Pleang (แผลง): Portraying Prince Naris’ Cultural Hybridity in Architectural Forms

Abstract

His Royal Highness Prince Narisaranuvativongse (1863 –1947) was a court designer whose works transcended various fields of art, design, music, and architecture in Siam. Since his death, the prince’s legacy has been fading from the public consciousness. This research comprises an architectural design proposal to resurrect recognition of his designs, and to create public connectivity in terms of physical spaces by focusing on Prince Naris’ way of thinking, as expressed in a Thai word, pleang (แผลง), employed by Prince Naris himself. Pleang does not mean conventional, nor does it mean atypical. Pleang is a way of thinking that has limited relation to building typologies. We chose to study one architectural element that has an integral place in architectural theory and practice, namely, the window, which has often been considered as a “device” to create human comfort, and a “destination” of a room, with the qualities of being both “somewhere” and “nowhere.” On-site observations and architectural surveys were used to document Prince Naris’ placement of windows and fake windows in religious buildings along with his arrangement of the windows in his own private residence and studio known as Ban Plainern. The findings were later applied to an architectural design of existing shophouses that buffer a residential complex belonging to Prince Naris’ descendants from Rama IV Road. We propose a renovation project, under the Prince Naris Learning Center program, to turn this building into an aperture to Ban Plainern putting it clearly into the public eye.