Thailand’s Tallest Skyscraper Is Completed

A pulsing display of lights brilliantly illuminated Bangkok’s skyline Monday night, heralding the official debut of Thailand’s tallest skyscraper, the 77-story MahaNakhon tower, designed by acclaimed German architect Ole Scheeren. The mammoth project “is a vision of a tower that is very much about process, about becoming, about developing," Scheeren said recently in a statement. Clad in all glass, the soaring mixed-use structure crests just over a thousand feet above the city’s financial district and will ultimately house an observation deck, a hotel, retail, and restaurants, plus 200 condominiums managed by Ritz-Carlton Residences. Work on the $520 million tower, spearheaded by Pace Development, started in 2009 and topped out last year.

Monday’s nighttime light show projected a multihued array from striking pixelated cutouts, which “coil up the tower’s full height to reveal the inner life of the building,” said Scheeren in a statement. “The pixels have been designed to maximize unobstructed panoramas and offer rare bird’s-eye views of the city and Chao Phraya River.” In the past decade Scheeren has added several other modern landmarks to the skylines of Southeast Asian cities, including Beijing and Singapore, the latter of which is home to the Interlace, a vertical village that won the coveted Building of the Year award at 2015’s World Architecture Festival. In 2010, after working on Asian projects under the legendary Rem Koolhaas for 15 years, Scheeren launched his own firm, Büro Ole Scheeren, which is based in Beijing.