This book is about the special and identifying role architecture has played over the last 15 centuries in the construction of the highly diverse and complex culture of Siam. The combination of its written and visual content and its contemporary theoretical underpinnings makes this the most comprehensive, critical and challenging interpretation of Siamese architecture that has been written.

This dissertation examines the evolution of Western and Modern architecture in Siam and Thailand. It illustrates how various architectural ideas have contributed to the physical design and spatial configuration of places associated with negotiation and allocation of political power, which are throne halls, parliaments, and government and civic structures since the 1850s.

Beginning with a history of the country and its cultural influences, this book describes and illustrates a range of structures, from Thai houses to elaborate temples and even crematoriums. It concludes with a look at contemporary Thai architecture and how traditional architecture practices have been adapted to suit modern needs.

The first ever comprehensive survey work on the art and architecture of Thailand from the earliest times until the establishment of the Thai-speaking kingdoms. A systematic and elucidating history of pre-fourteenth-century Thailand in a volume indispensable to historians of art, religion, politics, and society.

“Utopia” is a word not often associated with the city of Bangkok, which is better known for its disorderly sprawl, overburdened roads, and stifling levels of pollution. Yet as early as 1782, when the city was officially founded on the banks of the Chao Phraya river as the home of the Chakri dynasty, its orientation was based on material and rhetorical considerations that alluded to ideal times and spaces. The construction of palaces, monastic complexes, walls, forts, and canals created a defensive network while symbolically locating the terrestrial realm of the king within the Theravada Buddhist cosmos. Into the twentieth century, pictorial, narrative, and built representations of utopia were critical to Bangkok’s transformation into a national capital and commercial entrepôt. But as older representations of the universe encountered modern architecture, building technologies, and urban planning, new images of an ideal society attempted to reconcile urban-based understandings of Buddhist liberation and felicitous states like nirvana with worldly models of political community like the nation-state. Bangkok Utopia outlines an alternative genealogy of both utopia and modernism in a part of the world that has often been overlooked by researchers of both. It examines representations of utopia that developed in the city—as expressed in built forms as well as architectural drawings, building manuals, novels, poetry, and ecclesiastical murals—from its first general strike of migrant laborers in 1910 to the overthrow of the military dictatorship in 1973. Using Thai- and Chinese-language archival sources, the book demonstrates how the new spaces of the city became arenas for modern subject formation, utopian desires, political hegemony, and social unrest, arguing that the modern city was a space of antinomy—one able not only to sustain heterogeneous temporalities, but also to support conflicting world views within the urban landscape. By underscoring the paradoxical character of utopias and their formal narrative expressions of both hope and hegemony, Bangkok Utopia provides an innovative way to conceptualize the uneven economic development and fractured political conditions of contemporary global cities.

With over 350 full-color photographs and in-depth text, Classic Thai showcases the finest interior design art and architecture of the Kingdom of Thailand. From the glittering chedis of Bangkok's Grand Palace to the rustic simplicity of village dwellings, Thailand offers a rich diversity of art, architecture and design. Classic Thai seeks to define the unique characteristics of Thai style, be it through the country's rich arts and crafts tradition, in its plentiful temples and palaces, or in a contemporary home. Photographed entirely on location, Classic Thai is an indispensable guide to the wonders of Thailand.

It is widely known that development in modern architecture design in Thailand evolved over a period of over 100 years, we can see modern architecture design being produced all over the country, the works are the results of designs by both Thai and foreign architects. This is especially within the last 5-10 years when we can see many interesting modern building being designed , designs which are worth being showcased to the world. These works show great clarity and profoundness in design, many buildings are majestic in appearance revealing strong identity in their specific city location, and they are the pride to the country and those who see them. This book will truly portray to the world the capability and determination of the Thai architects and designers that contributed to the design works in Thailand.

The first full history of a great commercial and political center that rose in Asia over almost five centuries.