160c Pastry & Speciality Coffee

Thanachot Foo

• Architects

The project’s thesis is to explore and understand how matter behaves and reacts when force is applied within a specific timeframe. It delves into the relationship and outcomes of liquid behavior during the process of solidification. Solidifying this experimental idea as an architectural element presents a challenge. The concept of finding beauty in the ambiguity of ‘in-between’ states stands in stark contrast to the traditional representation of architecture or the built environment. This project aims to juxtapose, compromise, and at times reconcile the relationship between ‘solidity,’ representing architecture, and ‘fluidity,’ our experimental thesis.

photo_credit Thanachot Foo — Thanachot Foo

The interior space translates the thesis of solidifying fluidity into a controlled architectural language, where form, surface, and light become the medium of transition between states. The ceiling acts as the most explicit manifestation of this idea a gridded, volumetric field that appears as if a liquid surface has been frozen mid-distortion. Each recessed module subtly deforms the plane, capturing a moment of tension, as if pressure had once been applied and then suddenly halted in time.
This “frozen field” overhead establishes a continuous dialogue with the grounded solidity below. The terrazzo floor, embedded with irregular aggregates, reinforces the idea of particles settling and binding another moment of arrested movement. Together, ceiling and floor create a spatial sandwich of compression and release, where the user is positioned within the ‘in-between’ state.

The wooden architectural insert curved, warm, and monolithic acts as a counterpoint. Unlike the fragmented ceiling, this volume reads as a continuous mass, yet its fluid geometry suggests it was once malleable. It embodies the moment just before complete solidification, where form is still negotiable. The staircase, carved seamlessly from this volume, further emphasizes the idea of erosion or flow being captured and preserved.
Light plays a critical role in revealing this temporal condition. Rather than uniform illumination, light is embedded within the geometry seeping through gaps, grazing edges, and amplifying depth. This creates gradients instead of boundaries, reinforcing ambiguity between surface and void, solid and hollow.

The insertion of abstract natural elements white tree like structures and stone introduces another layer of interpretation. These elements resemble matter in transition: the tree stripped to its skeletal essence, the rock as compressed geological time. Positioned within the architectural field, they act as frozen witnesses to transformation, bridging the conceptual gap between natural processes and constructed space.
Ultimately, the interior does not present architecture as a finished object, but as a captured moment within a process. It resists clarity and instead celebrates tension between fluid and solid, movement and stillness, intention and accident allowing users to inhabit a space that feels simultaneously resolved and unresolved.