SPACE-Realising the Maker’s Mindset: Sher Maker

SPACE Jun 2024 (No. 679)

interview Patcharada Inplang co-principal, Sher Maker × Youn Yaelim

Sher Maker Studio (2019) is located in Chiangmai, northern of Thailand. What is the reason for the current location of the office?

Thongchai Chansamak (co-principal, Sher Maker) and me connected with and deeply relate to local northern culture. We think no place better suited to our nature than Chiangmai. We are local to here and see many local builders have an appropriate sense of the built context so we want to raise architectural issues in the place in which we feel we belong. We learn about local communities and other design contexts when we form a team to work here.

The identity as a ‘maker’, evident from the studio’s name, seems to permeate the workspace.

We built this studio on rented land with a really limited budget, so we had to adhere to only the most necessary elements by limiting time and the cost of building as much as possible. The sense of the maker reveals itself in the structural system and choice of materials; the big gable roof is made possible by 6m of high column and 3m of low column to cut the steel to half only one time to reach this roof structure. All materials used are normal materials that can be found in local construction shops and many parts of the studio are full of ambiguous details that come from this self-built mentality. Many parts of the studio were welded by ourselves—we not rely on the skillsets of others but placed the responsibility squarely in our own hands. That is why we define ourselves as makers. This reflects our interest in the process of the built in this architectural realm. A whole space was divided to two parts, in-office for design and research process, and a workshop hall for hands-on process. I think a working space for architects needs to support its occupants in the seeking and finding of new design posszibilities or methodologies, driving what every office wants to achieve in practice. Our workspace includes not only normal office facilities but also provides many hand tools and basic machinery, allowing us to easily shift the space to the status of workshop. Here we can test and investigate many options for building systems.

Project name

Sher Maker Studio

Location

Chiangmai, Thailand

Building area

243m²

Building scope

Year of occupancy

June 2019

Number of employees

You can see more information on the SPACE No. June (2024).

Sher Maker

Sher Maker is a small team of local architects and makers who design and build their work through local architectural design methodologies deriving from Chiangmai, Thailand. With a strong intention behind the process and meaning located in local architectural methodology and deep respect for indigenous architecture in northern of Thailand, their projects are developed through profound consideration of the contexts of local technology and material possibilities. They believe that the formative architecture language emerges through in the adoption of appropriate methods when integrating both physical and atmospheric design in each specific place and specific society.