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Pichit Virankabutra, Deputy Director and Acting  Director of the Chiang Mai Office, Creative Economy Agency, Thailand, In conversation with Clay Chandler, Fortune

Brainstorm Design 2024: Spotlight On Thai Design

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Thank you, welcome, welcome, welcome. I drink some water to complete the work. So just out of curiosity, how many people in the audience have been to Bangkok? Oh, almost everybody. So now let me ask a more specific question. How many people have been to cumbent? Oh, a lot of people. OK. Almost everybody that's been to Bangkok has been to to come. But how many people have been to? What is it? Shalom is the next one, the the the district next door? Yeah. And how many people have been to Charon? I know this district? 122, only two. OK. So this is going to be interesting. Um This is one of the great uh revival stories uh of, of Asia and I think it's not uh as well known as it ought to be. Uh Chong Kong is one of uh Bangkok's oldest original neighborhoods. And uh Kita has been uh the leader of this effort to uh it's kind of fell on hard times for a little while. And then uh you've been the leader of this effort to try to use design design thinking to uh re invent it and help breathe new life into it. Uh And it's a lovely, it's a lovely story and I think it has interesting implications for uh Macau where we are right now and, and other cities as well. So let's um let's go back a little bit of history and tell me about Chong Kong and where this neighborhood comes from and what's, what's special about it. So maybe I'm not going back to the very fact that we talk behind the the stage. Um J right now is 100 and 60 years old um road. Um It was like the first road in Bangkok. So this is like a prime area. It was the place of, of Bangkok in 100 and 60 years ago. Everything was there. Um The bank was there, the hotel was there, the tram was there, the tallest building was there, which is seven story. So everything was right in the middle of the Rangoon and it carry on until like the past 40 years, Bangkok has expanded gradually into like a mega city right now. If if anyone has visited in Bangkok, Bangkok is a mega city. So Durran was abandoned. It's like deserted area because most of the houses are Chinese owned and the third generation will will carry on the the the ancestors um place, they won't sell it, but they won't use it. So it's like all, all, all of the area was closed down a lot. Ok. So um I'm gonna try to fill in some of the details here. If I get it wrong, you can, you can correct me. But um a couple of interesting things happened uh in Asia uh uh in, in the 16 seventies, we can go back that far. One was uh something that happened in Chaozhou, which is uh a region that's just up the coast from where we're sitting right now. And it was famous for having uh people that were very entrepreneurial, that were seafaring people that were great traders and that traded up and down in ships to Southeast Asia. Uh The uh forgive me for, you know, maybe too much history. But the Ming dynasty which was Han Chinese collapse, it was overtaken by the Manchus and the Qing dynasty and southern China, particularly the area around uh uh Chaozhou was kind of one of the last rebel holdouts of the, of the Ming. So there was all kinds of instability there uh caused famine, poverty and there were a series of natural disasters. So there was pressure on that population to leave and find another place to live, followed the trade routes down uh and, and got to Thailand. So in Thailand, this really interesting thing was happening, the Aut uh dynasty had been toppled by an attack from neighboring Burma and the major general general Thaksin uh became the king, moved to the city 50 miles down river. And it was really the beginning of what is now modern uh Bangkok um and transformed this foreign village into kind of an imperial capital. And he was partly Chinese and he was uh he needed a coalition of people to keep him uh in power. So he reached out to the Ch Ch Chinese from Chaozhou, who were already providing a lot of food and creative spices to this uh new city. And he gave them a huge plot of land that became Chinatown. Cha Kong is the neighborhood that sort of just adjoins Chinatown. Uh And um it became the center of, of, of commerce and, and markets and diplomacy and everything for the city. And when finally, uh Thailand opened up to trade with the West in the 18 fifties, there was just a flood of Western uh traders and diplomats and uh uh people that, that came in and they needed a place to kind of set up shop. And so that's why it became the first location of the first road instead of, you know, traveling around by boat, up and down the chara, they had a road, they had a cable car, you know, lighting on the streets. It was spectacular in every respect. But then the investment boom in the eighties and nineties and Itand it into a place just kind of left this district that had once been of the grandest districts in all of Bangkok behind. Uh So very interesting to me to see so many people still have been to Sukhum that but they have not been to the district where it really kind of all uh all started. So talk to us a little bit about what happened when the, so the Thailand has this very progressive design uh bureaucracy. If you want to call it that, it's an agency called the Thai Thailand Creativity and Design Center that group p works with and they put their headquarters uh in this neighborhood and talk a little bit about that. If you can, we'll see if we can get some pictures here so people can. So this is like where I work is the Creative uh Creative Economy Agency, which is government agency working with um 15 creative industries. And one of the new mission when we relocate ourselves from the other side of the road to this old neighborhood is about district development as lots of various Europe uh uh American cities that trying to revitalize, regenerate um rundown areas. So this was the initiative from the government, see if we can. So this is where I work, look posh with all the resource center, with the view and everything. So this is a spectacular