BAIYOKE TOWER

Designed by Plan Architects; completed 1987 Bangkok, Thailand
Distinctive for its horizontal strips of rainbow color and a gableshaped roof, the first
Baiyoke tower in Bangkok, Thailand, was famously known as the one-time tallest
reinforced-concrete building in Asia. This skyscraper signified the start of Thai high-rise
architectural development. Land Development, a real estate company dominated by the
Baiyoke family, the project developer and landowner, proposed this 42-story building to
serve as both a commercial and a residential complex. The company turned the site on
Rachaprarob Road, which once had been occupied by a large-scale theater, into a
garment and cloth market and a residential tower for the Pratunam district. Not only did
the garment and cloth business inside the building fit in well with the neighborhood’s
business in general, but it also eventually became one of the most significant wholesale
cloth markets in Bangkok for years to come.
Although the Baiyoke tower established the Baiyoke family among Bangkok’s
business society, the tower itself promoted its design firm, Plan Architect, for their use of
bright color and the composition of geometric forms. The design team represented a
collaboration between Plan Architect and Inter Arkitek. Sinn Phonghanyudh, Plan
Architect’s executive architect, was in charge of the design team, which included
Theeraphon Niyom (firm owner), Krongsak Chulamorkodt (partner), Boonrit
Kordilokrat, Chenkit Napawan, Sapark Aksharanugraha, and Songsak Visudharom. Their
design won the 1984 competition sponsored by the Baiyoke family. The winning design
proposed the most functional exploitation of the limited site as well as the remarkable
concept of building the tallest building in the region.
On its completion in 1987, the building contained 55,000 square meters, including two
main parts: podium and tower. The large-scale column-and-beam reinforced-concrete
podium covered almost the entire site. Each floor was marked by different color, forming
a vertical rainbow in downtown Bangkok. The ground, first, and second floors were
devoted to the garment and cloth market. The third floor was originally designed as
offices for rent but later was turned, in part, into cloth shops to serve the growing market.
The fourth floor held a gigantic food center and several minitheaters. The next five floors
served as a parking garage for over 500 cars, an estimation approximated to
accommodate the high density of car drivers in Bangkok during the 1980s. Architects
designed the roof at the top of the podium as a recreation center, including a swimming
pool and health center, serving residents of the tower above. The residential floors were
eventually converted to a hotel complex. Its structure, supported by the shared structure
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of the podium, was erected with flat-slab layers of a cross shape. Each residential floor
combined eight units, each with a single shared wall. Four elevators at the tower core ran
from the ground floor to the top, separating the tower’s access from that of the podium.
Other facilities were likewise designed separately for serving the tower’s residents and
the users inside the podium area. Despite the shared structure of the podium and tower
parts, Baiyoke tower was designed as two very different buildings. In fact, this design
reflected a common trend of multifunction complex favored among Bangkok’s real estate
development during the late 20th century.
Shortly following the success of the project, the Baiyoke real estate developer decided
in 1988 to initiate a second project, Baiyoke II, with a similar publicized theme of
establishing another record for the world’s tallest reinforced-concrete building. This
follow-up project, however, was interrupted a few times during Thai financial turbulence
in the 1990s. The building was finally opened to the public in 1999, taking more than ten
years to complete. This long wait contrasted to the three-year construction period of its
fellow building, the first Baiyoke.
The Baiyoke II consisted of 172,000 square meters, more than three times the first
Baiyoke’s space. The project comprised 88 floors, 309 meters in total height above
ground (including the tower’s antenna but excluding the two underground floors). The
building functioned mainly as a hotel and included a shopping plaza and a parking
garage—an intrinsic element of contemporary Bangkok’s architecture. The ground floor
through the fourth floor served as retail shops, and the next ten floors consisted of
parking space. The hotel business occupied space from the 15th floor up, with the top ten
floors designed to serve as space for sky lounges, restaurants, and kitchen areas. The
main observation lounge for tourists and visitors was located on the 76th floor, whereas
access to the very top floors remained exclusive to hotel guests and the restaurants’
clients.
Unlike the first Baiyoke’s colorful theme, the Plan Architect design team
conceptualized the second Baiyoke building as a massive red block rising from the
ground, with a glittering gold roof that signified the golden roof of a Thai temple, an
omnipresent metaphoric symbol of Thai culture. In the design proposal of Plan
Architects, the design team once mentioned that the mass of colorful red sandstone
represented “the image of natural sandstone rising from the earth, punched out to provide
space for human’s various activities. The higher it goes, the more modernized and
sophisticated these various voids become.”
To be modernized or not remains an unfinished argument for which there is hardly an
answer, not only for both Baiyoke towers but also for contemporary Bangkok
architecture in general. The issues of “modern” and “modernity” have led many Thai
architects to confront problems in interpreting and defining designs to suit the terms.
Along with layers of interpretation and influences from foreign architectural
development, definitions vary and thus have brought up various designs. The Baiyoke
towers’ significant contribution to the city, with extension to the Southeast Asian region,
was essential in that they challenged the general geographic condition and virtually
turned Bangkok’s architectural development into a new phase of high-rise architectural
development.