Central Post Office

The Central Post Office was designed to serve as the headquarters of Bangkok’s central post office. It stands on Charoen Krung Road, in the Bang Rak district, not far from the Si Phraya pier. In Thai it is known as Akhan Praisani Klang, the “central post office building”, and in everyday usage local people speak more simply of the “Bang Rak central post office”.⁷

The site was not a blank slate. The building occupies the former site of the British Legation, that is, the United Kingdom’s diplomatic mission to Siam. It was on this land that the Post and Telegraph Department launched its project.⁸

The project was initiated by the then director-general of the Post and Telegraph Department. Accounts differ on the dates of construction, placed either between 1935 and 1940 or between 1937 and 1940; the building came into service in 1940. The architectural design was the work of architects of the Fine Arts Department, while the engineering of the project was entrusted to H. Herrmann.³

The front section of the building presents a façade some hundred metres long, with a depth of nearly forty metres, and the whole rises over four levels above a basement.²

Two architects are associated with the Central Post Office. The first, Phra Sarot Rattananimman, also known as Sarot Sukkhayang, was at the time head of the architecture division of the Fine Arts Department.²

The second, Mew Aphaiwong (1905–1963), whose given name is also written Chitsen or Jitrasen, has his name so closely bound up with the building that it is sometimes presented as his masterpiece.¹

The exact contribution of each remains debated. Accounts differ: the building is presented sometimes as a joint work by the two architects, sometimes as primarily the work of Mew Aphaiwong.⁸

These readings are not entirely mutually exclusive. The first emphasises the administrative organisation, in which the head of division signs off on the project and answers for it; the others focus more on the authorship of the design and on the history of modern forms, in which Mew Aphaiwong holds a recognised place. The Central Post Office thus reveals a difficulty peculiar to public architecture of this period: the author of a state building is often subsumed into the department that produces it, and the memory of individuals takes shape only after the fact.

The building follows a T-shaped plan: a long front range along Charoen Krung Road, extended to the rear by a perpendicular wing. Its structure is of concrete, and it is topped by a flat-slab roof terrace, with no pitched roof. Everything is organised around an axis of symmetry running through the projecting bay of the main entrance, that is, the central part of the façade, set forward from the rest.¹

Standing before the building, one first takes in this ordered arrangement: two equal wings frame a monumental entrance, and the eye is drawn towards the centre. The composition favours volumes and lines over ornament.²

The style of the Central Post Office resists being confined to a single label. Some see in it a blend of Art Deco and the International Style, the modern movement that seeks clean volumes and undecorated façades; others the International Style alone; others still a modern style with a neoclassical leaning, mixed with functionalism, that favours simplicity. For buildings of this period, people also speak of Art Deco combined with “Stripped ClassicismStripped-down classicism: an architectural current that retains the symmetry and order of classical architecture while removing most of its ornament.”, a pared-down classicism that retains the symmetry and order of classical architecture while doing away with its ornament.⁸

Each of these labels describes one facet of the same building. The rigorous symmetry and the solemn entrance belong to a classical tradition; the plainness of the surfaces, the concrete structure and the flat roof belong to the modern vocabulary.

Two garudasMythical bird from the Indian tradition, the mount of the god Vishnu. In Thailand, it is the emblem of the monarchy and of the State., mythical birds from the Indian tradition, crown the central projecting bay, one at the northern corner, the other at the southern corner. They are attributed to students of the sculpture section of the Silpakorn school, working under the direction of their teacher, Silpa Bhirasri, born Corrado Feroci.⁴

The façade has also been given a symbolic reading. Its six pillars and two wings have been linked to the six principles of the People’s Party (Khana Ratsadon), the political movement that was then steering public commissions. This is an interpretation.⁴

The Central Post Office belongs to a group of public buildings promoted by the People’s Party. The movement sought to give the state a modern and powerful imageIn Thai Buddhism, a devotional representation of the Buddha, most often a statue, venerated as an object of worship., and architecture became for it a means of making this ambition visible in the fabric of the capital.⁹

In this context, the choice of a pared-down, symmetrical and monumental architecture was far from incidental. It set the building apart from the traditional forms associated with temples and palaces, and asserted a national identity turned towards modernity. The garudas at the entrance nonetheless tie this modernity to an age-old repertoire of images, which shows that the intended break remained measured.

The Central Post Office ranks among the finest examples of this nationalist modernisation, alongside Ratchadamnoen Klang Avenue and the Suphachalasai Stadium.⁵

The Bang Rak building still houses a postal service and remains in use today.⁷

Barely completed, the building lived through the Second World War. A singular trace survives from this period: an unexploded bomb was buried in the neighbouring car park.¹

For decades thereafter, the building fulfilled its original purpose as the central post office, and the telegraph operated there until 2008, the year in which the last telegram was sent from it.¹

In 2004, the Fine Arts Department recognised the Central Post Office as architectural heritage. By an official letter, it deemed the building an ancient monumentIn Thailand, a legal category (boran sathan) that places a building or site under State protection as heritage. within the meaning of the 1961 Act, as amended in 1992. The building has not, however, been officially registered as such.²

This intermediate status has consequences: the building’s heritage value is acknowledged by the authority responsible for heritage, without this recognition taking the form of a formal listing.

The building’s future has given rise to debate. A plan to convert it into a hotel, intended to generate revenue for Thailand Post, drew sharp criticism.²

The project did not shape the site’s future, since a cultural conversion ultimately prevailed. The episode shows that the Central Post Office has, over time, become an asset to which part of the public feels attached, and whose use is a matter of collective choice rather than a mere management decision.

In 2017, the building was partly restored and converted to house the Thailand Creative & Design Center (TCDC), a centre devoted to creativity and design. The work concerned the side and rear wings, which were refitted for new uses.⁶

The quality of the work was recognised by the ASA Architectural Conservation Award for 2020–2021 in the “New Design in Heritage Contexts” category, which honours contemporary designs set within a heritage setting.⁸

The Central Post Office has not, for all that, ceased to be a post office. A Thailand Post branch continues to provide postal services there, and the public can still come to post a letter in the building designed for that very purpose. In the converted spaces, the Thailand Creative & Design Center offers a design library, a materials library, that is, a collection of material samples made available to designers, and shared workspaces. The roof terrace, on the fifth floor, is open to visitors.⁷

The building also hosts events such as Bangkok Design Week, organised by the Creative Economy Agency. At the 2026 edition, for instance, it featured a steam-bent rattan installation created by KMUTT university with the designer Igor Pantic.¹¹