From luxury penthouses to sky-high secret slums, urban rooftop architecture is like a hidden world of its own, often invisible from street level. Most of us go about our daily lives in the city never knowing what exists right above our heads. In Bangkok, architecture firm WARchitect has completed a new example: an exclusive modern getaway that takes full advantage of panoramic views and a lack of prying eyes with lots of glass walls.

“The Skyscape Rooftop House” is a residence designed for the owner of a 5-story apartment building who decided he wanted to make use of the building’s empty rooftop, long used for nothing more than some water tanks. Because it’s less than half of the size of many of the skyscrapers around it, it still feels within the scale of its surroundings, but clears the rooftops of most of its neighbors.

The architects say they wanted to avoid an obvious contrast between the house and the apartment below, so they designed it so it can’t be seen from public roads (which does kind of make you wonder what the rest of the building looks like doesn’t it?)

“Our idea was not to make this house feel like a building, but to free it from form,” they say. “We wanted it to be just a borderless box that emerges out of nowhere in the sky, as if the thickness of the wall and roof were non-existent, but still able to make holes in the ceiling to install curtains, air conditioners, and embed lights.”

“Our intention was to give an illusion to onlookers that the entire ceiling was in the same straight line even though we featured a drop ceiling and a slope that was intentionally used to make the wall and ceiling look thin. These techniques may not be new in architecture. However, with this rooftop house, it is more special since a short distance between the main structure and the exterior helps disguise the techniques we used.”

Because the owner lives alone and doesn’t often host guests, the architects decided they might as well allow him to enjoy the views from virtually every room in the house, including the bathroom. These glassed-in spaces are separated from each other by external courtyards. The interiors are all clad in Balau wood planks the owner already had on hand, many featuring flaws like cracks, saw marks and gnarls, to add color, character and warmth to the overall effect, balancing the look of the concrete surface.

A new sports hall in Thailand highlights the aesthetic power and physical strength of bamboo, a flexible and fast-growing natural material. In total, more carbon is captured in the bamboo than was used to treat, transport and use it for construction, rendering its carbon footprint neutral.

Located at the Panyaden International School in the Chiang Mai province, the new building was designed by Chiangmai Life Architects, a firm specializing in natural materials like bamboo and rammed earth.

The symbolic design was inspired by the lotus, an important Buddhist and Thai symbol. Its natural materials tie it to scenic surroundings while open sides allow for passive ventilation for cooling purposes.

Despite its organic appearance, the structure is engineered to resist earthquakes, high-speed winds and other forces of nature.

The complex is able to accommodate 300 students, spanning over 8,000 square feet, and is used to host games of basketball and futsal, a variation on soccer that takes place in a court. It can also be used for student gatherings and visiting speakers.

Like wood, bamboo is becoming an increasingly appealing material for architectural construction thanks to its rapid growth rate and ability to sequester carbon — the natural look and feel are a nice touch, too.

With the completion of their latest project, a spectacular sports hall made of prefabricated bamboo trusses, Thai firm Chiangmai Life Construction (CLC) shows off the stunning architectural possibilities of this natural, inexpensive and sustainable material. But it’s far from the only incredible bamboo structure they’ve designed and built, and they’re here to prove that bamboo blends beautifully with modern technology and lifestyles. Each of their projects centers on the concept of ‘life construction,’ in which the design of a building is carefully customized to its environment, including weather, to control how bamboo interacts with the elements.

Bamboo Sports Hall for Panyaden International School

Each of the prefabricated bamboo trusses used to build this sports hall for a school in Thailand spans more than 55 feet without steel reinforcements or connectors, lifted into position on-site with help from a crane. The structure is designed to withstand earthquakes, torrential rain and high velocity winds, and to host basketball, futsal (a variation of football played on a small hard court), volleyball and badminton. The building shape is based on that of a lotus flower, and like all of CLC’s projects, this one is open to the air to encourage ventilation for cooling in Thailand’s temperate climate, where cold weather is not a problem. The space can host 300 students at a time and includes a storage area behind the stage.

Erber Research Center

At Kasetsart University, Thailand’s largest agricultural learning institution, CLC created a facility that allows students and visitors to study chicken rearing through the windows of an adjacent pre-existing broiler hall (where the chickens are raised) as well as offering space for lectures. Based on the layout of a traditional farmhouse with a square courtyard, the facility includes a covered observation platform with windows spray-painted to look like the eyes of a chicken, with a meeting room, office, lecture hall, kitchen and bathrooms nearby. Says CLC, “This design brings traditional architecture to today’s students who grow up in concrete bunkers.”

Trika Villa

Trika Villa is a residence aiming to illustrate CLC’s core goal of bringing natural materials into the 21st century, maintaining a balance of beauty, affordability and quality. The luxury residence includes 5 bedrooms, 5 bathrooms and a spacious living and dining room arranged around a swimming pool in the courtyard. The adobe walls don’t quite meet the curving, overhanging roof, allowing heat to escape and breezes to penetrate the structure.

Bamboo Reception Hall

Welcoming parents and visitors at the entrance of Panyaprateep School in Thailand is this bamboo reception hall with a rolling bamboo roof inspired by snakeskin. Half open and half closed, the structure offers earthen and stone benches for sitting together in small groups as well as an area full of shelves for the display of items made by the students.

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Bold Bamboo 8 Dramatic Organic Structures By Chiangmai Life Architects

Though the circumstances of their liberation seem somewhat more political than practical, the thousands of fish set to be freed into the wild may not care much about the reasons for the positive change in venue either way.

The ruins of the New World Mall in Bangkok, Thailand, were initially introduced by area vendors to a mixture of tilapia, carp and catfish after their roof collapsed, for indirectly obvious reasons: the stagnant water that subsequently collected in the void space had become breeding ground for mosquitoes.

The resulting informal fishery was fueled by tourists who came to see the strange site, which in turn captured the attention of the local government – as it turns out, abandoned buildings are not what most places want to be known for.

Presumably due to the high profile of the case, the fish are being treated with great care: caught in nets, they are being rounded by Bangkok Metropolitan Administration staff and sent to various lakes and streams around the region.

As to the structure itself: officials have called for its demolition and a court has ordered the corporation behind the failed structure (which never got proper permits) to pay for the draining, destruction and cleaning of the site. Update and images via CityLabs.

What would you think if you walked into an antique store in your town, and found it overflowing with the owners’ laundry? In much of the Western world, we tend to keep our lives rigidly compartmentalized, but in Southeast Asia, the boundaries are blurred – resulting in seemingly chaotic and visually stimulating live/work spaces. German photographer and artist Peter Nitsch documented these small combined homes and businesses for his series ‘SHOPHOUSES – 4 x 8 m Bangkok’.

Mechanic shops are filled to the brim with both the expected stacks of tires, and colorful art. In a hair salon, a woman sits beside a refrigerator, peeling potatoes. A watchmaker’s shop is packed floor-to-ceiling with boxes and trunks. Doors open to private spaces beyond, giving customers a glimpse at the private lives of the owners.

Bangkok is full of these combination home/businesses, which are usually two stories with the lower level open to the street, but the typical tourist will never notice. These shophouses can be founded on the outer edges of the city, away from the snarled traffic and blinking neon lights.

“But if one allows the pictures to make an impression, a fractal pattern with a high degree of similarity is to be gradually recognised in the overfilled rooms, which from the sheer number of objects suddenly makes a structured Mandelbrot set,” says Nitsch. “The chaos becomes a cosmos and thus transforms into its opposite: an orderliness, to which the photographs additionally lend their characteristic power of peace.”