‘Public’ Prayer Rooms of Contemporary Bangkok ‘Public’ Prayer Rooms of Contemporary Bangkok Winyu Ardrugsa Faculty of Architecture and Planning, Thammasat University, Thailand
[email protected] ABSTRACT his paper investigates the exclusivity of Muslim prayer rooms found distributed throughout urban T Bangkok. Although the prayer room can hardly be considered domestic, its existence is not really ‘public’ either. Increasingly, this little worship space is accommodated in some public facilities owned by state organizations and private corporations. In this paper the prayer room is examined in three interrelated scales: the geographical network, the placement of the room within a facility and the interior. The examination reveals inscribed body-place relationships which are conceived specifically to different projected images of each place and different social categorizations of Muslim users. Keywords: prayer room, public space, Muslim space, subjectivity, spatiality INTRODUCTION For devout Muslims, the prayer room increasingly becomes a part of daily life. This paper’s investigation In nations neighboring Thailand, such as Malaysia is specifically organized around the accommodations and Indonesia, Muslims are in the majority. Many of the individual prayer room in the city of Bangkok.1 Thai Muslims who have visited the countries agree The term ‘public’ added to the prayer room that the prayer room is a very common element here, however, is not used without intention. It is found in public facilities. When it is time for prayer, specifically employed to problematize prayer rooms they think about the room before the mosque. Its in ‘public’ places. They are to be found mostly importance and omnipresence in these countries within the seemingly-public facilities of private allow one to consider the prayer room an essential organizations, i.e.