Ashton Asoke-Rama9

This project, named after its location at the Rama 9 intersection, was the creation of a new iconic residential mixed-use high-rise development. Set in a very busy section of Bangkok, there was very little green space on the existing site. Our team developed a Shared Green Spaces approach for this design by adding a new public green space to the city. Ashton Asoke Rama 9 therefore helps alleviate the environmental challenges faced by the city while also harmoniously improving living standards for residents and native wildlife. Our first task was to carefully consider the environmentally sensitive landscape, in an area prone to flooding. We discovered an old canal, long forgotten and disconnected from the canal network. Our team worked with the clients, engineers, and the Bangkok Metropolitan Administration (BMA) to propose the idea of bringing back this disused canal and employ it to collect the stormwater from the project, allowing excess water to be stored during heavy rains and thereby mitigating the risk of flooding. We also altered the overall site base, allowing the landscape to remain at existing grade level and the lower grading level to act as green infrastructure to collect and channel the site’s stormwater runoff. We proposed a Green Pause concept to allow the project’s stormwater runoff to pause and get treated within the site. The landscape team envisioned this Shared-Green Spaces landscape as a new paradigm of an urban green infrastructure that articulates the theory with aesthetics of landscape design and appropriately applies it to the site context. For this project, we elected to use a circular form, a shape proven to use less surface area to hold the most amount of water, and also the circle is an abstract form of nature that represents infinity, unity, and harmony. This “O” Plaza is located at the corner of an intersection of the main landscape area. Each circular center is placed to first correlate with the two buildings’ axes, which in turn maximizes the circular spaces to create a variety of different sized outdoor rooms. These rooms are connected with a permeable curved path that continuously traces the circle’s periphery. We provided unique “O” seating inside the central space of each room, surrounded by rainforest garden, and set slightly off-center to create privacy and social distancing in the public space. Within each room are steps leading to the ground floor of the rainforest garden, where the visitors can observe the plants and any wildlife while listening to the soothing sounds of the green infrastructure’s water cascades. The “O” Plaza as a landscape space is a new paradigm of an urban green infrastructure articulating theory with aesthetics of landscape design appropriately. Our team integrated water management systems into our design, ensuring that excess water from the installed storage tanks flows to the former canal for storage. Any runoff water from the hardscape flows to the series of water cascades, and as it flows down the steps, any small particles will gravitate to the bottom. At the center of each circular room lies the rainforest garden where water will naturally infiltrate the ground. The landscape team carefully selected native water-tolerant plant materials with high carbon absorption ability such as Indian coral tree (Erythrina variegata), Yellow walking iris (Neomarica longifolia), and Singapore daisy (Sphagneticola trilobata). We created the rainforest garden by combining layers of tree canopies, shrubs, and ground covers in addition to help the city’s air and noise pollution reduction. In addition to the use of green spaces at ground level, we also were able to implement a green roof onto a building setback zone, adding to the Green Stack Gardens throughout inner Bangkok. At the sky lounge, the project offers a floor for each tower for public amenities As highlighted landscape spaces, infinity-edged double panoramic pools extend out into the sky from the two buildings. To ensure the pool holds something a little extra, we added a sky platform that extends over the pool, out into the air, providing a special feature that offers breathtaking panoramic views and a flexible space that can turn into a stage to facilitate events. Ashton Asoke Rama 9, seen as a prototype of a new urban development, demonstrates the implementation of landscape design’s aesthetic and function of green infrastructure to mitigate the city’s environmental problems particularly in dense urban areas with the associated challenges and limitations. While it may be viewed as a small-scale landscape intervention, we believe that, expanded and reproduced across the cityscape, together these green urban spaces will have a great impact on our city and be viewed as an efficient tool to enhance the living quality of people and wildlife.