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The Girls’ Home, Bangkok, Thailand: Developing Thoughts on Democracy
Author(s) -
Bristol Graeme
Publication year - 2002
Publication title -
singapore journal of tropical geography
Language(s) - English
Resource type - Journals
SCImago Journal Rank - 0.538
H-Index - 42
eISSN - 1467-9493
pISSN - 0129-7619
DOI - 10.1111/1467-9493.00135
Subject(s) - architecture , democracy , slum , economic growth , developing country , foundation (evidence) , political science , sociology , socioeconomics , geography , economics , law , demography , politics , population , archaeology
This paper describes an exercise with children in the implementation of housing rights. Based on the argued opinion that housing rights cannot be exercised without participation and that participation without knowledge is pretence, a Kids and Architecture programme was initiated with a group of 40 children — displaced from homes in the Klong Toey slum in Bangkok — at a girls’ home run by the Human Development Foundation (HDF). The programme, developed in two phases and involving students from the King Mongkut’s University of Technology Thonburi (KMUTT), School of Architecture, set about to teach these children some of the elements of architecture so that they could participate in the design of their own housing. From this experiment a number of conclusions are drawn about the implementation of housing rights and about the teaching of architecture, both to children and architecture students.