沃拉（沃拉颂巴特广场）

Firm： SPACE | STORY | STUDIO

Type： Commercial › Office Retail Showroom

STATUS： Built

YEAR： 2018

SIZE： 25,000 sqft - 100,000 sqft

BUDGET： $1M - 5M

VORA | Retail Office Renovation

Project name : VORA (Vorasombat Plaza)

Client : Piyasombat Property Co.,Ltd

Architect firm : SPACE | STORY | STUDIO

Firm location : Bangkok, Thailand.

Completion year : 2018

Gross built area : 3,500 sq.m.

Project location : Rama9 Rd., Bangkok, Thailand.

Architecture team : Pipol Likanapaisal, Tatiya Chuenpreecha

Structure engineer : Jedsada Ard-onk

Landscape designer : Hathaichanok Sukaviriya

Photographer : Chaovarith Poonphol

For the renovation project, the architect always has a few questions come up in mind. “How many we will keep?”, “How we can make the better architecture with the existing frame?” or “Should we have some reference to the existing one?” Or even "Why The ex-architect design like this" to understand the existing condition and proceed to continue.

The design process of this project tries to answer some of the questions above with the constraint of an existing building.

VORA (the existing building named as VONGVANICH, meant "wealthy merchandise") is a six stories retail office building located along a busy Rama 9 Road in Bangkok, Thailand. The building initially lacked identity to its appearance, prompting for a façade renovation that can revitalize the building to its potential.

Originally, the building consists of retail spaces on the ground floor level and offices on the upper floors. With a direct exposure of the façade from main street and highway next to the building, the clients seek to transform the upper floor offices into retail offices where greater window displays and eye-catching façade are required to promote their business and products. The facade design, therefore, intends to attract pedestrians, increase activities, and increase store profitability.

While keeping the spatial arrangements and structure intact, two zones - retail offices and core - are integrated into the façade design with differentiating treatments. Cores, located on both ends of the building, are designed in bronze and silver, to refer the ex-building name and also to assist navigation to the desired retail office by taking either of the color-coded vertical circulations. Prefabricated aluminum grills were selected as the core’s façade to provide flexibility for adjustments to the existing structure on site. The façade is designed with a vertically arrayed pattern that gradually blends the solidness of the core’s mass into the openness of the retail office. The prefabricated aluminum façade also acts as a buffer zone between air-conditioned and naturally ventilated space and between daylit and artificially lit space.

By randomizing window sizes and shifting aluminum grills, the retail office’s facade is designed to adapt and play with a variety of ever-changing window displays by the tenants. Tenants are able to customize their windows creatively, yet the building as a whole can still achieve a unified appearance, unlike its previous design.

The renovation results in a design that improves the conditions of a once-abandoned looking building and the retail office spaces inside it through unique façade design. It does not only attract customers but also better their overall experience and quality within VORA.