Baan Klai Wat

Nakhon Pathom, Thailand

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Baan Klai Wat

Nakhon Pathom, Thailand

Firm

Physicalist

Type

Residential › Private House

STATUS

Built

YEAR

2021

SIZE

3000 sqft - 5000 sqft

Baan Klai Wat (literally means ‘a house close to a temple’) is designed as a gazebo in a tropical garden. This long-stay retreat for a Thai couple who mostly live in the USA completely blends its architecture with its landscape. From the beginning, they desire to stay in a walking distance to the Buddhist temple their parents visit every Sunday morning and also the one which the owner used to ordain as a monk years ago. The house is designed to echo this spiritual journey to the peace within, aiming to create true relaxation of a calm and peaceful mind through calm and peaceful space.

In designing the house, the relationship between the tangible - the body / the architecture and the abstract - the mind / the space, are constantly questioned. Is there a room? Where is the boundary between inside and outside? Spaces are walled-in or walled-out? What is figure and what is ground? All of which are intentionally left unanswered. These neither/nor conditions create this house where its spaces are neutral. Together they create series of physical and psychological ‘voids’ where natural beauty of light and wind are invited. The interrelationship of them build the architecture and the lack of it at the same time. As a result, the house is basically a gazebo in a tropical garden, a blank canvas, providing enough protection while inviting maximum natural light and cross ventilation.

As a holiday home, rooms are separated into 5 villas which are evenly arranged to form a central courtyard. Together they create a square-shaped floor plan with vertical structures only at each corner which makes the whole ground floor completely open in the middle in every direction. Also, full-height panoramic glass doors are designed to be able to completely open, creating one big semi-outdoor patio of the whole floor, a feeling of being in the garden, not in the house. Circulations from one room to another is also semi-outdoor, a walk in the garden with different views and atmosphere in every turn. Moreover, pocket courtyards at every corner, in the ‘solid’ part of the ground floor make sure every little space is a part of a garden.

The bedroom floor upstairs are separated into 2 wings, the master bedroom wing in the East and the guest bedroom wing in the West. On both wings, the the full-height operable corrugated metal-sheet doors on the outer skin invite different degrees of light and wind while also providing privacy for bedrooms. At the same time, they provide the ability for the house to be completely closed for most of the time of the year while the owners are away. Moreover, the little gaps between the doors and the door frames let natural light and ventilation in even when the door is closed, making sure the interior is lit and ventilated even when the house is closed, creating the peace of mind, the relaxation even when they are away from home.

Living there in the garden among millions of leaves, under flooded daylight, hearing the wind sing,

inner peace might as well be in a walking distance.

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Baan Klai Wat

Nakhon Pathom, Thailand

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Baan Klai Wat

Nakhon Pathom, Thailand

Other Projects by Physicalist

Baan Dindaeng

Umi Gyu Yakiniku and Beer

Baan Ekkamai

Baan Klai Wat

Nakhon Pathom, Thailand

Product Spec Sheet

Collaborating Firms

Team