Advanced Option Studio (AOS): Of Mothers and Dragons - Compound as Architectural Models, Rice Fields as Urban Form
This studio seeks to recover the spatial entity of the Mae Kuang (Mother River Kuang) and its distributary offspring, believing that contemporary urban and architectural practices can be recalibrated with the embodied knowledge of everyday stewards, ultimately transitioning object-based approaches to address systemic issues that frame water-based resilience.
Chiang Mai projects by John Brody Ploeger and Chengming Jacky Jia (B.Arch ’25) in the Compoundologies Studio coordinated by Tommy CheeMou Yang.
AOS Catalog Course Description
This studio seeks to recover the spatial entity of the Mae Kuang (Mother River Kuang) and its distributary offspring by studying how local stewards in four mutually cooperative peri-urban villages take care of each other and their water-based lifeworlds. The studio focuses on the annual reconstruction of the artifacts and landforms that maintain the hydrological landscape’s water access and care-produced locality. This studio believes that contemporary urban and architectural practices can be recalibrated with the embodied knowledge of everyday stewards, ultimately transitioning object-based approaches to address systemic issues that frame water-based resilience. We trace a territory shaped for agriculture, craft and water distribution along the Mae Kuang through its weirs and canals. The semester-long journey nurtures a comprehensive project that includes detailed fabrications inspired by toys, illustrations of an architecture between four villages, and fabrication film.