Smiling through their Struggles – Untold Tales of Pom Mahakan
Being the last surviving community living outside the city walls, the people of Pom Mahakan are faced with an issue overlooked by many – that of eviction. The daily struggles of the community, not knowing if they have a place to stay tomorrow, are however masked by their strong community spirit and welcoming everyone with smiles on their faces. Hope is what keeps them going, hope that they will continue having a place to live, hopes that the nation would not abandon and neglect their fellow people.
This sense of hope sits deeper than just having a place to stay. The uniqueness of Pom Mahakan lies in the fact that they have found strength in numbers. Together as a united community, they have resisted and protested against the unjust treatment hurled towards them. This has reaped bountiful rewards, with the Building Municipality Authority (BMA) finally granting conservation status for 19 out of 24 of their houses. Whether or not they are allowed to continue living in their houses remains to be seen.
Pom Mahakan is rich in its architectural values, boasting a wide range of traditional vernacular architecture as well as hybridized architecture with western influences. It’s spatial and urban planning and patterns are clearly preserved, and since it is the last of its kind in Bangkok, the haphazard and rapid urbanisation out the city outside the walls over the past 30 would definitely have a thing or two to learn from Pom Mahakan, a village akin to a treasure chest of values over a century old.
As an individual visiting Pom Mahakan for the first time, it took me a while to even begin understanding why the community chooses to remain there with their ‘low’ standard of living. In other case studies in and around Bangkok, the fall of such a community would occur naturally when the younger generation starts moving out of the village in hopes of seeking a better quality of life. It seems inevitable that Pom Mahakan would eventually perish, albeit a slow and delayed death.
However, it came as a surprise to me when I was informed that the younger generations still choose to remain in Pom Mahakan, despite owning other residential spaces outside those walls. They still chose to leave their young kids with their parents in the village. When asked why they acted as such, I was given a simple answer. It is only in Pom Mahakan, with the immense community spirit, with the hopes of a positive future, that they found a sense of belonging.
It struck me that architecture is more than just about nice buildings which works superbly, but it is more so about the people inhibiting it. Good architecture might never give you the sense of belonging you yearn for, but it’s the people around you that matters. Pom Mahakan is not just the last surviving traditional village in Bangkok, it is probably the only place in Bangkok with such a strong sense of community. May they continue living in that area indefinitely, we surely have many a thing to learn from them.
