Old Minburee Market Playground, Week 2.

I arrive in time for the second week of the 'playground as catalyst' project. Ploy a young architect in her second year at CASE is running the project, she has given me some background and we have visited the community earlier in the week to put up posters advertising the saturday workshop.

When saturday arrives, we meet the kids at the playground site and go to a nearby building for shelter from the heat. Ploy introduces the activity and distributes the cardboard and crayons for drawing. The kids gather on the floor and draw their ideas of how their playground should be. Ploy encourages them to draw not just the playground but also all the things they like to play.

The kids draw in four groups, some are shy to begin, but Ploy and the GE volunteers prompt them and soon they are discussing amongst themselves and drawing so much they all flip over the cardboard to use the other side!


The drawings are very diverse, there are birds-eye views of football fields and gardens as well as side views of plants, slippery dips, swings and other play equipment. There are also more whimsical and abstract drawings.

Ploy and the volunteers then go to each group in turn and ask what each drawing is, the kids explain and label the drawings as well as write their names on it. they do this one by one so that everyone gets to hear the ideas of each group.


Once everyone has had a chance to explain, each group holds up their drawing and the others clap. the ones who get the loudest clap get to have their picture on the poster for next week.

A Playground for kids in the Old Minburee Market

The first project that I am participating in with CASE is a playground for the kids who live in the Old Minburee Market. CASE has been involved with the Old Market communities for sometime as it is only a short walk from their office. Chumchonthai Foundation funded CASE to look at the feasibility of doing a project with the community, after spending time with the locals the concept of a playground was raised and a suitable site chosen. A multinational finance corporation with offices in Bangkok also approached CASE seeking a suitable project for its office workers to participate in as part of a volunteer community engagement programme. The corporation will fund the costs of all community design workshops and the construction of the playground itself.

Below is an outline of the project as presented by CASE to the corporation.

CASE studio, an introduction.

CASE (Community Architects for Shelter and Environment) is a group of young Thai architects in practice for more than ten years. They are the first practice that I will embed myself in for the research project; working with the informal, learning from the informal. From June until December I will work with CASE, participating in a range of their projects and learning from their unique philosophy and methods of community engagement. The results of this will be continuously documented on this blog.

Below is an introduction to the work of CASE. More detailed information is available
from their website (http://www.casestudio.info)