{"id":539200,"date":"2026-07-08T12:30:10","date_gmt":"2026-07-08T12:30:10","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/539200\/"},"modified":"2026-07-08T12:30:10","modified_gmt":"2026-07-08T12:30:10","slug":"handmade-elephant-dung-bricks-make-goya-tower-rise-in-southern-thailand-handmade-elephant-dung-bricks-make-goya-tower-rise-in-southern-thailand","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/539200\/","title":{"rendered":"handmade elephant-dung bricks make goya tower rise in southern thailand handmade elephant-dung bricks make goya tower rise in southern thailand"},"content":{"rendered":"

BOONSERM PREMTHADA\u2019S GOYA TOWER RISES IN PHANG NGA<\/p>\n

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In Phang Nga, southern Thailand<\/a>, elephants form part of both the cultural memory and ecological landscape. Nearby, a limestone mountain known as Khao Chang, or Elephant Mountain, is said to resemble a reclining elephant turned to stone<\/a>. Designed by Boonserm Premthada with Bangkok Project Studio, Goya Tower continues this connection in built form, standing at the entrance to the Matalay Project as a new public lookout named after a female elephant born in the area.<\/p>\n

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The observation tower invites visitors to climb through a sequence of cylindrical columns, curved walkways, light, and shadow. As they ascend, views of road, garden, forest, sky, and sea gradually unfold across the surrounding landscape<\/a>, extending the experience beyond the summit and into the slow rhythm of the climb.<\/p>\n

\"handmade
the observation tower invites visitors to climb through a sequence of cylindrical columns | all images courtesy of Spaceshift Studio<\/a><\/p>\n

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HANDMADE ORGANIC BRICKS SHAPE THE TOWER<\/p>\n

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The project began with a simple question: could what elephants leave behind become architecture, and could it support a creative economy for elephant-raising communities? Each circular brick is made by hand using elephant dung, measuring 33 centimeters in diameter and 5 centimeters in thickness. Produced in five natural colors and never fired, the bricks rely instead on hands, sunlight, and time.<\/p>\n

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During construction, each brick is threaded onto a central steel rod and stacked according to a carefully designed color pattern. Through repetition, weight, and touch, the organic material becomes both structure and surface. With Goya Tower, Premthada\u2019s<\/a> research moves beyond object or museum collection to become a full-scale public space \u2014 one that visitors can enter, touch, climb, and inhabit.<\/p>\n

\"handmade
boonserm premthada shapes the observation tower as a sequence of cylindrical columns and curved walkways<\/p>\n

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FROM TA KLANG VILLAGE TO FULL-SCALE ARCHITECTURE<\/p>\n

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The material research behind Goya Tower began far from Phang Nga, with a single elephant-dung brick carried in a backpack from Ta Klang Village. What first appeared as an unlikely experiment, met with laughter and doubt, gradually developed into a long-term investigation into how elephant-raising communities could generate new forms of craft, value, and architectural production.<\/p>\n

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Over time, the elephant-dung brick entered the collections of institutions including MoMA and M+ Museum, but Goya Tower brings this research back into the landscape. Here, the brick is no longer only an object to be preserved or displayed; it becomes part of a larger cycle between animals, humans, and the land, suggesting an architecture shaped not by humans alone, but also by elephants, sunlight, and the landscape of Phang Nga.<\/p>\n

\"handmade
the tower invites visitors to climb through changing light, shadow, and views of the surrounding landscape<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"BOONSERM PREMTHADA\u2019S GOYA TOWER RISES IN PHANG NGA \u00a0 In Phang Nga, southern Thailand, elephants form part of…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":539201,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[31],"tags":[45727,307,304,305,306,308,93,61,60,48110],"class_list":["post-539200","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-arts-and-design","tag-architecture-in-thailand","tag-arts","tag-arts-and-design","tag-artsanddesign","tag-artsdesign","tag-design","tag-entertainment","tag-ie","tag-ireland","tag-marble-and-stone-design"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/539200","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=539200"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/539200\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/539201"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=539200"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=539200"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=539200"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}