The Met is a 66-story condominium located in

Bangkok Bangkok, officially known in Thai language, Thai as Krung Thep Maha Nakhon and colloquially as Krung Thep, is the capital and most populous city of Thailand. The city occupies in the Chao Phraya River delta in central Thailand and has an estim ...

on Sathorn Road. , it was the tallest

condominium A condominium (or condo for short) is an ownership regime in which a building (or group of buildings) is divided into multiple units that are either each separately owned, or owned in common with exclusive rights of occupation by individual own ...

in Thailand and fourth-tallest building in Bangkok.

Design

The Met has a height of 228 metres and 66 floors. It contains 370 condominium units. It is composed of six towers connected by

sky bridge A skyway, skybridge, skywalk, or sky walkway is an elevated type of pedway connecting two or more buildings in an urban area, or connecting elevated points within mountainous recreational zones. Urban skyways very often take the form of encl ...

s. Sunshades, overhangs, and walls of live greenery filter sunlight and protect interiors from overheating. The gaps between the towers contain terraces with pools and sky gardens. The staggered blocks of the structure's mass are oriented to let the sun pass through the building on its regular course. The apertures through this building are meant to increase the strength of passing breezes and to cool the living units. The architects conceived of this building as a model for high-rise construction in a low-wind tropical climate, reworking the worldwide model developed for cold climates with high winds. All units are cross-ventilated, leaving residents a viable option to not use air conditioning. Private planters are included in the residents' balconies. The building's location between

public transit Public transport (also known as public transit, mass transit, or simply transit) are forms of transport available to the general public. It typically uses a fixed schedule, route and charges a fixed fare. There is no rigid definition of wh ...

stations for the BTS Skytrain and MRT systems encourages mass transit use in a city infamous for

gridlock Gridlock is a form of traffic congestion where continuous queues of vehicles block an entire network of intersecting streets, bringing traffic in all directions to a complete standstill. The term originates from a situation possible in a grid ...

Development

The project was developed by Pebble Bay (Thailand) Ltd., a subsidiary of the Singaporean company Hotel Properties Limited. Pebble Bay, which acquired the land from the U.S. Information Service in 2003, planned to develop a high-rise condo, The Met, along with a low-rise hotel on the smaller plot in front. The 10-

rai (), commercially styled as since 2000 and known until 1954 as (RAI), is the national public broadcasting company of Italy, owned by the Ministry of Economy and Finance. RAI operates many terrestrial and subscription television channels a ...

land was divided in 2004 into seven rai for The Met and three for the hotel. Pebble Bay abandoned the hotel project in 2016, when it sold the land to PMT Property Co., Ltd., an affiliate of , for THB 1.58 billion. In 2023, the Central Administrative Court revoked PMT's construction permit and

environmental impact assessment Environmental impact assessment (EIA) is the assessment of the environmental impact, environmental consequences of a plan, policy, program, or actual projects prior to the decision to move forward with the proposed action. In this context, the te ...

. In a lawsuit filed by The Met, the court ruled that PMT's proposed development of two buildings with 36 storeys each, named 125 Sathorn, exceeded lawful size limits.

Awards

The Met has won the 2009 Bronze

Emporis Skyscraper Award The Emporis Skyscraper Award was an award for architectural excellence regarding the design of buildings and their functionality. The award was presented annually by Emporis, a real estate data mining company with headquarters in Hamburg, Germany. ...

WOHA WOHA is a Singaporean multinational architectural industrial design firm. First established in 1994 by Wong Mun Summ and Richard Hassell, its name is derived from the initial letters of the founders’ surnames. Based out of Singapore, ...

, the architectural firm, won the Singapore President's Design Award - Design of the Year 2009 for The Met. In 2010, the Met won the

German Architecture Museum The Deutsches Architekturmuseum (English: German Architecture Museum), or DAM, is located on the Museumsufer in Frankfurt, Germany. Housed in an 18th-century building, the interior has been re-designed by Oswald Mathias Ungers in 1984 as a set ...

International Highrise Award The International High-Rise Award () is an international award in architectural design. The award is bestowed to "a structure that combines exemplary sustainability, external shape and internal spatial quality, not to mention social aspects, to cre ...

and was cited for "sustainable living conditions in this tropical region without recourse to air conditioning". The building was the

RIBA ''Riba'' (, or , ) is an Arabic word used in Islamic law and roughly translated as " usury": unjust, exploitative gains made in trade or business. ''Riba'' is mentioned and condemned in several different verses in the Qur'an3:130

2011 Lubetkin Prize winner.

References

Skyscrapers in Bangkok Residential skyscrapers in Thailand Sathon district Residential buildings completed in 2009 2009 establishments in Thailand WOHA {{Thailand-struct-stub

Design

Development

Awards

See also

References