When asked to attempt to imagine a post-capitalist society, my junior year urban studies seminar went dumb with silence. No matter how much Henri Lefebvre we let our brains soak in that week, it seemed impossible to begin to map our way out of the throes of Late Capitalism. Enter the ‘Billboard House,’ dreamt up by Bangkok-based design studio Apostrophy’s. The project presents itself as a solution for living harmoniously with our endlessly reproducing economic era, simply by overlapping the capitalist production of billboards with the human need for shelter. Continue.

At a recent exhibition in Thailand, Apostrophy’s introduced the ‘Billboard House’ as a threefold solution: clients would find space for advertising, homeowners would lay claim to a sleek, modern, modular housing unit, and new jobs would be created to coordinate transactions between advertisers and property owners. The conflation of two disparate spaces—the blatantly capitalist space of the contemporary billboard and the haven of the private home—is also an attempt to reduce visual pollution in the city.

Built prototype of the Billboard House on display. Photos via Design Indaba.

The prototype of the ‘Billboard House’ notably borrows vernacular architectural details, such as various patterns of curlicue mesh fencing and spaces for slender trees expressive of commonplace outdoor architecture in Bangkok’s climate zone. It appears that Apostrophy’s is knowingly designing with a specific site in mind—namely Thailand’s vibrant cities—and eschewing the ill fate of proposing a design solution that claims to transcend a specific sense of place, as artifacts of capitalism so often do.

[All renderings courtesy of the architects.]

by Kelly Chan

posted in New Projects

tagged Apostrophy's, bangkok, billboard, Capitalism, design, housing, thailand

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