Bangkok Art and Culture Centre

The Bangkok Art and Culture Centre is an amazing 11 storey building that features galleries, gourmet cafes, create-your-own craft shops, niche bookstores, and even a pop-out bike shop! I'm not even sure how a pop-out store works, but I'm loving it!

I really wish I had something like this nearby to hit up, it would be much more entertaining than the usual mall! Apparently there's a few of these venues out there, so I wonder why I've never heard of them before now?

I also think that the 'mallesque' atmosphere of the art centre presents culture in a way that would be very attractive to children and young adults. After all, the stuffyness of some museums can really kill the atmosphere, don't you agree?
The official article I checked out was here on Nation Multimedia.

Do you think 11 storeys is a bit excessive, or should North America start taking some notes?

Tweet

Rezoning Buildings as Studios?

I hopped into my local auto shop today to get a metal mold welded together - I don't know if all mechanics will do this, but my dad happens to be old friends with the owner, so he was willing to help me out. While I was there I started looking around the shop and realized, "Damn! An old auto shop would make an amazing studio!" And, in fact, I think in my lifetime I have seen quite a few closed down auto shops.

I realized the space is pretty damn large, too large for just a kiln casting studio, even if I was running workshops. So I figured, if anyone was about to start a glass co-op, the building would easily fit a kiln shop, hot shop (glass blowing and hot casting), flameworking, and a cold shop. It would suck to have an open space between everything, because a cold shop is really damn loud, but if everyone cooperates they can pick official cold shop days and times, so that the majority of use, when people are in there for hours, doesn't interrupt everyone else.

When you need some extra ventilation, or the day is just really hot, you could also just throw open those beautiful glass garage doors! Speaking of, glass garage doors would be great for natural light, and amazing to let the public peek in while they're walking by! Now all I need to do is figure out where you'd put a safe zone so the public could come inside and take a gander, and we'd be all set!

A co-op glass studio like this isn't in my future, not as far as I know, but it's still nice to think about it.

Would an auto shop work for anybody else? Would textiles artist's enjoy it, or is something more homey better for that? What other buildings would be amazing if they were rezoned as studios?

Tweet

There Are Polyculture Farms, Are There Polyculture Studios?

When you think about the idea of local farms, what comes to mind?

For me it's a polyculture farm, as opposed to the industrial giants that plant giant monocultures (of say, corn) so that they can successfully fill all of WalMart's thousands of orders.

Assuming the information I've been reading is correct, a polyculture farm - one that has different types of produce and different animals - can;

Check out these healthy grasses!

-Be healthier for the environment
-Be more nutritious for consumers
-Produce a higher quality of food,
-Avoid the use of pesticides
-Act as it's own ecosystem
-Support local businesses
-Make for happier animals







At least, all of these things seem to be true of Polyface Farms, which is the particular farm I have been reading about. If you read about how this farm operates (say, in The Omnivore's Dilemma), you might come to the conclusion that this is the ideal way to farm, and wouldn't it be great if everyone had local farms again?

At least, that's the conclusion I came to, and thanks to a friend I have started wondering, is there such a thing as a craft polyculture? A complete studio ecosystem? I'm thinking about it more before I write out my answer.

Is there any way artist's materials and practices can help support each other?

Tweet