18. Apr. 2021

Bangkok's Unbalanced Land Management is Challenged: Recreational Mountains

Project title: Recreational Mountains

Designed by: Solidsprout

* This project is featured on designboom. *

* This project is featured on Flipboard. *

Executed as a concept design by SolidSprout, this project tries to visualize Bangkok, the capital city of Thailand, about how it might look if the department stores and malls are replaced by green spaces. In the photos, the mountains of recreational spaces are recreated and placed around the iconic buildings and at the exact spots where the department stores are actually located. This project aims to raise people’s awareness about the development of green spaces in the city.

Bangkok is a dream city for travelers and shoppers. In 2018, a total number of 127 department stores can be found, but only 36 parks have taken their roots in Bangkok. The city’s average green area is only 3.5 - 6.2 sq.m. per capita, below the regulation from the World Health Organisation (WHO) which sets the standard at 9 sq.m. per capita for all big cities.

The number of department stores in Bangkok is increasing; there are five new malls in the last five years (2014-2018) and one new mall in 2018. While the social movements that shout out for the development of city parks are hardly recognized by the state, the question still lies on the possibilities of how the city would balance the economic growth with the development of green spaces.