ASA Journal 15/2023

STUDIO LOCOMOTIVE
139
language. There isn’t any design or
architecture that doesn’t communicate
in one way or another. Our role is to
bring our abilities, collect all we have,
and present them most effectively. And
with the best it can be to present to
those we communicate with. I don’t really
believe that there is a design that makes
everyone feel comfortable or that makes
everyone feel good when they move in.
But we need to know who we are doing
this to communicate with, and we have
to bring this knowledge to help extend
those communications through experience
to those target audiences. Our
studio, therefore, does not focus on the
form or try to create your style. But we
try to work by thinking about who we
will talk to or communicate with and
then how to communicate with these
people to impress them.
Can you share an example of an
impressive or remarkable design
project?
It’s the Hotel Gahn, which opened during
COVID. Since it is located at one end
of Khao Lak, it is a challenging project
in terms of site constraints. Even though
it’s on a major road, there’s no view.
Because the land is small, having a huge
room or a large swimming pool takes
work. So it’s critical to understand
how we can make this little hotel profitable
in this competitive market. Then
we started thinking about the design
approach—what language we would
use and who our target audience was.
As a result, the decision was made to
focus on culture rather than the sea.
We chose the theme of Baba Yaya,
which was born in the area and has
been modified and presented in the
design of various hotel portions without
employing decoration styles such as
stucco or classical elements, which are
outward appearances. Instead, we used
the abstract themes of faiths, beliefs,
and feelings in the Phuket area as the
story to tell.
Another project is Villa Qabalah, located
in Phuket’s green zone. When the client
asked us to present the layout, we
proposed a conversation through trees.
We used the area where we usually go
to sell lawns, but we didn’t have money
to manage to plant trees for customers.
So we brought the land up to the top
so that the land in that area would be
reduced, we could sell more land, and
every house would have a garden. The
more units we add, the more trees on the
roof we will get. This is a big challenge
for us to present ideas this way. Bringing
trees to the top will add more money to
the cost of the structure as it will have
to support more weight, but for us, it’s
a challenge to try something out of the
box, different from the conventional
marketing approaches, and to prove that
this way of thinking can be sold as well.
The investors retain business while the
area is livable with more trees and
green spaces.
Villa Qabalah
Do you have any plans or goals
for Studio Locomotive in the
future?
From the start, it was always our plan
to stay in a small studio like this. We
try not to have more than ten members
so we can choose projects we’re really
interested in. In the future, we want to
do design work that meets the owner’s
needs and affects the people around it.
And as these projects get closer to being
real, we’ll try to push harder. When the
hotel and restaurant projects start to
settle down, they will start building a
gallery to exhibit the work of local artists.
This will be a simple goal for us.
Studio-locomotive.com