The development of a retail complex in Bangkok offered an opportunity to create a unique retail experience in the heart of Asia’s retail capital. The project marries traditional Bangkok with new expectations of the vibrant city, all set against the backdrop of nature. Inspired by the natural surroundings, the project connects the best of natural form and texture into a cityscape experience through an amorphous façade system which variously acts as cladding, canopy and signage a single evolving element, both structure and sculpture. As the programme changes, the architecture adjusts to each constraint. Through the fashion arcade, the structure reaches and extends over the space to form a forest canopy-like structure, enclosing and modifying the environment to complement the activity below.
The design for a indoor/outdoor Shopping complex in tropical Bangkok engages with the notion of shelter, through this semi external shopping mall. A synthesis of elements of a traditional style, the environmentally adaptive design abstracts natural strategies for shelter by creating an armature for plants to grow on and create the walls, balustrades, inform the pathways and forms to reflect the fast changing urban life of Thailand’s sophisticated capital. The project connects natural forms and textures into the cityscape through an ambiguous façade system, both structure and sculpture, which acts as cladding, canopy and signage in a single evolving element. Through the fashion arcade, the structure reaches and extends over the space to form a forest canopy-like structure, enclosing and modifying the environment to complement the activity below.
The Design Process
Architects: DROO + NAME
Project Architect: Michel da Costa Gonçalves (DROO) & Nathalie Rozencwajg (NAME)
Design Team: CPN Internal design Team
Client: CPN
Completion: 2016
Area: 78 000m2 Retail - 120 000m2 Total Construction
Cost: 28 000 000 Euros - 25 000 000 Pounds
Renders : Produced by DROO and NAME
Notes
Initial phases of the project was carried out under our previous name RARE Architecture and completed under our current names DROO and NAME.
Photographers: T. De Vapalin and Michel da Costa Gonçalves
Founded by Michel Da Costa Goncalves and Amrita Mahindroo, DROO Architecture is a RIBA and RICS Award-winning practice operating worldwide from our offices in London, Paris and Melbourne.