The River as a Blueprint
Twitee Vajrabhaya Teparkum & Amata Luphaiboon

Words Ruby DaviesImages Chris Schalkx

On a narrow island in the river outside Ayutthaya, Department of ARCHITECTURE’s Twitee Vajrabhaya Teparkum and Amata Luphaiboon let the water decide almost everything at sala bang pa-in—where rooms face, how low the buildings sit, what stays untouched. 

Since founding the Bangkok architecture studio in 2004, the pair have built a practice around exactly that instinct: looking past the surface of a place to what the landscape is already asking for. It’s a kind of restraint that takes genuine confidence—knowing the boldest move is sometimes what is left untouched.

Just an hour outside Bangkok, sitting alongside the Chao Phraya River, the blueprint for the island sanctuary was a river, a raintree, and a village the hotel was built to slip quietly into. We spoke with Twitee about quiet architecture, working with a site instead of against it, and why the best design decisions are often leaving things untouched.

What drew you to architecture in the first place, and is there a building by someone else that still stops you in your tracks?

It started simply. I loved art as a kid, could stare at a painting for ages, but I was also drawn to logic and how things work. I didn’t have a word for that combination until my father suggested architecture. The idea stuck, even before I understood what the field actually was.

As for a building that stops me in my tracks: it’s not a building. It’s the medieval towns of Northern Italy, which I first saw on a study trip. Narrow passages, light falling from above, then suddenly a piazza opens and the whole scale of the world changes. What got me wasn’t the spatial complexity. It was realizing everything I’d assumed about how space works was just one option among many. A different way of building could open up entirely different ways of seeing, living, imagining.

What’s one thing architecture school got completely wrong?

Nothing, really. The discipline is too deep to fit into four or five years. School gives you a foundation and, inevitably, some blind spots. It doesn’t finish you. That takes decades, and it starts the moment you realize school was only the beginning. Becoming an architect is a much longer process of cultivation.

What does it feel like to design for a narrow island surrounded by water? How did the geography shape how guests move through the property?

The site is extraordinary. sala bang pa-in sits at the tip of a narrow island, water on two sides. That shaped movement, sure, but our real focus was making the presence of water felt everywhere, visually, physically, in the air.

It runs through every scale of the project. Every room and villa opens to the river; nothing is detached from it. At the building level, we pushed further with generous openings, decks, plunge pools. Public spaces are stepped so different levels can share the view without blocking each other. We wanted guests living inside the river’s atmosphere, not just next to it.

You scaled the buildings down to match the surrounding village houses. When did that become the only way forward?

Almost immediately. This isn’t a dense urban site, it’s a riverside community of small houses. We tested a more singular, prominent form at one point, and the more we explored it, the clearer it became: the site wasn’t asking for an icon. It was asking for humility. Scaling down stopped being aesthetic and became an attitude. The most powerful move here wasn’t to stand apart. It was to belong.

Slowness is hard to design for. How do you actually do that?

You make the architecture quiet. No excessive gestures. Just calm, minimal conditions that make it comfortable to sit still for a long time. We weren’t designing activities, we were designing space for lingering: a tree, a generous roof, a breeze, the sound of water. Slowness isn’t a form you draw. It’s what happens when architecture gets out of the way.

The raintree and the amphitheater feel like they belong to the place as much as the hotel. Was that always the plan?

The raintree was there before we were, and it was too good to treat as a garden feature. It needed to be the anchor, which meant rethinking arrival entirely: not arriving at a building, but arriving under a canopy. The amphitheater grew out of that. It belongs to the hotel, but it feels civic, like something the whole village could claim. We didn’t invent a centerpiece. We recognized that one already existed.

How much of the sustainability commitment, the farm, the scholarships, the energy systems, was baked in from day one?

All of it. sala has always taken this seriously, and we’d worked with them before, so we knew it wasn’t a box to tick. Our job was translating that intention into how the buildings behave: orientation, shade, natural ventilation, spaces you can sit in without air conditioning. It’s not just about performance. It’s about the hotel becoming part of the local ecology instead of standing apart from it.

Could you tell us more about how local crafts show up in the project?

We wanted belonging to happen at every level, including the ones you feel with your hands. Not decorative references, but the sensibility itself carried into a contemporary language through wickerwork, timber, and brick that quietly recalls the architectural memory of Ayutthaya. In some spots, skylights hit the brick directly, so the light reveals the texture. Nothing loud. Just woven in.

You founded Department of ARCHITECTURE in 2004. Has the way you think about heritage changed over twenty years?

It’s gotten more refined. I trained in a Western modernist framework that talks a lot about place but not much about heritage. Coming back to Thailand meant working surrounded by heritage; memory, materials, climate, ways of living. There was no ready-made model, so I built my own position slowly. Not nostalgia, not rejection. Heritage isn’t a fixed form to preserve. It’s a spirit that keeps evolving if you let it.

When you’re not designing hotels, what feeds the work?

Everything, honestly. Keep the antenna open. Streets, art, travel, and other disciplines. Travel especially, because it knocks you out of your own assumptions.

Someone arrives from Bangkok exhausted, stays three days, leaves feeling different. What would you want that difference to be?

Gently recalibrated. A little more rested, a little more settled, a little more ready for whatever comes next.