PJ Dick Innovation Fund Project Grant: Of Mothers and Dragons: Tracing the Life Worlds of Chiang Mai’s Peri Urban through Water and Craft

Of Mothers and Dragons: Tracing the Life Worlds of Chiang Mai’s Peri Urban through Water and Craft
Tommy CheeMou Yang, Special Faculty, Carnegie Mellon Architecture
Vernelle A. A. Noel, Lucian and Rita Caste Assistant Professor in Architecture, Carnegie Mellon Architecture
Brian McGrath, Professor of Architecture and Urban Design, Parsons at the New School 
Chiranthanin (Phuwa) Kitika, Associate Professor of Architecture, Chiang Mai University

The indigenous knowledge of Chiang Mai, Thailand, is made of rhythms of human rituals – planting, harvesting and practices that have centered matrilocal beliefs for centuries with the intimate association of climatic, topographic and fluid knowledge of land as they meandered the alluvial plain nestled between two mountains. Matrilineal Spirits guide the craft of the villages as the goddess Mae Posop, “Mother of Rice,” blesses the start of cultivation season, welcoming rain as the crops are nurtured by the Mae Kuang, “Mother River Kuang.” Here, farmers gather and direct the annual monsoon waters through an intricate muang fai pattern of weirs and canals to fill rice paddies in which the land Mae Thorani, “Mother Land,” helps sustain agriculture. This proposal expands a community empowered design research that has been rooted between Carnegie Mellon University, Parsons and Chiang Mai University – to trace the landscape and spatial matrices built from the hands of mothers spatializing macro-level systems of natural resources, architecture, agriculture and care. This spatial pattern includes Mae Nam, the word for river translated as “Mother Waters,” where Nak, or dragons, are associated. The research will consist of additional fieldwork, translating stories into architectural grammars, design build work and a workshop in Thailand and at Carnegie Mellon University. This project hopes to recalibrate the imperial language of “social justice, climate change and AI” through the wisdom of local people in modifying and constructing physical landscapes through care, myths and being.

Image: The Elder’s Compound and the Matrilineal Spirits. Drawing by Tommy Yang and Brian McGrath.