Fars Studio Wins Landmark Competition for Chao Phraya River in Thailand

Thailand-based firm Fars Studio has been named the winner in a national design competition for the Chao Phraya River Memorial and Museum in Nakorn-Sawan, Thailand. The competition was held by the Nakorn-Sawan Municipality and the Association of Siamese Architects to create a landmark symbol for the significance of the river in this region.

The bridge-like design proposal by Fars Studio blends traditional Thai architecture with state-of-the-art technology on an area of 15,000 square meters. The costs for this structure are proposed with 200 Million Baht ($6 Million).

Here is how Fars Studio explain their entry:

The River Ping, Wang, Yom and Naan combining together become Chao Phraya River, the largest river in Thailand. Nakorn Sawan Municipality and ASA create this competition due to the symbol of this River where it occurs. This site has an extraordinary context: during the flood season, differentiate between low and high-tide is up to 9 meters. The river on the north side of the island has a green color and the south side is red. After those two rivers combine green and red color still tracking itself along Chao Phraya River creates a resonance stripe. This significant area not only has a phenomenon but also contained with the history of the country. Unfortunately this area is being abandoned for a long time as a result of the enormous number of the different tide level.

This landmark “Pasaan” situated on the tip of the island where the confluence occurs, in order to revitalize the area and attract Thai people and tourist. In our opinion, the site itself is already a potential landmark; we just need to underline it by attach an element to the site as modest as possible. Our purpose is to reflect the River’s chronicle, tradition and quality of life of the city by 2 following conditions:

First, Inside the Yom island, architecture becomes the complement of the nature; nothing can explain how beautiful the nature better than the river itself. In one axis, parallel to the River’s resonance stripe, we optimize numerous locations, elevation and appropriate angle on the site for people to perceive all the sceneries of the Rivers. In one route the architecture leads the people to each imperative locations such as; the point where people see 2 river all together, the point where people can see the whole city around the area, and the point where people see the confluence.

Second, from outside of the island, the architecture becomes a symbol the river represented through the weaving stripes. The bridge-like architecture accentuates visual connection and creates physical connection between 2 sides of the river; allowing people to sail pass and make the memorial alive during the high tide period.

For us, the essence of the traditional Thai architectures is the attention their designers paid to the quality of the human scale. Therefore, we generate the form out of the 2 conditions (previously mention), the constraints and the outline pattern from Thai artistic/architectural elements into the shape of the weaving stripes. Due to the local construction technology and the materials that resistance to flood, concrete is a major structure on the area between high and low tide and steel is for the rest. The cladding for the stripes is a combination between copper panel and wood.

Images: Fars Studio