An ambitious and accomplished work, Bangkok Utopia discusses the politics of representations in architecture and urban space in twentieth-century Siam and Thailand. Although the same subject was covered by previous publications—including Chatri Prakitnondhakarn's Kanmuang lae sangkhom nai silpa satthapatayakam (2005) and my Aesthetics of Power (2013)—Lawrence Chua, a historian of architecture at Syracuse University, has supplied a fresh perspective together with a rich account of how different ruling elites reconciled Buddhism with modernity in their attempts to portray the country and its people as members of a civilized international community via the symbolic significations of selected built forms in the capital city.
Operating on the methodological premise of “urban humanities” to investigate “lived experience of urban space” (8), Bangkok Utopia examines how non-Western states like Siam and Thailand engaged modernity by localizing utopian modernism. Encompassing three parts, on the themes of tools, materials, and systems, the composition of the book...
