Sirindhorn Anthropological Centre
Bangkok, Thailand, Completed 2020
Landscape Planning and Design Scope:
Main Entrance, Street Front Gardens, The Library Patio and Gardens, Courtyard and Garden and Entrance Patio to the New Centre Addition
Building : A Mixed-use Building consisting of Showrooms, Headquarters
Client : Princess Maha Chakri Sirindhorn Anthropological Centre (SAC)
Architecture : Super Machine
Interior Architecture : Super Machine
Collaborator : URBAN/S Landscape Architecture & Urban Planning
A Garden of Many
Landscape Design for HRH Maha Chakri Sirindhorn Anthropological Centre
by TOPOLA Design
A Strong Sense of Place
PLACEMAKING
01 Place
The landscape renovation of the Sirindhorn Anthropology Centre focuses on two existing outdoor spaces: the courtyard between the library and museum centre, and the garden entry plaza leading to the library.
While these spaces play an important role during festivals, cultural activities, and special events hosted by the Centre, they remain largely underutilized during everyday hours. Extensive hardscape and insufficient shade make the courtyards uncomfortable during the heat of the day, limiting their potential as places for informal gathering, learning, and daily use.
The existing landscape, however, carries an important history. Mature trees are carefully preserved wherever possible, particularly a historically significant tree planted by HRH Princess Maha Chakri Sirindhorn. The existing lily pond is also retained as part of the garden’s collective memory and established ecological character.
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02 Making
TOPOLA Design reimagines the landscape around three interconnected principles: Flexibility, Inclusivity, and Diversity.
One of the fundamental transformations is the shift in geometry. The existing courtyard, previously defined by rectilinear forms and multiple angular edges, is softened into a landscape of circles, curves, and continuous lines. The circular form becomes a subtle expression of unity and inclusivity—without a beginning or end, and without hierarchy. Curved paths and planting edges encourage movement through the garden while bringing people naturally toward shared spaces at its center.
The existing courtyards are transformed into flexible outdoor rooms capable of shifting between quiet everyday use and larger cultural gatherings. Open spaces remain adaptable for festivals, performances, exhibitions, and community activities, while new layers of trees and planting provide shade and comfort for visitors throughout the day.
Hard paving is reduced and replaced where possible with porous surfaces, allowing rainwater to infiltrate and recharge the ground while helping mitigate heat accumulation. Together with an expanded tree canopy and diverse planting, these interventions establish a more biophilic environment—one that works with natural processes rather than separating people from them.
Diversity becomes both an ecological and cultural idea. A rich palette of trees and plants creates multiple layers of shade, habitat, texture, and seasonal change. This biodiversity reflects the mission of anthropology itself: the study and understanding of human diversity. Just as different species coexist within a healthy landscape, the garden becomes a setting where different people, cultures, generations, and perspectives can come together.
Inclusivity is embedded in the physical experience of the landscape. Accessible paths and gathering spaces allow people of different ages and abilities to move comfortably throughout the garden, reinforcing the Centre’s role as a place for learning, exchange, and shared cultural experience.
At the library entrance, handmade brick introduces the presence of human craft into the landscape. Its tactile quality and individual variation celebrate the relationship between material, making, and culture—a subtle reflection of the Centre’s anthropological mission.
Through the preservation of memory, the diversity of planting, and the creation of flexible and inclusive spaces, the landscape becomes a garden of many—a common ground where nature, people, and cultures can coexist.
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