The Horror, the Horror

摘要

It's the first thing architect Francois Roche shows me when I visit his Bangkok studio-even before introducing me to Vong, his right-hand man who sits quietly behind an altar of computers, next to a small six-axis robot. The studio, hidden in Bangkok's Chinatown on the Chao Phraya River, is a light structure, and once inside, one has the feeling one is actually in the hold of a ship. Roche leads me up a stepladder that lets out onto a narrow deck. "Don't fall! It will end badly!" he warns. "Shhh! Do not make too much noise or you'll wake them!" Pointing at a narrow void between the studio and the neighboring building, he says, "there are crocodiles living under the studio floor!" Indeed, among the rubble, the rubbish, and the wreckage, I see an eight-foot-long lump of blubber covered by dirty, scaly skin. It's disturbing to think that there are more crocodiles just inches away, beneath the thin wooden floor.