Natural Builder
Teerarat Boripanthakul
Chiang Mai
Areas of Specialization
Retired clinical psychologist who turned a flat rice paddy into a 13-year polyculture sanctuary with a hand-built adobe home
Teerarat Boripanthakul is a retired clinical psychologist who spent more than thirty years at Chiang Mai University. Thirteen years ago he took on a flat, sun-baked rice paddy in San Pa Tong, Chiang Mai, heavy with waterlogged clay and without shade, and began turning it into a polyculture sanctuary. He describes the land as a canvas for human peace and ecological balance.
The structures on the site draw on traditional Thai building wisdom. Alongside the main family home he hand-built an adobe house, and both are used to show how double roofs, thermal earth mass and careful siting regulate heat without mechanical cooling. The 13-year forest that now surrounds them is the setting for foraging, soil and biochar sessions.
He co-facilitates the Intuitive Suburbia workshop with Prae Jaru and Spencer Leung, leading the built-realm tour and the dialogue on homesteading psychology, mental resilience and household self-reliance, and coaching participants as they map their own homes and gardens.
