MONDO CONDO!
In a telling series of photos, artist Miti Ruangkritya races to keep pace with Bangkok’s growth
Bangkok CityCity Gallery off Sathorn Road is looking like a realty office at the moment, an illusion helped along by its being surrounded by posh condominiums.
“You selling condos?” asks a passer-by who’s popped in.
“No,” replies the owner, “we sell contemporary art.”
It’s an honest mistake. The year-old gallery has a huge photo of blue sky in the front window marked “Sold out” and inside a condo model and a wooden sculpture identified as “Dream Property”.
Along one wall are 32 more photos of empty windows showing the skyline beyond. The facing wall has condo sales pitches.
“Dream Property” is also the title of this exhibition by photographer-artist Miti Ruangkritya, a specialist in views of super-urbanised Bangkok. You might recall his show “Imagining the Flood”, about the city’s 2011 inundation, or his shots of Thaksin Shinawatra in a set called “Thai Politics”.
“‘Dream Property’ stems from my interest in the rapid changes we see taking place in Bangkok, where I’ve lived for six years since coming back to Thailand,” says Miti, who has a master’s in photojournalism from the University of Westminster.
The exhibition might put your dream home in perspective with views like this one from the “Rooms” series. Photo courtesy of Miti Ruangkritya
The exhibition underscores how the capital’s growth has rocketed along in spite of all the political turmoil and other setbacks. The caption on the wall gasps at “a staggering 50,100 new condominium units” launched in 2014 and 35,000 more this year and last.
“I’ve lived in condos since I was very young, so there’s that familiarity,” Miti says, “but I left Bangkok to study abroad at a young age, and now I have a renewed interest in exploring the rapid, ever-changing pace of growth in the city.”
“It’s changing at a really hectic pace compared to London, where the city centre has remained pretty static. If you look at pictures of London in the ’60s and now, the architecture is much the same, other than shifts in taste and fashion. In Bangkok there’s a sense that anything could happen.”
For his “Rooms” portfolio, Miti actually approached a realtor pretending to be a potential buyer and was able to get more than 100 images of different suites. The condos he shot are all along the expanding Skytrain line and priced from Bt1 million to Bt80 million.
The pictures in the series appear at first glance to be of the same place, but closer examination reveals different details – as reflected in wildly divergent asking prices.
“What you see are newly built interiors awaiting occupation,” Miti says. “The questions that arise are about aspirations versus reality.”
“Excerpts from Bangkok Real Estate Advertising” are presented in the original English and tend to strain credulity while attempting to entice. “For visionary homeseekers”, says one. “Bangkok’s Ground Zero for a new way of living”, reads another. Yet another gushes that the building’s height (42 floors) is “the height of happiness”. Miti’s also compiled them all in an amusing book.
“Empty Lot” is empty no more, yielding to development within a year of Miti first noticing a newly built roadway. Photo courtesy of Miti Ruangkritya
“Empty Lot” comprises pictures of a green landscape along a newly built road, a hint at the transience of nature in the city. “I found this road accidentally while out driving in 2014 and went back last year. Some parts had already been developed.”
In a smaller section of the gallery, fragments of past economic booms and busts intertwine with the present in three pieces.
The photo “SkyView” was taken from the 30th-floor terrace of the sumptuous Sukhothai Residence in Sathorn business district, a property touted at Bt490,000 per square metre for its “sophisticated design” and “uncompromising elegant way of life”.
“1 Square Metre of Soil”was excavated from the site of Miti’s childhood school,
not allocated to yet another high-rise.
Setting his camera aside, Miti dug up “1 Square Metre of Soil” in an empty Rajaprasong lot readied for a high-rise condo. The site’s former occupant was the primary school that he attended as a child. The dirt he once played in is worth a lot more now.
Leaning against a wall is “Tower Sketch”, derived from architect Rangsan Torsuwan’s original conception for the 47-storey Sathorn Unique Tower in Siam Square that’s now one of Bangkok’s abandoned “ghost” structures. Not every luxury condo can be a winner.
Miti points out the “exuberant design style” that the reeling economy left behind at this address in the ’90s, including Greco-Roman columns on every floor. The 1997 Asian financial crisis resulted in more than 200 unfinished high-rise projects in the city, he says. Many of their skeletons are still out there, “a lingering reminder of the dangers and perhaps tentative nature of the economy, even within the rapid rate of property development”.
Miti Ruangkritya presents his “Room” series – images from a hundred different empty condo units. Bangkok CitiCity Gallery/Akapol Sudasna
Miti has designed a small architectural marvel of his own – an exhibition book to be unveiled on Saturday, on the eve of the show’s closing.
“I didn’t want to do just an ordinary exhibition book. This one’s large format – A2, 24 pages in English and Thai – and a lot of attention went into the design, the choice of paper stock and the printing, so it’s offers an experience in its own right.
“It switches between my work and that of contributors from different fields – an architect, an urban planner, a writer and a film director. It expands on ideas and lets the reader see the issues from angles that my work might not cover directly.
“Yanyong Boon-long, an architect, and Jittat Fakcharoenphpol, a university lecturer, have for example contributed an abstract graph that reviews the possibility of connecting up the different metro areas with canals. Apiwat Ratanawaraha, a professor in urban studies and planning, has written a poignant essay on Bangkok’s resilience in bouncing back from various shocks over the years.”
Miti is amazed that development surges ahead in the capital regardless of natural disasters, military coups and even such once-in-a-lifetime blows as the death of His Majesty the King.
“It does make one wonder whether the bubble will burst in the real-estate sector like what happened in 1997,” he says. “The frenetic pace of change in the urban landscape raises questions about city planning, in terms of public spaces, green areas and staying connected.”
WHAT DREAMS ARE MADE OF
- The exhibition “Dream Property” ends next Sunday.
- The book commemorating the show will be unveiled on Saturday at 3pm.
- Find out more on the “BangkokCityCityGallery” Facebook page.
