U T T H A Y A N
Cave and Vertical Ecology Exploration Project
The red contour on the map represent the amount of land that
was flooded from the construction of Ratchaprapa Dam.
Ratchaprapa Dam is constructed in 1982 to preserve water for electricity generator in Surat Thani, South of Thailand. The dam makes 164-square-kilometer of artificial body of water which flooded huge part of the forest creating lost and mass destruction to both animals and trees. Moreover, these new body of artificial water also create new phenomenon impact to the geological of Khao Sok National Park. Limestone mountain can be said to be the main geological landscape in this area, which limestone itself are known for the super reactive chemical reaction with water!
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The new artificial body of water will create a change in geological system.
The water that rises destructed many trees and wildlife but
will also create new water ecology and also new geology.
There are many types of landscape that can happen from erosion and weathering of limestone. All these variety have it own special characters and process of formation. But to be specific it all happen naturally through time unlike here in Khao Sok, the new body of artificial of water will speed up the process of erosion creating the new unknown phenomenon to the national park. Now the process that have taken over millions of year will be change by the dam forever.
Types of landscape inside the limestone mountain occur from erosion and weathering.
Start talking into more geological details of the limestone landscape, cave and and steep terrain are usually form by erosion of sedimentary rock like limestone which make the landscape very interesting. People create many leisure activity and also exploration on these natural landscape from rock climbing, cave exploration, cliff camping until very extreme activity like cave diving. All these layers of activity realating to Khao Sok create vertical layers of both activities and natural landscape from the new underwater geology from the dam water to the old Khao Sok cave ecology and vertical steep cliff of the landscape.
Diagram representing activities that can happen in limestone landscapes.
On the other hand, the limestone cave are extremely fragile! Firstly we should separate cave into 2 types, first, the relict cave where the cave have no water flowing through the cave and second, the active cave where the water flow through will create erosion and changes in the cave through time. The active cave is the fragile one. All these formation of erosion have very special requirement to happen and with the touched of human without knowing can end the process that happen forever. Not only the geology of the cave is very fragile, the ecology is also extremely fragile. The organism and animals that leave there require a very specific temperature, humidity, lights and even acoustic level which all of these can be harm from the unaware of human.
The ecology and environment of the cave.
From all these reasons, the limestone landscape and ecology should be look after and explore with care to leave it for our ancestor to experience. Which makes me want to design a design for sustainable recreation and researching architecture for the national park. The design would first started of for the place for speleologist (researcher study on cave) to first explore the cave and the overall landscape and after the researchers have analyse and finish the design would than allow tourist to visit the site without harming the cave.
The design focus on the construction method of using primitive material like bamboo to create architecture which can be construct and reassemble with the minimum touch to the precious landscape and creating the best strongest structure through range of techniques. The design would also be multi functional to suits the need all range of users which have different activities and constraint.
The picture below shows the first draft design what the architecture could be like, the design below uses one of the technique of bamboo construction called "scaffolding" to create structure for the architecture and having bamboo to create path and other elements for the speleology to use. Bamboo are also used to make floating raft for the speleologist to use it as a cave diving check point before entering the cave underwater.
The first draft design of the project focusing on speleologist.
