Bauhaus In Thailand

[lingling]

Judging from the pics, it looks like it should be called 'gay house' instead.

Anyway, why live in a greenhouse in a tropical climate? On top of that, one with a flat roof... ...take a look at the traditional building style here - there are very good reasons for each of the features in the traditional houses. Unfortunately, most people, locals included have forgotten why.

[sfokevin]

lingling you are too much of a girlyman for the engineering challenge...

I think if you have a good design that shelters the glass walls from the sun you will not have too much expansion/contraction problems and the flat roof is modern technological advancement that will be fine if you have proper drainage and use a seamless sheet of PVC that is covered with a good substructure and UV protected...

The major hurdle will be finding a nice quiet lot to build the place...

Nikkijah - note this pic has a cool way to incorporate your spiral staircase in a nice brick center column... Please do not put any straight looking lawn furniture up on your deck roof...

Edited January 14, 2007 by sfokevin

[turnip]

I think Lingling just likes looking at pictures.

And “gayhouse” is daft. I have a gay friend who lives up country in a wooden home with his boyfriend. Being a flamboyant queen, he loves the tinsel and tat, and his house is suitable camped up, wat style. He can’t be bothered with engineering and hates simple, clean design. It’s ain’t got nothing to do with who you stuff, just what you’re hoping to achieve. I only say that because this seemed like it was developing into, for me, a very useful discussion.

But … to answer your points.

A flat roof can be very effective at keeping a house cool if it is designed and built well.

A house with many large windows can be kept passively cool, if it is designed and built well.

That’s part of the reason for this thread, I think.

In a country where I can afford to build a grand house, I would rather spending the money on a simpler better designed, engineered and built house. And Bauhaus is a good starting point.

I agree that we should try to incorporate tried and trusted indigenous methods, but reject the idea that any international tried and test design should be dismissed. I certainly don’t want to live in a faux Thai-Disney house just because I live in Thailand. Equally I don’t want to build a 50’s California desert Bauhaus in Thailand. I want to build a Thai home, practical and functional in the environment, inspired by the Bauhaus tradition.

And bring a girl back to enjoy it for the evening …

[lingling]

A flat roof can be very effective at keeping a house cool if it is designed and built well.

Yes, but it will not contribute to cooling it down. And even if it will keep the water out for maybe the first ten years if you rubber coat it, it will age and it will leak. Guaranteed.

A house with many large windows can be kept passively cool, if it is designed and built well.

Yes, but the flat roof contradicts passive cooling. In addition to a steep roof angle, the roof need to extend far out (1/3-1/2) to not turn this thing into a greenhouse.

I'd say gaybauhouse architecture is for climates where the average outdoor temperature is below 20°C.

[turnip]

A flat roof can be very effective at keeping a house cool if it is designed and built well.

Yes, but it will not contribute to cooling it down. And even if it will keep the water out for maybe the first ten years if you rubber coat it, it will age and it will leak. Guaranteed.

A house with many large windows can be kept passively cool, if it is designed and built well.

Yes, but the flat roof contradicts passive cooling. In addition to a steep roof angle, the roof need to extend far out (1/3-1/2) to not turn this thing into a greenhouse.

I'd say gaybauhouse architecture is for climates where the average outdoor temperature is below 20°C.

No roof will cool the internal air. But a well designed roof will aid in stopping the transfer of the sun's heat into the house. Pitched roofs can actually trap hot air and delay cooling if badly designed. Ventilation inside the house is equally important. I'm talking about a flat roof that is designed to withstand the heat in this climate, not a slab of concrete stuck on top of the house. A well designed flat roof can do that. Period. Apart from the different layers of material used in the roof's construction, reflecting and insulating the heat from the living space, there are paint products designed especially to reflect the sun's heat. Try spraying a highly reflective white paint on the cement tiles next to your blue roofed neighbour's house. They wouldn't be too happy. A flat roof - no one can see.

Check out www.wohadesigns.com and their building on Rochalie Drive, Singapore. An amazing modern building, with a flat roof, that is designed around passive internal cooling. They designed The Met on Sathorn.