building and what you can see kind of from this side on the kind of lower right hand corner here is that it's, it's in the, it's at the edge of this very curious building. What say something about the the larger where it's been housed inside. Actually, this is like the Grand Postal building built in 19 forties. And, um, we, it was abandoned, actually, maybe I'll go through this. So this is all the, all the area of the new banks is there, the, the, all the embassies is here. Um, you can click throughout. So this is like the, the place where everything happens and for at the area that's like, um, the Grand Postal building that was actually the center of communication to Bangkok at the time. And we are looking um at this area that survived World War Two bombing, things like that. And it was the Grand Postal Building for ages. We know the area, the area is called the Grand Postal area. So if you call a taxi, you say this is the word for the area. And when the Grand Postal, um when the Postal company also abandoned the building because the building is too small for the corporate. So they move out. And the next slide will see like this is what what is was abandoned at the time. So no one operated, it was like really abandoned with, with with broken windows and everything. So in 2017, we relocated ourselves and we regenerate, we regenerate the building, we saw the building and just now what we've seen is the Thailand Creative and Design Center inside with the resource center with all the services for the creative industries. And from this on, this is the pinnacle of the area that will be shifting. Um projects for revitalizing Terran area. It's a wonderful art deco building that's been designed by local architects really quite unique when you decide it. So talk to us a little bit about what you did when you moved into this neighborhood to kind of figure it out when we move in. It's like as I mentioned, it's a ghost town. We can't find even lunch. It's difficult. You have to go like an hour like you, you you have to go by taxi out of town, out of the area to to to get lunch, things like that. So the first thing that we done is data collecting. So we we went knocking all the doors to see whether this place is a commercial area, which is a residential area. Where's the hotel, where's the mosque, the church, the the temple. So we collect data to see whether, how vacant is it, how is it occupy things like that during the eight years, we just kind of figuring out who your neighbors are. I mean, classic design process. So what are we looking at here? Like for this thing? I think it is parallel. When we collect all the data, we found that lots of places are run down buildings. So it's like uh a project that we were looking at strategy of place making. So eventually during the year, we will try to approach new places to see whether it could be used um to see whether it is the, what you call the structure is, is good enough for, for rental, things like that. So we try to connect and, and maybe like in Design Week, we, we will try to rent out the area to see whether it's possible to, to give an idea that buildings could be used. Ok, great. So what are we looking at here? So this little uh logo uh in brown here in the brown circle made in Chong Kong. This thing came a bit later because when, when Charan Kong was, when we relocated, we have we run um design ring in the area to prove that there's potential and possibilities of people coming in. The thing that we found is the 30 years old, 50 years old, 80 years old um um businesses in the area could not sell things to, to the new visitors because there's a younger generation coming in. So the Met in general was was imposed to as a design center. We have designer in our left hand, we have the old business on our right hand. So we meet them up to come up with new services, new products that were to new visitors. So the med intern was like implement, I think the fourth or the fifth year right now and they create new products for new generations, new visitors, right? So you have all these little kind of mom and pop businesses, right? That are, that are in the neighborhood, they're producing cool things, but they don't have much marketing, some of them right now online, some of them now in department store because we have like the business development department that works with them. Great like that. So interesting though. So you go to these people and say, hey, design, marketing design design, it won't work if this won't work. You need to, to look over the whole journey of, of businesses, things like that to to tell us about these portraits because I think that this story is really quite touching and and revealing the district branding in a way. I believe everyone working on, on, on regenerating district. The working with people is one of the toughest, the community is the toughest thing. So we came up with an idea that how to break and the break icebreaking for, for people. So the idea of the portrait of the room was imposed in, in this, this this this um context. Um We, it's an easy project. Um We film um 80 families in Terran area and we use the photos as a display in large public area across Terran Room and we have like a content of it. What that, that, that we could, could um introduce them to the public. So this is like things that people haven't expected that they will be displayed in, in public area, in large, in large places, things like that. And some of the, I think half of the families that that was in this program, they didn't have a family photo for over 30 years. So it's like, it's a, it's a, it's a little story of small family but it, it made them have a sense of ownership. They have a sense of place. And right now when we would like to do anything with them, it's easy because they know us, we know them and they are proud that they are people of group that is so great. So Andrew earlier this morning, Andrew Lazarro uh said something that I thought was quite profound was, you know, the importance of design, helping people feel seen. And this is essentially what you did. You went took the portraits of these families, you help them kind of brand themselves and you validated and celebrated