Adlib Hotel and KAEN Innovation Centre : SKY BRIDGE
Khon Kaen, Thailand, Complete 2022
Landscape Planning and Design Scope:
Main Entrance, Drop-off Area, Kaen Ground Garden, Backyard Garden, Sky Bridge, Sky Garden, Sky Pool and Moire Pavilion
Building : A Mixed-use Building consisting of Hotel, Resort, and Office Tower
Client : Adlib Hotel / Mitrphol Group Thailand
Architecture : Office of Bangkok Architects
Interior Architecture : Dot Line Plane / YAAF DESIGN
Main Consultant / Construction Management : Currie & Brown
Structural Engineer : Cedar Structural Inc.
Mechanical Engineer : ME Consultant
Main Contractor : Construction Lines
Softscape Contractor : Cordia
Photography : Rungkrit Charoenwat
RESONANCE OF THE SOUL
Landscape Design for AD LIB KHON KAEN, KHON KAEN INNOVATION CENTER PHASE I
by TOPOLA Design
A Strong Sense of Place
PLACEMAKING
01 Place
Located in the heart of Khon Kaen, the Khon Kaen Innovation Center stands as both a physical and symbolic transformation. Once an abandoned office tower and outdated retail big-box building surrounded by underutilized parking lots, the site embodied the stagnation of the city’s mid-century urban core—spaces constructed for commerce yet left behind by the shifting patterns of economy and culture.
As Khon Kaen undergoes a quiet but determined urban renaissance, civic groups, entrepreneurs, and creative collectives have been reclaiming fragments of the city’s fabric to reimagine them as shared cultural platforms. Within this evolving context, the Khon Kaen Innovation Center emerges not as a new insertion, but as a reawakening—an urban palimpsest where contemporary design dialogues with the layered soul of Isaan.
The project transforms the residual and forgotten spaces of the existing structure into a vertical landscape of renewal, where architecture and landscape intertwine to articulate a collective identity of place. The design seeks to resonate with the soul of Isaan—a region defined by its resilience, community spirit, and deep-rooted relationship to land, craft, and rhythm of life.
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02 Making
Rather than erasing traces of the past, the project embraces them. The existing concrete structure is enhanced by ad hoc additions, expressing the stories of the site told over time. TOPOLA Design proposes a biophilic landscape that integrates and envelops the space, creating an immersive garden experience.
At the foundation of this continuum lies the Kaen Ground, the urban forecourt and primary threshold that redefines the building’s connection to the city. With Adlib Hotel serving as the anchoring program, the site takes its main approach from Srichan Road, the historic artery of Khon Kaen’s Town and a growing cultural and creative district.
The other landscape programs are distributed across the building’s upper levels: Sky Pool, Sky Garden, Moiré Pavilion, and the Sky Bridge. Each landscape component is inspired by, and resonates with, the local cultural and physical context of Isaan, abstracted and recomposed through new materials, patterns, and forms. Together, they form a sequence of ascent: a journey from the city’s density to the sky, while the architecture and landscape bridge memory, material, and climate.
Upon arrival, the driveway transitions seamlessly into a welcoming plaza, a fluid gesture that merges the exterior ground plane with the interior of the lobby—signifying a strong bond between landscape and architecture. Within the oversized, triple-height tunnel-like breezeway, generous planting beds feature a palette of lush, air-purifying tropical foliage, filtering light and air to create a transitional microclimate. The result is a porous civic threshold—a place that simultaneously marks arrival and belonging, grounding the vertical complexity of the project in a distinctly local atmosphere of generosity and shade.
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Each landscape component across the building’s upper levels is conceived as a fragment of Isaan’s terrain, abstracted and recomposed through light, pattern, and form. Together they form a sequence of ascent, a journey from the city’s density to the sky—bridging memory, material, and climate.
The Sky Garden reclaims what was once a sterile rooftop into a lush elevated landscape that restores nature as a civic experience. Planting bands weave between existing structural bays, forming rhythmic layers of shade and texture. Hard and soft surfaces are carefully interlocked to retain permeability, while clusters of native Isaan flora recall the fields and seasonal cycles of the plateau. The geometry of the garden, drawn from the morphology of rice paddies, creates terraces and voids that invite wandering and contemplation. It becomes a living field above the city—both ecological and symbolic—filtering air, softening heat, and offering a horizon of green.
Anchoring this upper landscape is the Sky Pool, a reflective horizon that captures and returns the image of the Khon Kaen sky. The water’s surface operates as both climatic and poetic device as its stillness mirrors the expanse of the region’s skyline, embodying vision and renewal.
The Moire Pavilion becomes the project’s spatial and symbolic centerpiece. Its double-layered metal mesh canopy interprets the weaving traditions of Isaan, one of the region’s most enduring cultural expressions. The superimposed patterns generate a moiré effect that shifts with the movement of sun and wind, recalling the tactility of handwoven silk translated through contemporary fabrication. Beneath this shimmering veil, light diffuses softly onto the garden surface, creating a condition that is both ephemeral and grounded. The pavilion acts as an urban sala—a modern communal shelter that embodies Isaan’s sociable openness, porous to climate and conversation.
The Sky Bridge threads together these elevated spaces, linking the building’s fragmented wings into a continuous landscape. Suspended lightly above the existing structure, the bridge extends through canopies and gardens, offering views that oscillate between the intimacy of vegetation and the vastness of the city beyond. The experience of walking the bridge evokes the vernacular trok—the narrow alleyways of Thai urbanism—translated into the sky as a social corridor. It becomes both path and place, circulation and encounter.
Through this intricate layering of garden, water, pavilion, and bridge, TOPOLA Design transforms the neglected vertical surfaces of Khon Kaen’s built fabric into a terrain of resonance—a dialogue between material memory and future possibility. The Khon Kaen Innovation Center—Phase I stands as an architectural and cultural act of renewal, resonating the soul of Isaan through the language of landscape and architecture.
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