All roofs need upkeep, but were not talking about pouring bitumen everywhere. It's the design and engineering in this type of house that will make it work. That's what's interesting.

Yes, extended roofs do shade windows and walls. I agree. But it's not the only way to provide shading, or thermally insulate a house. 15cm concrete block with an extended roof, common in many new builds, is little more than the roof being used for effect, rather than as functioning as a way of keeping the house cool. Having said that, I am going towards the idea of having an extend (flat) roof over a terraced and portched area on the southern and westen faces of the house.

Keeping the rain out and away from the walls is, I agree harder on a flat roof but not impossible. I have found a few designs, which if i can find the time to re-draw, i'll post. And flat doesn't have to be 100% horizontal. Depending on the lay of the land, there is no reason why it couldn't slope down away from the front.

Edited January 14, 2007 by turnip

[Nikkijah]

Judging from the pics, it looks like it should be called 'gay house' instead.

Anyway, why live in a greenhouse in a tropical climate? On top of that, one with a flat roof... ...take a look at the traditional building style here - there are very good reasons for each of the features in the traditional houses. Unfortunately, most people, locals included have forgotten why.

I'll elaborate more tomorrow, I've been out tonight and if I started I probably wouldn't finish with you lingling, you seem like an arrogant ignoramus to the fullest, how can a grown up use the phrase 'gay house'??

Anyway, sorry if I haven't been able to 'keep my end up' (eh eh, did you like that one lingling) I'll be back tomorrow for some more grown up discussion

Nikkijah

[sfokevin]

Gay or straight we would all agree this design is not for the peeshy...

Surfing and looking at the pure Bauhaus designs shows a flaw that limits it use... The lack of privacy...

Both owner and neighbor would find the morning coffee trek a bit weird to say the least...

[lingling]

No roof will cool the internal air. But a well designed roof will aid in stopping the transfer of the sun's heat into the house.

I'm talking about using the natural chimney effect that a high roof gives.

Keeping the rain out and away from the walls is, I agree harder on a flat roof but not impossible. I have found a few designs, which if i can find the time to re-draw, i'll post. And flat doesn't have to be 100% horizontal. Depending on the lay of the land, there is no reason why it couldn't slope down away from the front.

Take a look at the top of any large flat roofed building during a heavy rain during the rainy season. There can be a lot of water (20cm or so) after a heavy rain so you need some really oversized drains.

Anyway, just my 2 cents - I think this design is better in a cool climate where you want to trap heat and where you don't get the enormous amounts of rain that you can get here.

[Naam]

"it seems that I remember from my studies that steel and concrete havesimilar rates of expansion and contraction with temperature which is one reason why they work so well together..."

*****

that's correct Chownah but it applies to steel which is embedded in concrete. i am facing a problem with my home which is (single story) about 750m² (including the roof overhang). the steel structure of the roof expands and contracts (delta t only 5ºC) so much that we had get used to listening to something like gun shots in the nights when the steel contracts. one day in december, when it cooled down considerably within a few hours the gun shots turned into grenade explosions.

[Naam]

"Would the steel change size(contract?) and if so then the glass panels wouldn't move with it"

*****

that shouldn't be a problem. a number of my big glass panels are fixed panes and i made sure that the glass set into aluminium frames (alu has a much greater expansion/contraction factor than steel) have 2-3 millimeters "play" to avoid glass breakage.

my wife and me consider the Bauhaus design as beautiful, were considering to build one but finally decided to build an identical home we lived in for a dozen years. our main concerns were privacy and of course our demand to live in a fully airconditioned home. Bauhaus style with a lot of glass and a flat roof would have meant most probably an electricity bill exceeding 50k Baht a month. for our conventional building, built with 'superblock', proper ceiling insulation and forced attic venting we are paying an average of 12.500 Baht a month.

moreover, (as mentioned by others) a 100% flat roof is a huge problem in a country with heavy rains. it is mandatory to have proper slopes to all sides enabling fast drainage. but that could be achieved invisibly without changing the design.

