The Rama 9 Royal Crematorium: Part 5

13 Dec

The Wrap-up: A last look at the project

 

This is the cleanup entry on the Rama 9 Royal Crematorium.  There was a lot to see on this amazing site.  The crematorium building and it’s accompanying exhibition pavilions were all amazing.  The landscaping was incredible.  Particular attention was paid to the views to the various buildings from different vantage points.

I still can’t believe how well thought out and executed this project was, given that there was less than a year to design and build it.  I think people will be sad to see it go. While there has been a public push to either retain it or move the entire project to another site, I have a feeling that this will not happen.  However, there is talk of building a proper museum to house all of the artifacts, models, pictures, videos and audio currently exhibited in the various pavilions and in, on and around the actual crematorium.  We’ll see what the current monarch says about that prospect.

One thing that I forgot to mention in previous entries was the music pavilion.  The king was an accomplished musician, favouring jazz and big band music.  He was also a pretty decent composer and arranger.  He followed the big bands and famous jazz artists who, sometimes, came to perform with him at the palace in Bangkok.  In this short video clip, you can see the king playing a solo performance with the Preservation Hall Jazz Band in 1988.

There was no jazz at the crematorium site.  But there was a pavilion devoted to traditional Thai music.  I can’t say that I’m a big fan of this form of music as it always sounds off to me.  [note] It was ironic that the king seemed to compose, listen and play mostly American jazz and big band tunes.  Maybe he wasn’t a fan of traditional Thai music either. [/note] However, it’s the Thai classical way and a small pavilion devoted to the instruments and players sat in one of the corners of the site.  I filmed a short video, below, of musicians playing in this small pavilion.

One small point on the care that was taken to work out every detail in this site.  There were, as one would expect in a rainy climate, lots of manholes and drains spread across the site.  But a typical manhole cover is ungainly and ugly, so the designers set each drain in the tiled ground cover so that it would have the same dimensions as the tiles. [note] Slide #22 above. [/note]  They then covered each drain with rocks to create a pattern across the site.  This design looked good, worked well and again showed how carefully designed this site was.

Another design feature that I loved was the siting of the project to take advantage of important views.  For example, in slide #5, you can see the Temple of Dawn on the other side of the Chao Phrya River, perfectly framed by the spires of the crematorium.  I’m sure this was no accident.  I noticed that other views to the Grand Palace and other nearby temples were also carefully framed.

For a very cool 3D’ish augmented reality tour of the entire crematorium site, check out this site.  And one of the local newspapers has put together a PDF document that nicely highlights, in one file, what is going on at the site.

The visit to the Rama 9 Royal Crematorium was pretty amazing.  The project demonstrated, at least to me, that one can combine mythology, creativity, craftsmanship, time sensitive project management and come out with something that is wonderful.  The photos above are of the various scenes around the site and end this visit to the Rama 9 Royal Crematorium.

 

 

 

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