Takanao Todo's 300-prism wall bends Bangkok's riverfront into a kaleidoscope

A riverside commission for Bangkok Design Week 2024 along the Chao Phraya: make a fragile-looking, temporary structure that holds up in wind and invites a heterogeneous city to coexist.

300 glass prisms (30mm x 30mm x 150mm) fixed by wedge-and-adhesive to a sandblast-finished stainless steel frame, 1.9m tall and 2m wide, self-supporting and easily relocated; visitors' silhouettes merge and split in the refraction.

After the exhibition the structure was relocated to Bangkok Blossom Market, one of the world's largest flower markets, extending its life beyond the festival.

'Through the Looking Prism' stood on the banks of the Chao Phraya River for Bangkok Design Week 2024: a wall of 300 glass prisms held in a sandblast-finished stainless steel frame, refracting and reflecting the riverfront's lights — temples to skyscrapers — into evolving kaleidoscopic patterns that shifted with daylight and night.

Designer Takanao Todo, working with lighting design studio ambiguous, framed the piece as an argument about coexistence: 'Bangkok has cultivated a liberal and rich culture that embraces diversity and values exchange. In our contemporary society, which is becoming more heterogeneous, fragmented, and complex, we must envision a new way of coexisting. We propose a window that consists of a glass prism wall.' Visitors approaching the structure caught their own silhouettes merging and splitting with those of strangers.

The engineering served the ephemerality: each 30mm-by-30mm-by-150mm prism was fixed to the frame with a wedge and adhesive, making a self-supporting, wind-stable structure that could be dismantled and moved. After the festival it was relocated to Bangkok Blossom Market, one of the largest flower markets in the world.

The material is the message: prisms literally reframe one rigid cityscape into many views — the designer's argument for coexistence made physical.

It works with what is already there: no screens or projections, just Bangkok's own light, Wat Arun and river traffic, refracted.

Visitors become part of the piece, their silhouettes merging and splitting with strangers' — exchange made visible.

Wedge-and-adhesive fixing makes 300 fragile components stable in wind yet fully portable, so the work has a second life instead of a skip.

Design the afterlife: a pavilion built to be dismantled and loved somewhere else can outlive the festival that commissioned it.

The pavilion was unveiled at Bangkok Design Week 2024 and afterwards relocated to Bangkok Blossom Market, one of the world's largest flower markets. The report gives no visitor numbers.