Bangkok is changing through time. New technologies have been introduced to the capital city of Thailand. Hi-tech and iconic buildings are starting to pop up on empty area of city. At the same time, old buildings are being demolished by reasons concerning feasibility, structural necessity and trend. This process starts to erase Bangkok’s older buildings even if they represent Bangkok’s architectural period, style and its everyday life. It begins to make Bangkok appears generic. We are, however, interested in collecting the buildings that make Bangkok, Bangkok. In Made in Tokyo written by the Japanese architects Atelier Bow-wow, buildings that can be generally found in Tokyo are documented as a catalogue. These buildings serve the cultures and the behaviours of Tokyo’s everyday life. Most of them are not the iconic buildings. They can be read as the activities of inhabitants who live in that area.

Robinson Bangrak is a building that can be included in our catalogue of buildings that make Bangkok, Bangkok. It is a mixed-use department store and hotel in Bangrak district, near the Chao Phraya River. This building is outstanding from its surrounding because the curved masses of the hotel and the concave front facade of the department store were designed to play with the set back building codes and regulations. A famous Thai architect named Dr. Sumet Jumsai designed this building and referred to its character as a sailboat. He designed many contemporary buildings that are thought of as Thai modern architecture. Robinson Bangrak is one of them.

Our observation in Robinson Bangrak suggests three main problems about this building: traffic, unused spaces in the parking building and lack of natural light in hotel rooms. The traffic problem is caused by the two-lane street named Charoenkrung Road that passes through the front of the building. The cars in each lane is traveling to the opposite directions. Around Robinson Bangrak, there are three to four stories high shophouses and markets. Charoenkrung Road, the first main street of Thailand then called Siam, is the road that separates the front of the building and the shophouses in opposite side. The traffic around the site is bad because there are two bus stops, one is near Robinson and another one is at the opposite side, in front of the market. Both bus stops have only the bus stop signs. There is no drop-off area for the passengers so every time when the bus stops for a passenger, it would block an entire lane. The two bus stops that are opposite to each other and the two-lane road make the traffic of Robinson Bangrak horrible.

The second problem of Robinson Bangrak is the car parking building. There are seven floor levels inside the building and half of each floor is shifted in order to create more floors in seven-level-building height. There are a lot of cars parked in the first 4 floors because there are the entrances to the department store of those car park levels. From level 5 onwards, the number of cars is decreasing. The top-floor is empty. An engineer of Center Point Hotel at Robinson Bangkok, Khun Banchit, told us that the upper floors of parking building are almost abandoned. Sometimes, there are students coming up to do something because not a lot of people would use these spaces. He also said that this is the problem that the Hotel is concerning about. The hotel guest have to drive all the way up to the top of parking building to reach the parking lots of hotel which located on the rooftop of department store. And to drive up at night is dangerous because the space is quite dark and secluded.

The hotel room has its problem. ‘The room is large but the amount of lamp is not balance to the area and that’s make the room having dim atmosphere. The facade outside the balcony is also causing this problem, it’s thick and massive. There is not enough natural light that can shine into the room’ Khun Banchit said while guiding us around the room. ‘It would be nice if natural light can come in more’, he added when we walked into the master bedroom. We were there in a bright afternoon, yet the room was dark.

In the design phase, our attempt is to solve the problems with new building technologies without changing the original shape of the building. First of all, we propose the drop off area as a bus stop at the front of department store and the connected area with a new facade. This new facade will not only connect to bus stop but also other public transportations such as BTS Saphan Taksin Station and Taksin Pier. By doing this, it will be more convenient for those who would come to the department store. The design of facade will be water-like facade, since the first concept of this building is sailboat, to mimic the image of boat on water. To create more realistic look of water, we add LED screen to create the sun set scene on the water. So this building’s facade will be more attractive and pedestrian can also observe this beauty without going up to see the actual river. And we design negative space behind the facade, which is the curtain wall with terrace, in order to create new experience for people inside department store.

To solve problem of the car parking building, our proposal is to replace the whole parking building interior with the automatic parking machine. When the interior is replaced by the automatic system, there will have more security for people to going inside and this will prevent people to mingle there. This will not only solve the problem of abandon area, it also increase amount of parking lots since the original is 480 spots and didn’t reach the law’s amount which is 800 cars for this type of building. The automatic system will make it increase to around 2000 cars.

Lastly, the lack of natural light in hotel room. Our proposal is to create a new shape of balcony to unblock the light for below floor levels. The new balcony will be in zigzag shape so that the shading will not block the light from above. These zigzag balconies are not only for getting light into the hotel rooms but also giving a wider view to guests who use the service.

By Pornchanok Chueyen and Thanatchaporn Nateekulcharoen