Eleven award-winning projects completed by students across the four year groups on the BSc Architectural Design course at INDA feature in this Virtual Design Festival school show.

The 11 featured projects were awarded prizes at the Thai design school's end of year review and exhibition, INDA Parade. The show takes place annually, but due to the coronavirus pandemic, the 2020 show was held in a virtual world that students entered using personalised avatars.

This year's winning projects range from landscape and urban designs, through to schemes that explore sexuality and AI, demonstrating how architecture can connect to other disciplines.

International Program in Design and Architecture (INDA)

University: International Program in Design and Architecture (INDA)
Course: BSc Architectural Design
Studio: Year 1, Year 2, Year 3 and Year 4
Tutors: Surapong Lertsithichai, Sorachai Kornkasem, Scott Drake, Christo Meyer, Marie-Louise Raue, Alicia Lazzaroni, Antonio Bernacchi, Tijn van de Wijdeven, Paul Francis Feeney, William Bertram Hulbert, Michal Jurgielewicz, Patrick Donbeck, Payap Pakdeelao, Pratana Klieopatinon, Takanao Todo, Thomas Lozada, Chon Supawongse, Ekapob Suksudpaisarn, Pitchapa Jular, Eduardo Cassina, Per Stefan Svedberg, Hseng Tai Lintner, Warisara Sudswong and Liva Dudareva

Course statement:

"INDA is the International Program in Design and Architecture of Chulalongkorn University in Bangkok, Thailand. It aims to nurture diversity in design approaches, methodologies, and sensibilities, based on a clear framework of constructive dialogue.

"The school is a four-year bachelor program founded in 2006 with a strong emphasis on design studios, considered as an opportunity to enquire, through architectural design, topics and methodologies relevant to the agenda of contemporary architecture, with a particular focus on Southeast Asian dynamics and specificities.

"Although INDA has adopted architecture as its principal topic of studio courses, it aims to show how architecture connects to other disciplines, such as landscape architecture and urban design, and thus to show how architecture is representative of design disciplines in general.

"INDA Parade is the main event of the school held at the end of each academic year, involving design studio reviews, exhibitions, lectures, and parties, happening concurrently and in the same space. It is meant to enable the community of students, instructors, alumni, guests, and the public to discover and celebrate students' works collectively as an ongoing conversation. In 2020, challenged by recent events, INDA decided to use a social virtual reality platform as a complementary tool for exchanging and representing ideas, under the motto 'Keep School Real'.

"This year all participants joined the review and exhibition worlds with their own avatars, interacting with others and exploring in great detail the many three dimensional models, large scale drawing boards and presentations in mixed media environment with live streams. The VR environment enabled the INDA community to regain the proximity that is so crucial to foster excitement and momentum.

"The event concluded with a public presentation of shortlisted works and the awarded projects are featured below. INDA Parade 2020, has been and still remains open and accessible to everyone, proposing experimental methods of interaction and engagement and breaking down the boundaries between the school and the public."

INDA Parade 2020 was designed by Patrick Donbeck and Michal Jurgielewicz and is accessible here.

Unlimited Instructables by Mona Chananya Auttavoothisilpa, Year 1

"The project is a device aimed to enhance the educational potential of a kindergarten teacher in her interaction with pupils.

"It has been developed through interviews with an educator using Montessori education that facilitates the independent learning process of students. It is a dress containing toys and play components of different natures, whose use can be suggested subtly through precise postures of the instructor's body.

"It has been progressively deconstructed from a jumpsuit, to a coat, to a series of flexible strips with embedded metal wires, that can be rearranged in multiple forms. Superimposed patterns introduce additional ways of exploring the toys, multiplying creative opportunities."

Student: Mona Chananya Auttavoothisilpa
Project: Unlimited Instructables
Award: Y1 S1 Design Excellence Award
Course: Year 1
Project tutor: Antonio Bernacchi

Objective Randomness by Poon Tassaporn Sukhumdhanakul, Year 1

"While observing the area in front of Lumpini Park, I found a lot of mushrooms that keep on changing due to environmental conditions.

"I therefore studied Thai traditions of using mushrooms as a way to interpret numerology for lottery tickets. There are multiple objective methods to interpret mushrooms, but people seem to mainly seek for subjectivity, so this project intends to find a systematic pattern of subjectivity hidden in a sequence of unpredictable randomness.

"I created a protocol of mushroom numerology through which people would implant mushrooms in their skin and use a precise system of interpretation, ensuring unpredictable results."

