Little Shelter by Department of Architecture Co.: 2019 Best of Year Winner for Facade

What makes a shingle a shingle? That was the question Amata Luphaiboon and Twitee Vajrabhaya Teparkum, Department of Architecture Co. principals, asked themselves for their innovative 8,900-square-foot inn Little Shelter.

After initially scouting approximately 40 locations, an idyllic spot was discovered minutes away from the Old Town, with its distinctive wood-shingled sloped roofs, some dating to the city’s 13th-century founding. The catch? “While the city doesn’t specifically require the same language, officials strongly prefer that any new architecture this close to the Old Town blend in,” Luphaiboon explains. “But we don’t do traditional,” Teparkum adds. So they nodded to the past with a peaked roof topped with shingles made of scrap teng, a Thai hardwood DAC repurposed from local timber factories, while providing a contemporary twist with the four-story front facade.

Here are more shingles, but in a different yet equally cost-effective material. Starting from the roofline and arranged within a steel armature, teng shingles morph into semitransparent polycarbonate ones, the latter creating a dramatic gradient effect as well as catching and playing with natural light.

> Read Little Shelter’s feature from the October 2019 issue of Interior Design

Project Team: Adhithep Leewananthawet; Pitchaya Poonsin; Tanadeth Mahapolsirikun; Supavit Junsompitsiri; Yada Pianpanit; Apisara Lertrattanakit.

> See more from the December/January 2020 issue of Interior Design