MBK Center

Brief Information

MBK Center opened in 1985 as Asia’s largest shopping center, but its scale is most apparent not through the record itself, but through the building’s organization: eight floors brought together shops, restaurants, services, cinemas, a hotel, and a bank office in a single volume. It is not a separate showcase, but a multi-story urban machine for shopping, food, services, and entertainment.

The name also left a physical trace. The center is named after Ma and Boonkrong, the parents of developer Sirichai Bulakul, and their statues stand on the ground floor. Because of this, an ordinary shopping center gains a personal signature: among the signs and streams of people, there is a detail that connects the commercial building with the family memory of its creator.

What to Notice First

It makes sense to read MBK Center vertically and along the edges of the building. The ground floor sets the personal layer of the place: the statues of Ma and Boonkrong explain the origin of the name. The seventh floor shows a change in entertainment: MBK Hall, a concert venue for popular Thai and foreign singers of the 1980s and 1990s, used to be there, and now it houses eight SF Group cinemas.

The layout adds another key point. Don Quijote is located in the northern part of the center, while Pathumwan Princess Hotel is in the southern part, so retail and hotel functions are separated at different ends of the complex. The second floor is connected by a covered pedestrian bridge across Phaya Thai Road to Siam Square: the building functions not only within itself, but also as part of the neighboring urban network at the intersection of Rama I Road and Phaya Thai Road.