The Klong Toey is an informal housing area formed in 1939 by dock labourers working for the Port Authority of Thailand (PAT). Thanks to low-cost housing and job opportunities, the area attracted immigrants from many ethnic backgrounds, including Thais, Laotians, Khmers, Vietnamese and Burmese. At present, there are 43 communities in total, including 17 communities that live inside the PAT land and 26 communities that are located outside of that area. Housing in Klong Toey can be categorised into four groups, namely “informal settlements”, “walk-up flats”, “co-operative housing”, and the new “habitation improvement”.

Most of the Klong Toey dwellings have combined live-and-work arrangements and characteristics, meaning that the residents, who are mainly on low incomes, live and work in one place. Therefore the housing spaces play double or multiple roles in order to support or accommodate living, working and other activities. This project attempts to understand how live-and-work arrangements interact with the informal settlement, and seeks to propose alternative dwellings for the people of Klong Toey and to design such architecture, including the configuration of new settlement structures that could respond to and embody such live-and-work arrangements.