Hidden Forest

A 200 sq.m. commercial interior on Pattanakarn 44, Bangkok — conceived as a hidden forest inserted within an urban shophouse shell. The name is not a metaphor but a design brief: the project asks what it means to bring a forest into a city, and answers it spatially rather than decoratively.

Patches of live moss are set flush into the concrete floor, turning the ground plane into something closer to landscape than interior. A double-height void opens the center of the plan, with a dense cluster of Edison pendants descending through it like fireflies in a clearing. The structural frame throughout is exposed black steel — industrial in its honesty — held in tension against the green, timber, and exposed brick that give the space its warmth. Skylights draw natural light deep into the plan, shifting the quality of the interior through the day.

The upper mezzanine shifts register entirely: timber flooring, Japanese-influenced slatted timber screens, and paired-down joinery create an intimate counterpoint to the drama below. A long brick wall carries teal-lacquered open shelving, backlit from beneath, bridging the raw materiality of the shell to the curated softness above. The result is a commercial space that rewards discovery — layered, atmospheric, and never quite fully revealed from a single vantage point.