[mikael colville-andersen] they think we want a ride. [mikael colville-andersen] on this river? what's happening around the world is cities are taking them out. they made that mistake in the 1950's and 1960's. paris has just done it. [mikael colville-andersen] where is bangkok going now, with regards to urban planning? the traffic... everybody knows that it's kind of a joke. how do you fix something that is really quite broken? - smiling is a good thing, of course. but it's not really going to solve anything. bangkok and its population are growing at an alarming rate. it's become very clear that this would be a good time to think things through, to make urban planning decisions for the greater good. - yeah. clearly, duangrit isn't shy to take on ideas that have nevereen tried in bangkok's unregulated urban transformation. he's working hard to create useful architecture, using the past to make the future. what is this place that you've created here? what would have been the default? just bulldozing it and build something new? - nowhere is the challenge of preservation more pressin

(felix colville-andersen) kind of spooky. (mikael colville-andersen) spooky? ville andersen) and confusing. woah. (mikael colville-andersen) i'm in what's technically a cycle lane. this is counterflow. you can cycle one way with the cars, but you're actually allowed to cycle the other way as well. we're traffic coning. we're actually doing something good for the city of paris, which is calming the traffic. look at this intersection: you got cars, you got bikes, you got 18 million pedestrians, you know. somebody's out of place here. (felix colville-andersen) yeah. - william! - hi! - hello! nice to see you. - welcome to les grands voisins. - thank you. - this used to be a hospital. 500,000 parisians were born here. - really? - yeah. - like half a million, almost. - yeah. half a million. absolutely. it was one of the main maternity ward. - and we really are in the middle of paris. we rode our bikes here, and all of a sudden, you turn to the right and you're in this huge, almost like a park in a way... it's so massive. - for years, this 365,000 square-foot space wa