[Naam]

backflip, I am both window shopping AND serious

I'm fed up with the bland(in my view) designs that are all over this country, the sheer amount of money spent on bland homes in this country is shocking and the styles are straight out of a brochure with not much design thought whatsoever...

Why do I not see more falang building imaginative homes? Is it because of the costs? Is it the worry of shoddy(bad) craftsmanship? Is it planning issues?

the problem is that if you come up with ideas of your own to find a contractor who implements your ideas. i went through one year of horror spending several hours every day on the construction site because people just could not understand what i was trying to achieve. and that inspite of the fact that i prepared more than a hundred detailed drawings for which english was not required. my thought was "a picture is more than a thousand words", but HOW WRONG i was!

[chownah]

I've got absolutely no idea about construction - only what I would love to have as a house, any ideas about how this problem is overcome??

You could overcome this problem by studying construction, engineering, and architecture. There are many ways to do this studying...schools, books, internet, personal observations....etc.

And as you mentioned in a previous post, this could be an issue, do you have more clues for me?

I don't know what issue you are referring to....please indicate what I posted that raised an issue here.

As most of the houses I've seen photos of are in N. America the conditions are surely different to here...

The temperature changes in most of N. America are much greater than those in Thailand so the expansion and contraction of construction materials is less a problem here in Thailand than in N. America or N. Europe.

Chownah

[quiksilva]

Flat roofs are high maintenance.

Rain water run off must be properly catered for, and once a month somebody needs to get up there and clear grime and dead leaves etc from your drains and gutters to prevent spectatular flooding during the rainy season!

They also have a much shorter useful life when compared to their pitched equiavlents, so in the long run cost more.

The design is great though, I really like it, but it just doesnt seem very practical.

[chownah]

"it seems that I remember from my studies that steel and concrete havesimilar rates of expansion and contraction with temperature which is one reason why they work so well together..."

*****

that's correct Chownah but it applies to steel which is embedded in concrete. i am facing a problem with my home which is (single story) about 750m² (including the roof overhang). the steel structure of the roof expands and contracts (delta t only 5ºC) so much that we had get used to listening to something like gun shots in the nights when the steel contracts. one day in december, when it cooled down considerably within a few hours the gun shots turned into grenade explosions.

Actually, coefficient of thermal expansion is an intrinsic property of a material and does not change due to environmental factors. A piece of steel has the same coefficient of thermal expansion whether it is embedded in concrete or not.

The noises your steel roof makes are probably caused by movement between two structural members attached at joints. Find the joints that are allowing this relative motion and secure them properly (or lubricate them or otherwise allow for easier movement....I guess) and the noises will stop.

It is likely that the delta t is much higher than 5 degrees C....that might be the delta t for the ambient air but the sun on the roof will raise its temperature alot higher than ambient air. Likewise, at night heat radiated off of the roof to the sky (albido) can drop the roof temperature considerably below the ambient.

Chownah

[tracker]

You might be interested in 3M's new product. I read it a couple weeks ago in the news. They have a developed a non-metallic film for glass windows. It stops 97% of infrared, if I remember well. I dunno if it is already on the market, but since your house construction is not starting tomorrow, it might be interesting for you to... google it.

[manjara]

If you want a modern style house in Thailand, check out the following website of a German architect living and working in Thailand.

http://www.atriumss.com/proj_ph.php

I'm thinking about using them for our new house, but the wife needs further convincing on the house being modern style.

Personally I like this work by an Australian architect....http://www.gabrielpoole.com.au/philosophy.html

[lingling]

You might be interested in 3M's new product. I read it a couple weeks ago in the news. They have a developed a non-metallic film for glass windows. It stops 97% of infrared, if I remember well. I dunno if it is already on the market, but since your house construction is not starting tomorrow, it might be interesting for you to... google it.

97% infrared sounds high. Maybe 97% UV...?

http://www.3m.com/us/arch_construct/scpd/windowfilm/

[turnip]

If you want a modern style house in Thailand, check out the following website of a German architect living and working in Thailand.

http://www.atriumss.com/proj_ph.php

I've seen a couple of those houses in Hua Hin. So interesting to see who designed them.

