The largely precast, concrete post-and-beam dwelling, nestled on a jungly lot in a residential neighborhood of Chiang Mai in the north of Thailand, was a collaborative effort among Tiravanija and Aurell; Aroon Puritat, a local architect; the New York-based husband-and-wife architecture team Neil Logan and Solveig Fernlund (who are also friends of Aurell and Tiravanija’s); Settawut Pinyorid, a local builder, and his construction crew (artisans who work as rice farmers most of the year); a feng shui geomancer and the various highly opinionated spirits that have the final say on most domestic matters in Thailand.
Conceived as a series of pavilions around a central courtyard with public functions (offices, kitchen, living room) on the street side and private (a study, bedrooms, a master bath with an outdoor shower) on the back, the house incorporates many of the practical elements of the country’s indigenous architecture while referring to the work of Tiravanija’s modernist heroes — architects like Le Corbusier, Mies van der Rohe and Rudolph Schindler. Aurell, who grew up in Japan, brought yet another sensibility to bear, which is most apparent in the master bedroom, where the massive platform bed is like a tatami room within a room. “I knew what I didn’t need to have, but also what the others might want,” explains Tiravanija, whose modest second-floor work space is dwarfed by Aurell’s gorgeous double-height studio. But rather than an unruly hodgepodge of competing visions and needs, the result, as the artist accurately describes it, is “something minimal and modern that still works in this chaotic place.”
