Demolition man

By Simon Willis

The Mahanakhon, a new 314-metre skyscraper in Bangkok, is Thailand’s tallest building. Yet as a piece of high-rise architecture, it is a powerfully ambiguous piece of work. Running in a spiral from the bottom of the building to the very top is a canyon of corrosion, as though King Kong has run his giant fingernail across its glass façade. At the bottom, where it meets the street, it cracks into a series of ledges and terraces, and there is another small building which appears to be a fragment of the big one. Soaring high above the apartment blocks and office towers around it, the Mahanakhon nevertheless appears to be falling apart.