Central Festival Chiang Mai 2

Vernacular references to a contemporary retail centre design.

Facts

Location: Chiang Mai, Thailand
Client : Central Pattana Public Company Limited
Size : 210,000 m2
Completion : 2014

Role

Lead Architect, Retail Planning, Architecture

Located on a prominent junction of Chiang Mai’s main ring road, this lifestyle retail centre combines indoor shopping and outdoor enjoyment.

The main building features 5 levels of shopping, eating and entertainment including a multiplex cinema and ice-skating rink. The indoor experience is extended outwards through a network of canopied walkways connecting event plazas, landscaped gardens, pavilion restaurants and outdoor casual shopping.

Drawing vernacular inspirations are a powerful way to tell a story and make the community identify themselves with the new destination. The curvy lines of the façade make subtle reference to shapes and shadows of rice paddy fields in the mountainous valley. It symbolises the very origins of the Northern capital culture and its prosperous rice trade economy based on which the city of Chiang Mai has blossomed. “Lanna” means “million terraces” and it is the original name by which the local culture is called.