Edited January 15, 2007 by turnip

[thedude]

Architecture has gone a long long way since the Bauhaus era. I agree with lingling's points on applicability to tropical climes. nice to have, but only the super rich with no consideration to air-con bills and drainage and maintenance issues can afford a true bauhaus style home in the tropics. the spirit of bauhaus is in design for functional purpose, and so obsessing over its 'style' with disregard to purpose seems almost ironic here. bauhaus developed over what was an emergent machine age and new building materials, and much less about bauhaus related to organism or even the environment, areas that have developed leaps and bounds in recent decades.

the thai and asian pitched roof design developed over millennias have its functional basis although widely assumed to serve purely ornamental/religious concepts. the home is lifted off the ground to prevent flooding in the wet season and heat and humidity expands and dissipates over the roof more easily allowing for cooler ventilation in day time temps. the layout of tropical structures within a compound not only relate to asian communal culture but also the way the structures relate to the tropical surrounds.

a school of modern tropical architecture has since developed in the past several decades from early tropical 'plasticists' like Brazilian Oscar Niemeyer or Mexican Luis Baragan, to the work of the late great Sri Lankan architect Geoffrey Bawa. many leading proponents of the present wave of tropical architecture reside in Singapore, look at the work of Kerry Hill architects, or as mentioned earlier, the work of WOHA design to see how the tropical language is now transposed on verticle urban environments.

[chownah]

On the other hand a shack is sufficient!!!

Different people; different ideas.

Chownah

[Nikkijah]

I’m glad that so many people are giving their opinions here, all of them will need to be addressed before I even start to plan a project like this….

First I think it’s important to address the roofing issue, as teacup has shown in this illustration the roof is pitched, the house may have lost more of the feel which I’m after but it still shows that pitched roof doesn’t necessarily mean the end of any Bauhaus remnants in the design.

Although teacups illustrations are not very ‘Bauhaus’ they are still fairly inspiring for me, mainly because when I get round to starting my project I will be sure that I am building something relatively unique and, for me at least, aesthetically pleasing.

Backflip

I wouldn't worry about planning issues in Thailand...

Most farangs have little consideration for architecture, choosing what's easiest. Too, many farangs - and most builders - are familiar with the common construction vernacular (brick, concrete, and bad paint). Finally, most farangs will choose the cheapest construction available (brick, concrete, and bad paint) - purchase, and transport of 50 foot steel beams, and hundreds of square feet of laminated glass is not for those with thin wallets or weak hearts. Check out Phillip Johnson's compound in Connecticut. Wow!

Absolutely understood. The logistics are daunting for sure. I would love to have my home built in the country but the families land is 179kms East of Nong Khai so getting all of the materials there would definitely be worrying for this reason I think I'm going to consider building my home on the outskirts of BKK, although, I’m not sure 50ft steel beams are necessary, I’m certain shorter lengths could be bolted together, however, the (expensive) glass is the main logistical concern.

See photos of Phillip Johnson's compound below:

Sfokevin

Surfing and looking at the pure Bauhaus designs shows a flaw that limits it use... The lack of privacy...

True, but I intend on filling my land with trees and bushes just inside of my high perimeter fence, these trees and bushes, as long as they’re high enough, will add the extra shade to compensate for some of the lack of thick concrete walls and tinted windows…

lingling

Take a look at the top of any large flat roofed building during a heavy rain during the rainy season. There can be a lot of water (20cm or so) after a heavy rain so you need some really oversized drains.

As I’ve said before, this will not be a problem if the roof is only slightly pitched, even just a few degrees.

Dr. Naam

the problem is that if you come up with ideas of your own to find a contractor who implements your ideas. i went through one year of horror spending several hours every day on the construction site because people just could not understand what i was trying to achieve. and that inspite of the fact that i prepared more than a hundred detailed drawings for which english was not required. my thought was "a picture is more than a thousand words", but HOW WRONG i was!

This I understand Perhaps a way round this would be to use European contractors although this may make the costs unaffordable.

