Vertical Living Gallery

Vertical Art Museum is a 430-square-meter public sales-office gallery in Bangkok, designed in 2011 by Shma in collaboration with Sansiri PCL and SdA, photographed by Wison Tungthunya. Bangkok's living plane keeps rising with taller buildings while green area does not keep pace; this green cladding therefore wraps a public program that redefines urban life. The vegetation-wall modules are made of stainless steel for easy installation, and hanging planters with drip irrigation are mounted behind a felt layer, a system that is both inexpensive and straightforward to build. Given the surrounding context, the designers selected Tokyo dwarf shrubs, a local ground-cover species, because it adapts well to Bangkok's extreme climate; the plant's texture softens the rigid facade and lets the building stand out within the city's complex environment. The project embodies the principle of developing in step with nature, turning a commercial sales pavilion into a piece of urban infrastructure that adds living green to a dense, vertical city. Project details are limited in the source material.