Neighborhood shacks, street vendors carts, sidewalk benches. There are countless makeshift structures everyday people concoct from discarded, cheap and salvaged materials to solve everyday problems in everyday life. Where others see eyesores, Bangkok-based architect Chat Chuenrudeemol sees authenticity and inventive design solutions for Thailand. In this talk, he demonstrates how the architecturally unpedigreed structures he calls “Bangkok Bastards” serve as flexible, often humorous responses to real problems, advantaging and reinterpreting their urban conditions. Might "Bangkok Bastards" lead to the discovery of Indiana Crossbreeds?

Chatpong (“Chat”) Chuenrudeemol has since 2012 operated Bangkok-based CHAT ­architects, a practice combining research and design, resulting in innovative multi-scalar projects that aim to stimulate community through strategies that re-interpret authentic local conditions. In 2015, he created CHAT lab, a research think tank aimed at discovering new Thai vernacular “street” typologies, affectionately called Bangkok Bastards.

Chat has taught design studios at various universities throughout the world, including Chulalongkorn University INDA, National University of Singapore (NUS), and MIT. Currently, Chat serves as Adjunct Associate Professor at Taylor’s University in Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia, guiding students in the research of “Kuala Lumpur Bastards.”