Mandalizing Meaning: Experiencing Bangkok’s Architectural Cosmopolitics

Abstract

This thesis draws on the limits of constructing religious cosmology into physical space. Why might one want to make such a translation, and what might be the consequences—political, social, and spatial—of such a mapping? I argue that it is possible to chart a cosmological path through structure, tracing performances of power and politics through architecture. There exists a relationship between cosmology and one’s right to rule, and architecture becomes a medium reflecting a monarch's greatest ambitions, anxieties, and fears. Charting a path through Wat Arun, the City Pillar Shrine, the Temple of the Emerald Buddha, the Grand Palace, and the Thai Parliament, this thesis begins with the assumption of planar interference, that one may claim their right to rule through cosmological spatial positioning alone (“I am the rightful monarch”). It is revealed, however, that as rulers are faced with new constraints, such a reliance shifts. In the face of Westernization and changing political ideas, this thesis reveals that legitimization through purely ‘planar’ forms spatial organization decreases as attention becomes directed to the elevational and symbolic projection of messages. I argue that there exists a transition from architecture as legitimization (“I am the rightful monarch”) to architecture as colonial defense and protection (“We are civilized”) to finally an architecture that aims to reclaim and re-entrench prevailing institutions of power (“Even in the face of changing political ideals, power belongs to me”). Taking the ethnographic approach as a method, this thesis presents how lived experience allows us to draw a different set of conclusions than a solely textual analysis, stressing the importance of employing the theoretical and experiential in tandem. It is through immersing oneself in the architectural experience that the politics of cosmological representation can be felt.