Revealing culture and craft through Central Embassy’s shingles

The Central Embassy Bangkok shopping mall requires very few windows, so we developed an envelope that would be affordable to the developer and speak of the context of Thailand.

The socio-economic condition in Asia is the inverse of Europe and North America: labour is cheap, but technology is expensive.

Uniting traditional craftsmanship with digital design technologies, the facade design builds on Thailand’s tradition of intricate pattern making.

We designed a system of aluminium shingles, each with two surfaces, to reflect both the chaos of the city and the sky itself. A computer script that we wrote helped us to create an intricate pattern composed of only three types of tile.

The shingles cover the windowless areas of the seven storey retail mall that opened in May 2014 and are continuing to be installed to clad the thirty storey 5* Park Hyatt hotel as part of the Central Retail Corporation development, opening in 2015.