Robot Building by Oran Viriyincy licensed under the terms of CC BY-SA 2.0
This week’s crazy building is the Robot Building in Bangkok, Thailand.
When the Bank of Asia asked architect Sumet Jumsai to create a building that shows banking has been modernized and computerized, Jumsai took them literally.
Inspired by his son’s toy robot, built a robot of his own—only this one was 20 stories tall! The Robot Building sports a boxy exterior, antennas and even a pair of eyes. The robot’s antennas actually function as lightning rods and for communications.
The stepped design contributes to the robot’s look, and has the extra benefit of complying with regulations requiring buildings to be set back farther and farther from the property lines the higher they go.
While the building looks very much like a product of the 1980s, it’s still an icon of architectural modernism. In fact, it was named one of the 50 seminal buildings of the past century by LA’s Museum of Contemporary Art—not bad for a building inspired by a child’s plaything!
