High Line Bangkok: Rethinking Infrastructure as a Social Device

On the occasion of Bangkok Design Week 2026, Bangkok City Hall Square is reimagined as a new space for encounter and social interaction with High Line Bangkok, the thematic pavilion by Jenchieh Hung + Kulthida Songkittipakdee / HAS design and research.

Commissioned by the Bangkok Metropolitan Administration and the Creative Economy Agency, the project proposes a reinterpretation of urban infrastructure, transforming an everyday and often overlooked element – the streetlight – into a civic and relational catalyst.

High Line Bangkok: Observing and Transforming the Existing

Today, Bangkok Design Week stands as one of Southeast Asia’s leading platforms for urban and cultural experimentation. Following last year’s intervention by the Dutch firm MVRDV, this edition places its focus on a local perspective, entrusted to HAS design and research.

Professors Jenchieh Hung and Kulthida Songkittipakdee develop a project rooted in the direct observation of everyday behaviors in public space, as well as in the ways the tropical climate shapes urban life.

During the hottest hours of the day, people naturally gather in shaded areas beneath trees, while in the evening, as temperatures drop, public life shifts toward the illuminated zones around streetlights. This alternation between shade and light becomes the foundation of the project’s concept.

Rather than introducing new permanent structures, the designers chose to work with what already exists. Streetlights become the primary framework of the intervention, reinterpreted as resources capable of activating social interaction and civic life.

A Zero-Waste Pavilion

The installation is made using over one hundred meters of Thai fabric, carefully folded into a tube-like curve that stretches across the square.

The choice of material is deeply rooted in the local context: this recyclable, readily available fabric weaves together traditional craftsmanship and contemporary architecture, establishing a subtle dialogue with the historical surroundings. The design follows the inclination of the nearby Wat Suthat Thepwararam temple, while its fish-scale detailing echoes the pattern of the temple’s roof tiles.

The result is a space that evolves throughout the day. During daylight hours, the fabric filters sunlight, casting colored shadows across the square and creating a shaded, naturally ventilated environment. At night, the streetlights illuminate the structure from below, transforming the pavilion into a luminous landmark that reinterprets public lighting as a marker of collective identity.

The project takes on the value of a replicable prototype—a scalable strategy suggesting how the millions of streetlights across Thailand could, in the future, become urban gathering devices as well as functional elements.

Through a minimal intervention with strong symbolic and conceptual impact, the project demonstrates how the quality of public space can be enhanced by the ability to read and reinterpret the existing, mobilizing contextual resources in service of the collective experience.

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