Student: Poon Tassaporn Sukhumdhanakul
Project: Objective Randomness
Award: Y1 S2 Design Excellence Award
Website: y1s2-20192020.tumblr.com/tagged/2-Poon-Tassaporn-Sukhumdhanakul
Course: Year 1
Project tutor: Antonio Bernacchi

SPI[RITUAL] by Pang Thongtor Nontavatit, Year 2

"The project looks into the current crystal mining business, crystals' properties as a data storage medium, and the exploitation of miners by investigating the ideal conditions for crystal growth, overturning extraction economies, and preserving the growth of crystals within Madagascar's mines.

"Speculating about how crystals can grow in alternative locations, the project intends to produce a space that is generated by carefully controlled environmental factors. It proposes a geological pavilion that grows along with Madagascar's Famadihana — a sacred ritual believed to unite the spirit from generation to generation.

"Combining indigenous and modern architecture, SPI[RITUAL] transforms peculiar old mines into data centres and sites for community rituals."

Student: Pang Thongtor Nontavatit
Project: SPI[RITUAL]
Award: Y2 S1 Design Excellence Award
Website: y2s1-20192020.tumblr.com/tagged/5%20Pang%20Thongtor%20Nontavatit
Course: Year 2
Project tutor: Michal Jurgielewicz

Surface of Sexuality by Ann Ann-Pavinee Langenskiöld, Year 2

"This project proposes a Degenderisation Centre that serves as a gestation pond for the de-birth of sexuality, forming a critique on the history of the architecture of sex, where the critical moments – the panopticon, birth control pills, and sim card – exhibit our constant desire for arousal that was never fully met in the sexual realm.

"Embedded in the hyper-gendered hotspot of Bangkok's biopolitical map, the facility comprises spaces that exercise hyper-awareness in the liberation of gender, where the dissection of our skin, argued as the universal erogenous organ, is the medium for the dissection of our gender."

Student: Ann Ann-Pavinee Langenskiöld
Project: Surface of Sexuality
Award: Y2 S2 Design Excellence Award
Website: y2s2-20192020.tumblr.com/tagged/2%20Ann%20Ann%20pavinee%20Langenskioeld
Course: Year 2
Project tutor: Eduardo Cassina

Museum of the Present by Orm Santhila Chanoknamchai, Year 3

"In the increasingly privatised city of Bangkok, are we again losing our riverside public space and a historical and cultural reference to Bangkok?"

"The project rethinks the process of gentrification as a constant reconfiguration of everyday culture. A political framework is proposed in which the Old Customs House in Bangkok, currently in a state of transition, becomes a prototype for an alternative approach to urban renewal.

"The street becomes a route through the building, the existing character of the neighbourhood is activated and celebrated. If gentrification is taking ownership, The Museum of the Present is giving back ownership."

Student: Orm Santhila Chanoknamchai
Project: Museum of the Present
Award: Y3 S1 Design Excellence Award
Website: y3s1-20192020.tumblr.com/tagged/6-orm-santhila-chanoknamchai
Course: Year 3
Project tutor: Marie-Louise Raue

Metabolizing Territories by Orm Santhila Chanoknamchai, Year 3

"Amidst the rising of petrochemical industries in Rayong, Thailand, the exploitation of heavy metal substances has influenced a new underground invisible environment – the Aquifer – putting in question confinement strategies on the landscape, suggesting a network of systems that responds constantly to seasonalities and fluctuations.

"The project imagines a plausible future cohabitation across the interrelated scales of humans and microorganisms, performing two main complementary strategies to metabolise and visualise this 'guilty' landscape through a series of 'Inter-surface Artifacts'.

"Rethinking the notion of natural preservation, a repetition of cycles and patterns of dynamic and temporal reclamations would emerge, adaptable to seasons and anomalies."

Student: Orm Santhila Chanoknamchai
Project: Museum of the Present
Award: Y3 S2 Design Excellence Award and Y3 Critics' Award
Website: y3s2-20192020.tumblr.com/tagged/3-Orm-Santhila-Chanoknamchai
Course: Year 3
Project tutor: Alicia Lazzaroni

A(i)pophenia/An Age of Rediscovery by Nana Boonorm, Year 4

"From cave paintings, stories of mythical Nagas to bureaucracy, humans have always been obsessed with documenting their lives.

"Now, our human senses become obsolete in an ever-filling sea of data, drowning in information and noise. We created AI as a means to process what we couldn't, but it could be our most human mistakes that become our strengths in rediscovering our data.

