AP Thailand overjoyed over TIME magazine’s recognition of Klong Toei football field

AP (Thailand) Public Company Limited, a leading developer of properties and premier innovator of residential functional space design, was behind the creativity of the unprecedented football field.
TIME Magazine said the inventions were shortlisted for their ability to make the world better.  
AP announced in a press statement that the unusual football field was the result of channeling the company’s expertise in residential space design to give back to society under the AP Think Space concept.  
Following a survey of the Khlong Toei community, AP Design Lab decided to turn waste areas in the area into space that would be of benefit to everyone in the community.  The result is a couple of odd-shaped - L or zig zag-shaped - football pitches, proof that a football field is not necessarily limited to a regular rectangle, the statement said.
“It was a world’s first and a challenge to the way AP thinks in order to overcome traditional limits in space development through a different creative perspective.  It has created a ‘valuable life space’ that has been useful for everyone in the community – small kids, older kids and adults,” the statement added.
Pattaraphurit Rungjaturapat, deputy Chief Corporate Image Officer, AP (Thailand), said his firm had discussed ways and means to channel our expertise in space design into helping society so that people can live a better life.  
“We ended up with the idea of designing something for the Khlong Toei community with emphasis on turning untended or useless areas into something productive,” Pattaraphurit said.
“Many people wonder if a football field that is not in a rectangular shape is really playable.  But since we agreed that a football field is what people in the community wanted, we considered that size and shape should not be an obstacle for us to build the field … It was a challenge to our team of designers.”
He added that the L-shaped and the zig zag-shaped – was not just a result of thinking differently, it was a balanced design that brings the most flexibility and seamlessness to the community. 
 “The fact that TIME has selected AP Unusual Football Field (unusually shaped football pitches) as one of 25 best inventions of 2016 is beyond our wildest imagination,” Pattaraphurit said.
“But on top of everything, the paramount achievement of this project is that what we created can really meet the needs of the community because the heart of our design philosophy is the end-user - the people in the community - who benefited from the space we created.  It is what we really intended to do just like the criteria TIME magazine used to select a best invention – it must make the world better.”