them and that won their trust. Yeah, I think really important for us. Trust is a new currency for us. It is a that we, we use to trade because they have to trust us, we have to trust them. And, and this thing helps us to develop a new projects because um what we are doing is a people centric is a, is a community centric. Everything we do, there will be the people that we, we will work with. So they need to trust us and we need to trust them in a way. So instead of being suspicious of so they became your your allies in this project because before that, this is quite important because this was before we relocated, we have the co creator and whom we talked to 500 people over the span of eight months to see whether what are the needs, what are they expecting? What are the needs to see whatever they, they would like to see a design center moving into their neighborhood and you really work hard to sort of integrate the different segments of the neighborhood as well. Yeah, it, it's a span of a hun uh 1.5 kilometers framework. And actually if you see the green uh stroke, some of it was redesigned to to connect the small alleys because most of the opportunities are on the main road. But the green, the green small alleys was like for people less resourced and less less fortunate to to. So this, I think we are helping them make it easier for people to circulate in the in the neighborhood. Now talk about the role of design. The design week actually, is it like this um um conference that is about experimenting is about a laboratory. We use a design week different from maybe the design week in other countries because we look at as a lab. So it's a laboratory that we will try to see whether in this 1.7 kilometers area which normally no one comes, it goes down with a design week with a program with, with, with everything those people come. So the first edition of The Bangor design week catches like 400,000 people during the nine days. So it it it made people amazed with, with the number and people were were in the area. So it built trust in a way for businesses to maybe relocate it themselves. Projects is like like this that we're looking at like the part on the on the river, things like that. It is about issues on on green space in Thailand in Bangkok is really so design wing is like to open conversation with, with the governor, with people who look no place for green space on land. There will be green space almost like pop ups and yeah, that's all pop up. It's it's meant to to be a lab, a kind of lab to see whether people come in some of the programs for communities like a community karaoke so everyone could sing together and things like that. So we change the kind of mood and spirit of the. So you talked a little bit about lighting, the lighting, I think everyone has in every country. I believe lighting installation and lighting festival is always there. But for us, we we don't look at us as it as a lighting festival. It's the frame of of the brief. We're looking at how a small alley could compete with Children grung also. So the lighting was plot as as a answer to the question that how small alleys could compete with main roads, things like that So it was displayed along or even with this. Um This is for us, is the, the, the, the great grandfather of everything because um back then eight years ago, Thailand urban designers never had their project realized in, in the city. And this was like it took two years in the design week to fetch. Um um uh What do you call approval from the B MA the Bangkok Metropolitan Administration? Because right now we have prototype labs, see how people react, things like that. And we, we present it to the mayor and the mayor says, OK, for the first year, what's next, the next year? We we have it prototype as with the material, things like that. So right now it's like the great grandfather project with, with the government which built a bridge for designers, creative urban designers to work and realize that project in the city. So these, these sort of signposting, you know, how outsider helping outsiders to get to the neighborhood, find their way around. Uh you know, really quite amazing. I'm going to skip through this. Um And maybe I'm just going to put up this last slide. So you were saying something to me interesting the other day that this was mainly meant to be something that was to open Chong Kong back up to the local Thai community. But what's interesting is I just pulled, you know, we pulled these last night from, from the Western media. This is kind of now, the Brooklyn of Bangkok, right? Uh Look at these headlines, Bangkok, Sharon Krung Road City's oldest district now, Hippus is an makeover that brings new hotels and bars, galleries and street art. Uh This one at the bottom is the New York Times uh travel magazine, a huge spread there with some amazing photos. Uh You know, you've gotten all kinds of great uh press in the global media uh as a result of your efforts, uh uh We were down there a few months ago and visited Kun Chakra. Uh The design center is spectacular and there is a wealth of cool galleries and hip hotels and cafes, all kinds of Michelin starred restaurants. Now within just sort of a stone's throw of the design center, it's really cool. Actually, we didn't expect an approach from international, but actually, we work actually with working with the community and see how its creativity and design could prove for the community, the social and the economy. So that was what we the the real purpose and attempt that, that we were trying to achieve. Well, it sounds like a lot of things came together at once, but to be able to kind of have a revival of that magnitude in just a, you know, two or three years, three years. Amazing. And it's very encouraging case study, I think lots of uh of other cities and you know, design may only have been a part of that. But what I love about this story is that you can really see that the conscious efforts that you made to understand the community and then to kind of reach out and see what can we do to help them and use design to make this place more accessible? Have been a spectacular success. So congratulations convince. Thank you so much for joining us. Thank you.

