In the centre of Bangkok on Vibhavadi Soi 16, there is a small office located on the ground floor of an eight-storey apartment building with a total area of 6,000 sq. m. The office which covers an area of 43 sq. m. is expressed as width by height by length at 3.3 m x 2.6 m x 13.3 m. This long and narrow room is an economy-size office for a new entrepreneur. It contains 30 wooden cabinets with 139 shelves, different in sizes, heights and widths but with same depth. There are several voids scattering between these cabinets as design gimmicks (they actually have a function as a see-through feature to resolve the cabinet’s solid characteristic). All cabinets are covered by four shades of green laminate sheets ranging from olive green to army green, green like corkwood leaves in summer and green like preserved guava in sugar syrup that one can find from vendors strolling around street intersection. These cabinets are installed tightly in space with the intention to be the partitions and storages for documents and other appliances.
This place is an audit office with four staff members. Their four work stations are placed at the centre of the room behind the partition cabinet that separates them from the front reception area, which serves as a meeting place on some occasions. The two areas are positioned along the length of the room leading to the photocopier, coffee corner and bathroom are at the farthest end. There is no other way besides arranging a layout from the front entrance to the central work area and the service area at the back because this rented room is limited by a small, narrow, and long shape corresponding to the building structure. The seven floors above are also residential units for rent. All for commercial reasons. This is a work space where individual work station is placed in a linear order as it is not wide enough to have access from different direction. An extreme romanticist may see this linear order as sign of inequality and misconduct but in the eyes of a rationalist, this is clarity, straightforwardness, easiness and simplicity, one could have guessed a counter argument like this.
At first, being an audit office means working with numbers, budget, profit, loss and even tax avoidance. Thus, to convey the essence of this place and connect it to the users through symbolic expression, the ceiling lights could have been arranged in the forms of +-x÷ along the room. If this had succeeded, it could have created a unique and memorable identity. It is so unfortunate that this idea was sterilised. In the end, the 1.2 m. long rectangular ceiling lights are used to form the rectangular patterns corresponding to the green cabinets inside, which, at least, have the same sense.
Project name / Chokchairuammit Office
Owner / Accsure
Location / Bangkok, Thailand
Site Area / 43 sq.m.
Built Area / 43 sq.m.
Completion / 2021
Architect / Archimontage Design Fields Sophisticated
Interior Designer / Archimontage Design Fields Sophisticated
Principal Architect / Cherngchai Riawruangsangkul
Design Team / Cherngchai Riawruangsangkul, Thanakit Wiriyasathit
Electrical Engineer / Decha Panpasri
Contractor / Decha Satapat 149
Photographer / Rungkit Charoenwat
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