Urban Vernacular Transitions: Contesting Commercial Space Through Everyday Practices in Bangkok’s Privately-Owned Public Spaces
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Abstract
This paper explores the transition of vernacular architecture from rural traditions to urban adaptations, expanding the discussion toward what may be termed the “urban vernacular.” While rural vernacular has long been associated with natural materials, collective labour, and the continuity of cultural wisdom, the urban vernacular emerges in contexts marked by industrialised construction, consumer culture, and the negotiation of everyday life in rapidly growing cities. Privately-Owned Public Spaces (POPS) in Bangkok are introduced as illustrative cases through which these dynamics can be observed. Although designed as commercial interiors, malls and their semi-public areas are tactically re-appropriated by diverse groups: students transform food courts into study zones, elderly visitors establish routines of repeated occupation, and youth communities adapt mirrored walls for dance practice. Such activities reveal how POPS, despite their regulated and privately managed frameworks, provide informal third places that foster social interaction, comfort, and adaptability. The study employed non-participant observation and photographic documentation across selected malls, focusing on patterns of use that extend beyond consumption. These observations highlight how POPS serve as a lens to interpret broader processes of vernacular transition. The paper argues that urban vernacular heritage lies less in the preservation of form than in the recognition of lived practices that sustain cultural meaning. By framing POPS as an example rather than an endpoint, the research underscores the resilience of improvisation, collectivity, and cultural continuity within contemporary urban conditions. While these spaces demonstrate vernacular resilience through everyday improvisation, the analysis also exposes their precarity, a condition shaped by surveillance, selective tolerance, and corporate governance that renders user autonomy contingent and unstable. This tension between resilience and precarity defines the contested terrain of urban vernacular practices within Bangkok’s privately-owned public spaces.
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