MahaNakhon: Why Asia's futuristic skylines just got crazierhttp://edition.cnn.com/2016/06/30/architecture/ole-scheeren-bangkok-skyscraper/index.html
By Stephy Chung, CNN Updated 0918 GMT (1718 HKT) July 1, 2016
"I don't believe in a very formulaic architecture where it's essentially the same formal language that is applied to any part or place in the world," the former partner of Rem Koolhaas' firm OMAand now principal architect of Buro Ole Scheeren explains.
"If you look at my buildings, they are not all the same. They are different because different situations inspire and require very different answers."
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[size=1.2]Bangkok rising
[size=1.2]In line with that philosophy, MahaNakhon -- Scheeren's pixelated vision of a luxury mixed-use tower situated in Bangkok's business district -- looks little like the rest of his repertoire.
[size=1.2][size=1.2]Based on the shape of an extruded square, the building's central tower rises up and connects a large number of small-scale geometric extrusions to create the image of an unfinished building, or a Jenga game in progress.
[size=1.2]"MahaNakhon is a vision of a tower that is very much about process, about becoming, about developing," Scheeren says of the building.
[size=1.2]The architect himself lived in Bangkok in the late 1990s, an experience he says connected him deeply to the city's fabric and people.
[size=1.2]During that time, he spent six-months mapping the city's "visions of the future" -- some 250 unfinished towers that would never be actualized largely due to the 1997 Asian Financial Crisis and the country's political instability.
[size=1.2][size=1.2]"Bangkok revealed itself as a place co-existing simultaneously between a presence of an incredibly strong past, and yet a commitment to a very futuristic and fearless relationship to urbanity," he recalls.
[size=1.2]This contradictory mix of tradition and modernity has given Bangkok an eclectic skyline that hosts some of the craziest architecture on the planet according to Scheeren.
[size=1.2]"It has a robot building, an elephant building, pyramids buildings, UFOs...all of that juxtaposed with traditional Thai temples, colors and textures."
[size=1.2]
[size=1.2][size=1.2]"Bangkok revealed itself as a place co-existing simultaneously between a presence of an incredibly strong past, and yet a commitment to a very futuristic and fearless relationship to urbanity," he recalls.
[size=1.2]This contradictory mix of tradition and modernity has given Bangkok an eclectic skyline that hosts some of the craziest architecture on the planet according to Scheeren.
[size=1.2]"It has a robot building, an elephant building, pyramids buildings, UFOs...all of that juxtaposed with traditional Thai temples, colors and textures."
[size=1.2]
[size=1.2][size=1.0666666667]The MahaNakhon
[size=1.2]"The intensity of the traffic, the noise, the spaces of the colors, it's important to capture the river...it's also the smaller scale alleys, the small grain of city," he says.
[size=1.2]Read: Why we're obsessed with building tall
[size=1.2]It's play with space is also used to provide relief to what Scheeren believes are the building's most important component -- its inhabitants.
[size=1.2][size=1.2]"I believe in the interest of space and also the power of space to do something to the people that inhabit it," Scheeren says.
[size=1.2]"By revealing the people that are in the tower, you are suddenly connected back to the urban life of the city, the public realm...the public inhabitance is a very strong theme in a way."
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