Studio Locomotive - Apsara Cruise, Bar and Restaurant of The Year from World Architecture Festival Interiors - Bangkok - Thailand

2026-01-12

In the bustling heart of Bangkok, the Chao Phraya River and its countless waterways continue to serve as vital arteries for the capital's daily commutes and cargo transport to this day. In contrast to the city’s innovative skyscrapers, historical monuments—such as the Temple of Dawn, The Grand Palace, and Fort Phra Sumen —preserving three centuries of water-laced heritage stand along the riverbanks.

The riverboat now known as Apsara Cruise once journeyed the Chao Phraya River as a rice barge from the ancient Ayutthaya era, before Bangkok became the capital, transporting rice, sugar, and other trade goods between large ships and riverside warehouses.

The ambitious remaking by Studio Locomotive preserves its heritage wooden cargo hull—as a below deck for motorization, full commercial kitchen, and guest restrooms—and resonates the shape of vernacular bamboo canopy in a new superstructure, modified for all-season restaurant service. The new configuration comprises three decks, with a total usable area of 245 square meters, including a 90-square-meter indoor dining.

Evocative elements of Thai fine arts and architecture—such as wall murals reinterpreting Buddhist legends, auspicious Prajamyam floral motifs believed to offer protection and good fortune, and historical color palettes from glazed terracotta roof tiles on Thai temples—are reflected through fresh execution on contemporary materials, including mirror, mosaic tiles, and wooden beads.

Sharing the main dining deck are a beverage bar and a wheelhouse—disguised within a decorative green-tinted glass booth—featuring glass wall murals portraying the stories of the Rice Goddess and other mythical deities associated with agricultural abundance, redefined in modern narratives by a collage illustrator Nakrob Moonmanas.

The dining cruise was recently named Bar & Restaurant of the Year at the World Architecture Festival Interiors, marking a reflective and meaningful adaptive reuse that responds to its modern value in hospitality.

About Studio Locomotive

Studio Locomotive is an award-winning design group that approaches each project with an interdisciplinary expertise, and with interests from architecture, interior design, and product design, to creative ideation. The practice treats an experiential space as a persuasive manifesto of specialty, competency, and commitments, constructive for the project and congenial to its vicinity. Crafted with empathy and evaluative attitude, the experiential space offers a sense of place; conveys the philosophy of business; expresses brand characters in proper manners; and, when appropriate, advocates and inspires the values of history, art, community, or environment with creativity and reverence.

Photo credit: Pichan Sujaritsatit