How Asian countries are fighting against COVID-19

 (Photo by Ceng Shou Yi/NurPhoto via Getty Images)

International

It has been a year since the first Covid 19 case was reported in Wuhan, China. Yeah, Now the virus can be detected in almost all countries. Mhm, mhm covid measures like social distancing, mandatory mask rules, border controls and lockdowns are being implemented globally. But cases keep surging. Countries hitting new piece every week. Covid 19 is still spreading out of control. But not all are bad news. Several Asian countries like Taiwan, Vietnam and Thailand have done comparatively well despite being very near to and have frequent travelers from China. Seeing mask as one crucial factor in minimizing the spread, the Taiwanese government took different measures to ensure its domestic supplies for their citizens. For the shank. One woman where to go So yeah, the young woman called all the younger, trendier Chiba woman. Grenada comes up. They imposed an export ban on disposable surgical mask and set a limit for every mask purchase. The government also mobilized the military to join forces with local factories in ramping up the domestic mass production. By June 2020 Taiwan has raised a daily mass production from around 1.9 million before the pandemic it to 20 million per day. That doesn't mean that by putting on a mask, we can fully block the virus from entering the community. Governments will still need to act quickly to identify potential virus carriers and quarantine them before a massive local outbreak occurs. Yeah, Vietnam has taken a targeted approach when it comes to such measures based on potential exposure to the violence. Once the patient is identified, authorities were used. It's layered contract tracing, testing and quarantine tactics to contain a potential spread. Direct contact will be sent to mandatory quarantine in government controlled centers. In direct context will also be required to self isolate and when multiple cases are detected in the same area. Authorities were treated as a suspected virus hotspot and immediately locked down the entire area. Back in mid February, the government locked down a local community with 10,000 people for 20 days after discovering six cases. Vietnam only has 16 cases nationwide at the time. Compared to a symptom based method. Such measures have helped to reduce transmission within the local community. Over in Thailand, One unique feature of the country's collective effort will be its village health volunteers. Thailand has over a million of these volunteers acting as the bridge between authorities and local communities. These are normal Thai nationals who have received basic health training. They focus on educating and informing people about the latest covid situation and assist the government and monitoring and collecting health information from local communities facing a pandemic. It is important for authorities to act quickly to minimize the damage. Taiwan, Vietnam and Thailand all have previously experienced staff outbreak in 2000 and 2 to 2000 and three. Governments can quickly identify what works and what doesn't and deport appropriate preventive measures to handle the virus. Mhm. Even with the roll out of covid 19 vaccines, it will take time until it reaches every country. What Taiwan, Vietnam and Thailand are doing might not be the answer to ending a pandemic, but it can help to keep things under control until we managed to fascinate the entire world population. Mm

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