he beginning of this year, I and my team from Life and Home traveled to touch the nature and cold weather in Chiang Rai province. We had a chance to visit our beloved senior artist,. His house is located in area with the peaceful atmosphere. The house, itself, is equipped with a beauty of colors, built from natural construction materials and surrounded by the atmosphere of a simple lifestyle of local people. Absolutely, all components composed into this house are what everybody desires.
This house is like what in the dream of many people. Happiness from living in the house has nothing to do with the size or cost; actually, it happens when we can do whatever we love and favor in. Likewise, Khun Songdet, our host, built his own house on a small plot of land. He can make happiness happen to his house in his hometown. Khun Songde is a drawing artist with a strong identity and unique style. Interestingly, his traditional Thai style in creating his art works is inspired from Buddhism religion. It is something reflecting beauty of nature, local lifestyle, and Thai architecture with obviously identity of Lanna Empire in the previous days.
“Knowing that I returned home, the number of local people coming to see me was increasing more and more. My former house was used as my office and for living as well as displaying my artworks, totally 3 functions at one (laughing). On the other hand, there was no specific room properly for receiving guests because sometimes they stayed over at my house. There was no bedroom at all. For this reason, I decided to build this house, allocated spaces for receiving guests and demonstrating my artworks. It is somehow like a home gallery, says the host about the background of his house.
A 2-storey contemporary-modern house is designed in a box shape. An interior of the house coated with polished cement all over the building. The living space is installed with a big wooden folding door. When entering to the house, we will see a wide space hall decorated with Khun Det’s paintings in a size of more than 3 meters. The wall is painted in cream white that really enhance his artworks become dominant. At the meantime, it makes the wall look clean.. The floor is covered with polished cement and coated with epoxy to harmonize the tones of colors to blend well together with the rest of the room. The next is living corner where pieces of wooden furniture and soft fabric sofa in grey tone are arranged. This corner is in an open space in which we can overlook all parts of the house. This space is somehow like a themed place of happiness offering, since happiness of mind is fulfilled whenever artworks can be seen in every space of the room.
“When I first came back home, I met P’ Pu Yutthana Bamrungkit, an artist and designer. He is very friendly and we easily become close friends. When I decided to build a house, he took care all construction work; including, designing, and selecting materials for construction. Apart from him, P Kung Charn Lippasart, is the other one who helped design a building structure as he is an architect. “It was the same time when I came back to my hometown and he came to visit Chiangrai; so I had him help me with his house”, says the host with smiling face.
Next, there is a linking path to the kitchen. In an ordinary kitchen, there is a wooden topped counter inserted into the wall. One of interesting spots is the wall of the room. Brown rice paper is used to add textures to the ordinary wall. The decorating design is really interesting. At the dining corner, a long wood table which its legs are made from tall traditional Barn-posts is placed. This room is high and spacious because of its double volume designed to cover the ceiling of the room.
The second floor is connected with a stair having a bamboo handrail, attached to the wall. This really enhances the prominence of wooden color. A small door is decorated with rice paper having some patterns. For the guest’s bedroom, ll of décor items are made of bamboos; either a bed or a beside-bed table, including a room ceiling. Bamboo made items for decoration can help the space look comfortable as as if we were staying amidst the real nature. Walking through the wood door, we will see a toilet which is divided into wet and dry areas. On the wall, there are holes made to bring natural light into the room and to help get rid of dampness and smelling away. A rough coating design made on the wall makes it unordinary. Khun Songdet tells us that he likes something natural. He uses bamboo and rice paper because they can perfectly reduce hardness of materials and create better atmosphere for interior decoration. He says that bamboos are easy to find out in the area and it is commonly used by local people.
More or less, we can get real happiness from what we can completely make our dream come true. Like building a new house; good materials or luxurious design may be less important than our willingness. Just pay more attention to what we are doing and we can make happiness happen by ourselves.
