Rosewood Bangkok

Rosewood Bangkok rises 30 storeys on Ploenchit Road, and its silhouette answers a planning guideline as much as a gesture. Kohn Pedersen Fox, the New York architects, explain that the sloping form responds to Bangkok's setback guidelines: as the tower climbs it steps back, which creates terraces and smaller floor plates. The same incline carries the building's official image, the "wai", the Thai greeting made with joined palms, and diagonal columns along the slanted face keep the structural transfers small.

Two linked towers frame a central opening with vertical gardens meant to evoke the caves of Thailand, and an indoor waterfall runs down the atrium. Celia Chu, the Taiwanese designer of the interiors, said she set out, for the owners, to "create a place to celebrate and share their love and memories of Thailand and Thai culture", and compared the hotel to "reading a novel: each chapter is talking about something different".

The spa's plaster was shaped and painted by a commissioned artist to recall cave walls, and the gym's wall designs draw on the hand wraps of Thai boxers. Lakorn, on the seventh floor, has screens drawn from the metal nail extensions worn by Thai dancers, and since April 2024 has cooked the food of Thailand's four regions.

The tower stands among embassies and offices near Central Embassy, with a direct link to Ploenchit BTS station, so the Skytrain, not the river, is at the door; OKYTO's Bangkok guide looks at the city's districts one by one.

Photo: Chainwit. / Wikimedia Commons · CC BY-SA 4.0

The hotel opened in March 2019 as Rosewood's 27th. Its developer is RENDE, and the Thai daily Matichon names Pinthongta Shinawatra Kunakornwong as the owner of what it reports as a 5,000-million-baht project. It closed twice during the pandemic, reopening for the second time on 20 September 2022 with 158 keys. The setbacks had given the tower its terraces from the start, and the reopening added three Houses, each with a high outdoor terrace and a private plunge pool.

Sources: KPF; KPF; Designcurial; Hospitality Net; Global Design News; Matichon; Bangkok Biz News; Rosewood; Rosewood; Rosewood; Rosewood Bangkok