Showing love to shophouses

It's hard to imagine an architectural style less awe-inspiring than that of the shophouse, those commercial, cement structures that abound in Bangkok, and form a uniformly dull backdrop to nearly all provincial capitals throughout Thailand.

The simple shophouse is the essence of utilitarianism, designed to house a shop on the ground floor and living quarters above.

Architectural flourishes are, generally, kept to the minimum.

There are, of course, exceptions.

Some of the more striking shophouses are to be found in Bangkok's Rattanakosin district, which boasts the Grand Palace, old temple compounds and stately government buildings that defined the original capital of the Chakri dynasty.

Earlier this month, the United Nations Educational, Cultural and Scientific Organisation (Unesco) awarded the recently renovated Na Phra Lan shophouse row an "honourable mention" on its Asian heritage list.

King Chulalongkorn played a pivotal role in introducing the shophouse architecture.

"King Rama V saw what Singapore was doing with Stamford Raffles' idea of the shophouse, and after that he sort of copied the idea of shophouse building," says Yongtanit Pimonsathean, president of the International Council on Monument and Sites Thailand Association and professor of architecture at Thammasat University.

The style of colonial Singapore and Penang shophouses is classified as "Straits settlements". The structure comprises thick cement walls, wooden doors, beams, doors and window shutters, with plaster flourishes above the door frame.

King Chulalongkorn had Straits-style shophouses constructed along the capital's new roads, such as Charoen Krung built by his father King Rama IV in 1854, Yaowarat Road in Chinatown and Tha Tian and Na Phra Lan neighbourhoods surrounding the Grand Palace, Yongtanit explains.

After the end of the absolute monarchy in 1932, ownership of many of the Straits-style shophouses was passed over to the Crown Property Bureau.

In 1995, the government announced plans to turn both the Tha Tian and Na Phra Lan neighbourhoods into heritage sites, with evictions of local communities planned.

Community resistance was strong and the eviction plans were eventually shelved.

The Crown Property Bureau then opted for a more inclusive approach by trying to persuade the existing tenants to participate in refurbishing their shophouses, many of them more than a century old.

The most visible of these renovation efforts in the Na Phra Lan shophouse community across the road from the Grand Palace.

The shops were closed for more than a year for renovations, which were 75 per cent paid for by the Crown Property Bureau, and the remainder 25 per cent by the tenants, many of whom have been there for generations.

"My family has been here for more than 60 years," says Suphat Saetkhanuphop, third-generation tenant of a shophouse that is now the Grand Palace Photo Digital Lab.

Suphat's grandfather initially ran a restaurant in the shop that specialised in foreign dishes for employees of the Finance Ministry, which formally had its office in the palace compound.

When the ministry moved to a new location a decade ago, Suphat changed the shop into a photo lab, targeting tourists.

Although renovations to his shop cost the family more than Bt1 million, Suphat says it was worth it to keep the business going.

"I don't know what else to do for a living," he says.

The Unesco jury awarded the Na Phra Lan project an "honourable mention" partly because it was impressed by the joint efforts to refurbish the properties by the Crown Property Bureau and the tenants.

"It could be a good model for the future," says Montira Unakul, Unesco's local expert on the Na Phra Lan community.

The Crown Property Bureau is hoping to duplicate the Na Phra Lan model in Tha Tian and other shophouse neighbourhoods in Chinatown.

Not everyone is enthusiastic.

"Our place is fine the way it is now. Why should we change it?" says the proprietor of the Patkijprasong Dispensary, a century-old Chinese medicine shop in the Tha Tian neighbourhood.

"The Na Phra Lan shops look pretty, but they don't look authentic anymore," said the Tha Tian tenant, whose family has run the shop for 110 years.