"By building from things other than what is given, we may build new aesthetics and relations, new concepts beyond borders of what has been hardwired within us. Nothing will be too magical, too mythical, or too crazy."

Student: Nana Boonorm
Project: A(i)pophenia/An Age of Rediscovery
Award: Y4 S1 Design Excellence Award
Website: y4s1-20192020.tumblr.com/post/189505715334/age-of-rediscovery-in-an-era-where-everything-has
Course: Year 4
Project tutor: Michal Jurgielewicz

The Theatre of Deaf and Blind by Ploy Sitanan Teeracharoenchai

"In The Image of The City by Kevin Lynch, it is explained how the city's elements can be interpreted differently by individuals.

"The klong (canal) is one of the most common city elements in Bangkok; it can be both an edge for pedestrians and a path for water transportation.

"The Theatre of Deaf and Blind moves, creaks, and animates in relation to Maharnark Canal's changing tides, wave activity, and stage performances, providing a sensory experience for visitors where the building is both conductor and performer.

"Reverberation, sound, colour, tactility, and movement are some of the modes employed within this performance."

Student: Ploy Sitanan Teeracharoenchai
Project: The Theatre of Deaf and Blind
Award: Y4 S2 Design Excellence Award
Website: y4s2-20192020.tumblr.com/tagged/3%20Ploy%20Sitanan%20Teeracharoenchai
Course: Year 4
Project tutor: Christo Meyer

Manifestation of Truth by Opal Nattakitta Chuasiriphattana, Year 4

"Truthfulness to many individuals derives from the concept of realism and honesty, however, I argue that honesty does not bring forward the actual truth, because 'Truth is Subjectivity, and Subjectivity is Truth'.

"Truthfulness is heavily based on personal interpretation and how information is being exchanged. Thus, this project studies information and exchange through analysis of the structure of crowds of a Thai student protest against dictatorship in the 1970s.

"Research is gathered through methods of forensic archiving and conducting social experiments to understand the performative aspects of the protest.

"This led me to the proposal of the Performative City Parade: an event aimed for participants to experience the city through different interpretations of truth, instrumentalising the parade with forensic and performative elements, establishing a concept of Manifestation of Truth."

Student: Opal Nattakitta Chuasiriphattana
Project: Manifestation of Truth
Award: Y4 Critics' Award
Website: Phase 1 to 3 y4s2-20192020.tumblr.com/post/617202300682928128/information-and-exchange, Phase 4 y4s2-20192020.tumblr.com/post/617198260317192192/manifestation-of-truth
Course: Year 4
Project tutor: Tijn van de Wijdeven

Firescape by Boss Phatchanon Varanukulsak, Year 4

"In recent years, wildfires occur frequently all over the world due to climate change.

"In Thailand, wildfires also occur in deciduous forests, which is mostly spread from the monoculture of as corn and cane fields. Fires could harm evergreen forests too, but not before a deciduous forest.

"The project defines fire as a device of nature which will create and support a new cultural, economical and ecological value for the local community.

"The site was located in Huai Kha Khaeng wildlife sanctuary, which consisted of a large proportion of the animal population in Thailand due to the weighted overlay process. The design was divided into three layers of planning consisting of agriculture edge, fire-prone and firebreak."

Student: Boss Phatchanon Varanukulsak
Project: Firescape
Award: Director's Award
Website: y4s2-20192020.tumblr.com/tagged/2%20Boss%20Phatchanon%20Varanukulsak
Course: Year 4
Project tutor: Chon Supawongse

Gandhi Memorial Hall / The Embassy by Pimboon Wongmesak, Year 4

"The Gandhi Memorial Hall in Yangon is not a conventional candidate for preservation, but it hosted visits by Mahatma Gandhi to Burma's Indian diaspora and played an important role in the independence of India – and consequently Burma.

"In reflection on this political significance, the building is to be restored and repurposed with a diplomatic program that critiques the relevance of foreign diplomatic missions in a context of power assertion, shifting national values and new mediums.

"This Indian embassy explores territoriality, memories, and aesthetic contrast, while introducing new interventions and program organisation within and above the existing structure – putting the past and present into frank dialogue."

Student: Pimboon Wongmesak
Project: Museum of the Present
Award: Director's Award
Website: y4s2-20192020.tumblr.com/tagged/10%20Pimboon%20Pimboon%20Wongmesak
Course: Year 4
Project tutor: Will Hulbert

Virtual Design Festival's student and schools initiative offers a simple and affordable platform for student and graduate groups to present their work during the coronavirus pandemic. Click here for more details.