The Passenger Terminal at Suvarnabhumi International Airport and Thai Identity in the Midst of Globalization Era
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Abstract
Aside from functioning as a strategic instrument for modernization process and economic development,
international airports represent a material embodiment for cultural identity of their host nations as evident from
the architecture of passenger terminals around the world. Via semiological and phenomenological theories,
this article presents a critical inquiry on the passenger terminal at Suvarnabhumi International Airport in Thailand
in both cultural and social dimensions. The research also investigates the complex dynamism of the Thai
identity discourse (known as Thainess or khwampenthai) during the age of globalization, which has resulted in
contradictory readings on the building’s ultra-modern appearance in terms of a dichotomy between place-ness
and placeless-ness. Not only do the aforementioned studies reveal paradoxical characteristics of the Thai
identity through the complexity, incongruity, and contradiction in architectural signification by the passenger
terminal at Suvarnabhumi, but critical examinations on the design of this aviation facility further expose some
fundamental problems in the discourse of Thainess as well.
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