We had 300,000 visitors for the first year. The Resource Center’s membership is nearly 10,000. That’s a lot considering that people like to say Thais don’t like to read.

Actually I don’t think it’s true that we don’t like to read. It’s just that we don’t like formal learning spaces.

We are very intuitive and we like to learn in a relaxed and intuitive way. The Design Center was designed with that objective, to be relaxed.

We have to compete with shopping malls. At the end of the day, that’s the reality of it.

Just because it’s in a Sukhumvit mall doesn’t mean that only a certain group of people can visit.

I think Thais have a kind of concept of sakdina or hierarchy. We need to help the public to get rid of that. TCDC is a public space funded by taxes.

We have a very close understanding of people who come here. We do specific audience surveys and monitor all the activities here. Running a non-profit organization nowadays means you must use all the techniques that would apply to running a business.

Design objects are often victims of style more than anything else, especially in Thailand. They’re not really seen as a way to solve problems or improve your life. This is wrong. Design is about improving people’s lives by making the things around them better, friendlier and easier to use.

When you have a society that thinks design is just about style, then it becomes equated with middle class consuming.

In fact, design is everywhere. Even at a street market, there are lots of great designs and creativity.

TCDC was founded because we realize that since Thais have started to produce and export to the world, we’ve been trying to be cheaper or more efficient. But we cannot compete on price anymore; we have to compete on creativity and design.

The only way we can compete with Westerners is by reconstructing Western design icons and showing that they are based on certain processes that we already have in our country—but they’ve taken it to a deeper level or maybe simply applied higher technology to it, or to its production. We’re all about bringing audiences back into the Thai context.

With the “Isaan Retrospective” exhibition, we explored these ideas. It’s lifestyle that’s very Thai, with very simple things that we tend to overlook. We tried to show that you can use these as design ideas.

The Vivienne Westwood exhibition was about how she’s a working class girl. Her works were done in pretty much this perspective. She didn’t go to art school or come from a hiso family. Thais have this notion that design is for people with money.

All our exhibitions have some message that we want to convey. They represent different aspects of the design culture. There’s nothing cool about them. We hate anything cool.

If you asked Vivienne Westwood, she would tell you, “Go read books, but don’t follow them.”

If you look at trends and follow them, then you end up like everybody else. What’s important is the need to understand trends.