City Hall readies Mahakan demolition
City Hall will today resume demolition work at the Mahakan Fort community, despite pleas from experts that some of the old houses be preserved as a living museum.
Led by deputy Bangkok governor Chakkaphan Phewngam, the Bangkok Metropolitan Administration (BMA) will demolish house number 203, with consent from the owner, in the fort community’s vicinity at 7am, two days ahead of the original work plan which is to begin on Monday.
Another eight houses are to be demolished on Monday, said Sakchai Bunma, chief of the city’s ownership management unit.
In so doing, the BMA is standing firm in its plan to evict all the community residents, and to tear down some 24 houses proposed for preservation by the Association of Siamese Architects (ASA).
The proposal which aimed to turn the community into a living museum was endorsed earlier this week by a sub-committee under the Committee on Conservation of Rattanakosin and Old Towns (CCR).
The committee, chaired by Deputy Prime Minister Prawit Wongsuwon, ordered the BMA and the association to jointly solve the conflict with protesting fort residents.
Under the proposal, ASA experts presented architectural sketches of five houses as examples to convince the committee and the BMA that the community should be preserved.
Of the 24 houses, the BMA planned to keep only 16, as suggested in research work by Chatree Prakitnonthakan of Silpakorn University in 2006, said Mr Sakchai.
City officials will later talk with experts on which houses in the group of 16 should be preserved, he said.
While keeping the structures, the official dismissed the ASA’s living museum proposal.
Sudjit Sananwai, ASA’s vice president for urban activities and public policy, said the residents are a major component of the preservation proposal, not just the wooden structures.
“The residents will stay, but they cannot have ownership rights,” she said.
The fort area shows the evolution of architecture from the early Rattanakosin era to the present, she said.
However, Silpakorn lecturer Chatree did not agree with the BMA keeping only 16 houses based on his work. He said City Hall should keep more houses.
According to Mr Chatree, the 16 houses are just a group of core structures that must be kept in their original state, while there are many more houses that can be renovated.
“If the BMA keeps only 16, it cannot really be a preservation plan,” said the lecturer, adding that it is equally important that the BMA should allow the residents to stay on there.
“It is the most important part of the conservation plan,” he stressed.
Borvornvate Rungrujee, the head of a sub-committee under the CCR, said his panel endorsed the ASA’s Mahakan conservation plan because it recognised the historical value of the houses which represented different periods of the Rattanakosin era.
The committee told the BMA to draw up a work plan to translate the ASA’s proposal into action, Mr Borvornvate said, adding that the agency will submit its plan to the panel for approval at the next meeting on March 16.
Mr Borvornvate conceded that, despite the houses’ historical value, there is no legal support or law to protect these wooden structures, and the BMA, as the authorised agency, has the final say over which houses are to be kept in its plan.