Oriental Shine

Asia’s architectural gems create worldly designs to remember and admire.

- Philipp Kristian Diekhöner

Winston Churchill said it best: Environmental design matters. It represents our cultural and social identities. It influences our actions, thoughts, and feelings. Sometimes, it outlasts generations. When we speak about experience design today, we often mean the digital. In reality, modern lives are still shaped by physical worlds. What we build is updated infrequently, good and bad designs are more permanent. The most impactful designs are likely to always be the domain of the tangible world, something virtual experiences will struggle to entirely replace. The real world remains our most important design arena, and it’s essential to pay tribute to its most audacious and beautiful creations. Doing so, we raise awareness for their pivotal role in shaping human lives.

We picked four stories of standout architectural and interior design creations across this region. Big or small-scale, they reimagine our world as we know it. This makes them driving forces of progress and cultural interpretation.

A contemporary oriental tea house contrasting Bangkok’s high-energy living