The Robot Building on Sathon Road is a childhood superhero that comes to life. Standing on staggered floors, the chunky android is studded with nuts and bolts. Its head boasts metallic-lidded eyes and two communication antennae and its frontal body is outfitted with black glass and blue stripes like armour. It is ready to fight a monster in the urban jungle.
Unlike other highrises in the grey skyline, the Robot Building is more than my fictive imagination but is a living history of the late modern architecture of the 1980s. The Bank of Asia commissioned Sumet Jumsai Na Ayudhya, an architect and national artist, to execute the design of its headquarters. Inspired by his son's robot toys, he envisioned the progress of the financial institution towards a hi-tech future.
