CRUNCH: Making Sense: Non-Human Centred Design

Boonserm Premthada, founder of Bangkok Project Studio, is known for his socially conscious and environmentally sensitive architectural designs. His work emphasises creating a connection between architecture and our natural surroundings. One of his best-known works is Elephant World, an animal sanctuary which integrates architecture with the natural habitat and cultural practices of elephants and their caretakers in Thailand.

During this lecture, Boonserm will discuss the importance of adopting a non-human perspective in architectural practice. By shifting focus away from human dominance, architects can create spaces that foster coexistence, respect and harmony among all forms of life to encourage a more sustainable and inclusive approach to design.

This event is part of the flagship CRUNCH Series at The Bartlett School of Architecture, replacing the International Lecture Series.

Please note this event is first-come, first-served and is limited capacity. 

Speaker biographies

Boonserm Premthada is Assistant Professor at the Faculty of Architecture at Chulalongkorn University and Founder of Bangkok Project Studio. 

Boonserm’s work has won several international awards including, the ar+d Award for Emerging Architecture in 2011. He has also been shortlisted for the Aga Khan Awards for Architecture 2013, the Grand Prize International Brick Architecture 2014, Overall Winner of The Plan Awards 2017, Acknowledgement Prize, Regional LafargeHolcim Awards 2017 Asia Pacific, the Global Award for Sustainable Architecture 2018, the Royal Academy Dorfman Awards 2019, The Winner of 2021 Wallpaper* Design ‘Best Sanctuary’ Elephant World and The Golden Madonnina 2021 of The Design Prize in the category Social Impact, Italy.

Boonserm has lectured and exhibited at the Royal Institute of British Architects (RIBA), Cite de l'Architecture et du Patrimoine (Paris), the Hong Kong Pavilion as part of 16th International Architecture Exhibition (Venice), École Polytechnique Fédérale de Lausanne (EPFL), University of Tokyo, University of Hong Kong, National University of Singapore and several other international universities. 

Nayanika Mathur is Professor of Anthropology and South Asian Studies and Governing Body Fellow at Wolfson College in Oxford. She is an anthropologist of South Asia with wide-ranging research and teaching interests in the anthropology of politics, development, environment, law, human-animal studies, and research methods. She was educated at the Universities of Delhi (BA and MA) and Cambridge (MPhil and PhD). Before joining Oxford in October 2017, Nayanika held postdoctoral research fellowships awarded by the Leverhulme Trust and the British Academy at the University of Cambridge.
 
Her first monograph, Paper Tiger: Law Bureaucracy and the Developmental State in Himalayan India, was published in 2016 by Cambridge University Press as part of their ‘Law and Society’ series. The book was awarded the Sharon Stephens Prize by the American Ethnological Society. Her second book, Crooked Cats: Beastly Encounters in the Anthropocene, was published in 2021 by the University of Chicago Press. Crooked Cats retells the story of big cats that make prey of humans in India through a centring of the climate crisis. 

More information

Image: Bangkok Project Studio, The Cultural Courtyard, Surin Province, Thailand, 2020. (Photo: Spaceshift Studio)