecological farm, that combines both intensive and free range animal husbandry. A floating farm that allows the interdependence of every party. The animals will be able to sustain themselves with the daily timed food servings and landscapes that give them a fake sense of freedom. The farm is built to sustain the lives of the water people, in which will live in floating house clusters and can do their main job of fishery. The water people will build a stronger relation with the land people as they will trade their fishes for wheat and grains, to feed the livestock in the farm.

CHITIN PAVILLION

What if we could sense everything? sense experiences and the environments. Chitin which is the 2nd most abundant polymer on earth, made from shells of crustaceans. It can be made into a bioplastic with the byproduct as small air bubbles containing microorganisms. These microorganisms can create a surrounding environment and experiences from their exo and endothermic reactions to produce heat energy.

In my pavilion, I focus on 4 types of microorganisms, specifically the plastic eating bacteria. Hence my site is on a landfill where the plastic waste will be sorted and stacked. Location is in Phuket as the shrimp and crabs used for the chitin mixture will be from the seafood restaurants all around. Seeds are added to the mixture as chitin is a natural fertilizer. The chitin dries to create the structure of the pavilion whilst the bacteria digests the plastic waste below. The end product is a chitin shell with millions of microorganisms that you can trade and sense new experiences. It will be a sensory festival where you can come experience and eat, you can even eat the structure itself. Eventually will collapse and biodegrade in the monsoon season, the seeds that were planted will grow tall, leaving a flourished greenland from once a landfill.

PUENG PA PLAYGROUND

Pueng pa (verb.) depending on one another. Since youth, humans rely on the help and guidance of each other in order to grow. From mere actions of a helping hand in playground to guiding each other along in school subjects, “pueng pa” is the basic life lessons that all children should have.

Hexagonal structures with various height levels and rooms create the sense of a beehive maze for the children. There are leisure spaces, challenging spaces and social spaces all for the children to “pueng pa” each other while playing to their fullest. Crawling into one side and exploring the structure all up to the top of the tower will strengthen the childrens imagination and bravery skills.