Profane and Play

               Since we all are living in Thailand, a country of long lived history and many different cultures, it is quite common of us to see sacred places in our daily life. There are many religious in Thailand and almost every one of them has their own sacred version of structure such as temples and churches, each type has their own characteristic that is almost impossible to see the same look on different function. People elevate these places into a higher position among others types of structure so that, redefine the function would be some kind of an orthodox or what we call Profane.

                The concept of Profanity is when we try to redefine the concept of those untouchable sacred structures, we are challenging all believes and knowledge that we were born with. Profanity is like one of the unique perception that is not focused on creating a completely new thing, actually it is about using the existing space or form and then adds a new meaning into it. So far in my understanding, profanity is one way to adapt and evolve for a building, also a very brave action choice because playing with sacred places is not a common thing. There are so many possibilities both good and bad ways on the results, and to be able to succeed one good profanity building is risky and very challenging.

                Profanity in Thailand has many things to do with religions and cultures, and as I said earlier that Thailand has a very long history so, it is quite hard to play with these respective ancient architectures such as temples. There is one hotel in Chiang Mai that actually plays with the traditional form of temple, duplicated and redefined as a new luxury hotel. The hotel, in my opinion was a success in term of creates new function and space while still able to preserve the unique characteristic of the traditional temple. But there are always different believes and opinion, some would say that the sacred temple should not be used as anything rather than traditional use. Not just only in Buddhism but in Christianity as well, there is a similar situation in a painting of angry Jesus Christ. In the painting the god is getting angry because people have turned the church into something else by selling things inside of it. He was mad by the profanity of people that challenging this sacred house of god, it is considered as disrespectful and ruined the real value of the architecture.

                Profanity also happens to other designs rather than religious places as well. One of a very big example is from Rem Koolhaas. He is a well-known architect in terms of playful and a little bit of a badass, in my opinion. His works has a very unique style of getting people mad. The best example would be when he tries to create new architecture using Mies Van de Rohe, a well-known and widely accepted among architects as his inspiration. In the end, Rem managed to create a building with a façade that totally blown people away, he chooses Mies Van de Rohe’s face as a façade which is very unique way of inspiration. This is by far, has been consider as a playful profanity, even he did not play with religious believes but still Mies Van de Rohe is consider as one of the sacred and respectful among architects.

                So, I would say that Profanity is not something that we can judge, it is in between good and not good depends on different perspectives. It is just a way to of redefining process that is very challenging and risky in order to obtain a very successful one.