I’ll keep searching out contractors of the villa style homes that teacup was posting, they may have an understanding of the construction side of things and must be able to follow designs alien to them

This is the Stahl House, I guess it's in LA judging by the city sky-line in the background, this is a hot part of the world is it not? But you see how the design is in keeping with the Bauhaus style yet it has a large overhang and for all I know this overhang may pitch just a few degrees backwards allowing for drainage out of sight...

[Nikkijah]

This link goes to a detailed study of the farnsworth house just outside of Chicago I believe, by the University of Columbia(I think )I haven't had time to take a good look but it does go into quite a lot of detail about the construction of the house:

Farnsworth House

[Nikkijah]

So, if the house is made with a slightly pitched roof, high quality commercial glass panes, is raised off the ground to allow wind-flow, is facing the right way for the wind to pass through the house, uses compatible materials to allow for expansion & contraction and is surrounded by trees and bushes to allow for privacy then we have a strong starting point right?

Edited January 15, 2007 by Nikkijah

[turnip]

I don't want to live in a glass box. I doubt many people do. There are things that are built as pure architecture - to show design ideals, similar to Haute Couture in fashion, which are then adapted to suit real life and normal people who need to live day to day in the space.

Just to stop notion that bauhaus has to be a glass box, these images are Bauhaus buildings. Put the glass where you want it, where is practical and functional. I want a house that has lots of large windows, but not on all the walls! I dont want to live in a gold fish bowl.

(excellent link on the farnsworth house. i hadn't come across that site. it is a model for my current design. a beautiful building).

Edited January 15, 2007 by turnip

[turnip]

Sorry, edited the post, typo, and lost the photos. Here they are.

[RAZZELL]

I've seen a few adverts for houses in Koh Samui...which are "sort of" what you're after...will have a look for the links...

They might be able to help you out with contractors etc:

http://www.real-samui-properties.com/detail.php?id=260

Edited January 15, 2007 by RAZZELL

[Nikkijah]

I've seen a few adverts for houses in Koh Samui...which are "sort of" what you're after...will have a look for the links...

They might be able to help you out with contractors etc:

http://www.real-samui-properties.com/detail.php?id=260

Thanks for that RAZZELL, as stunning as this property is I have to agree with turnip when he says how he likes these styles but can't help but keep going back to the more pure Bauhaus styles - the price of that first house in the link is ludicrous don't you think?? B18,000,000!!! That is a heck of a lot of money!

[RAZZELL]

I've seen a few adverts for houses in Koh Samui...which are "sort of" what you're after...will have a look for the links...

They might be able to help you out with contractors etc:

http://www.real-samui-properties.com/detail.php?id=260

Thanks for that RAZZELL, as stunning as this property is I have to agree with turnip when he says how he likes these styles but can't help but keep going back to the more pure Bauhaus styles - the price of that first house in the link is ludicrous don't you think?? B18,000,000!!! That is a heck of a lot of money!

Yeah...a joke...but I reckon you could build one (not including land) for about 3 or 4 million.

[Nikkijah]

I've seen a few adverts for houses in Koh Samui...which are "sort of" what you're after...will have a look for the links...

They might be able to help you out with contractors etc:

http://www.real-samui-properties.com/detail.php?id=260

Thanks for that RAZZELL, as stunning as this property is I have to agree with turnip when he says how he likes these styles but can't help but keep going back to the more pure Bauhaus styles - the price of that first house in the link is ludicrous don't you think?? B18,000,000!!! That is a heck of a lot of money!

Yeah...a joke...but I reckon you could build one (not including land) for about 3 or 4 million.

Land is half of my issue RAZZELL, I'm after some land in or around BKK and I'm worried that the land alone will price me out of my dream home...

[teacup]

Since you like the "Bauhaus" design and also fruit trees, you might want to look at this carport. It can be a free standing or attached to the house on one side. The roof can be modified to suit your needs and preferences

I just found this in my collection – The Bauhaus w/a tropical touch. With the side lattices for ivy, you might want to grow a climbing kiwi, grape or something similar

This house is in BKK (I believe it’s between 15-20 yrs old, can’t remember)

Edited January 15, 2007 by teacup