ShophouseMetropolis

Documented cluster · Phra Nakhon

Phra Athit Khao Hong row

ตึกแถวเก้าห้อง ถนนพระอาทิตย์

The dimensions actually measured

Footprints screened
22morphology only, never surveyed
Median frontage
10.9 mcitywide 5.1 m
Median depth
20.2 mcitywide 13.6 m
Deepest tenth
44.1 mp90 · citywide 27.6 m

Frontage and depth are the short and long sides of each footprint's minimum-area bounding rectangle, computed by scripts/build-shophouse-spine.py over the Overture/OSM screen. A footprint in this set has not been visited: the shape says shophouse, and nothing here says it is one.

Against those 22 screened shapes, a published survey counted 9 units here. Where the two disagree, the counted figure is the one a human stood in front of.

What binds these buildings

Computed per footprint from depth, plot and neighbours — not merely listed. A clause counts as binding when this building's own geometry triggers it.

  • MR55 ข้อ 218 of 22

    Each คูหา: width ≥ 4 m (column centreline to centreline); depth ≥ 4 m and ≤ 24 m; ground-floor area ≥ 30 m². If depth exceeds 16 m, an uncovered void of ≥ 10% of ground-floor area between 12 and 16 m depth.

    The 4 m module is a floor set by law. Tirapas's surveyed 4 m module is the regulation made visible.

  • MR55 ข้อ 48 of 22

    Continuous construction ≤ 10 คูหา and total row length ≤ 40 m, regardless of ownership.

    Why long shophouse streets break into readable blocks with gaps. The rhythm you see from the pavement is a fire rule.

  • MR55 ข้อ 414 of 22

    Setback from public road centreline: 3 m; 6 m where the road is under 10 m wide, for buildings over 2 storeys or 8 m — including ตึกแถว.

    THE decisive clause. An old shophouse occupies its whole plot because it predates this. Demolish it and the replacement must step back onto ground that, on a 12 m plot, is most of the site — so on many plots you cannot lawfully rebuild what you tear down.

Already over the depth cap
9deeper than the 24 m ข้อ 2 allows a new build
Median row length
2 unitsข้อ 4 caps a continuous row at 10
Rows over that cap
0lawful when built, unbuildable now

The interesting number is the third. Where a row exceeds today's cap, the building standing there could not be built again — which means demolition is not a reversible decision, whatever replaces it.

Where the pressure sits

Each footprint is placed on two axes: the appraised land value underneath it, split at the citywide median of ฿3,568,750, and its plot depth, split at 13.6 m — below which a 2 m setback takes a serious share of any compliant replacement.

  • Worth reconsidering3

    High land value, shallow plot.

    Maximum pressure to demolish — and the plot is shallow enough that a compliant replacement loses a serious share of its footprint to the setback. Demolition here is closest to self-defeating, and it is the owner who is least likely to have been told.

  • Genuinely exposed16

    High land value, deeper plot.

    The land is worth enough to justify clearing and the plot is deep enough to absorb a setback. On present rules these are the ones that go, and an argument for keeping them has to be made on carbon, tenure or social capital rather than on the code.

  • Reuse is the easy answer1

    Lower land value, shallow plot.

    Little pressure to clear, and the setback would bite hard if anyone tried. Nothing needs defending here yet — which makes it the cheapest place to test what adaptive reuse actually costs.

2 of the 22 footprints here carry no quadrant, so the split above sums to 20 rather than 22. That is a join artefact, not a gap in the screen: the pressure layer classifies all 2,433 footprints, but the spine joins the two sets by centroid rounded to five decimal places, and 241 of the 2,433 miss that key by a metre or so. Those buildings have a quadrant; this page cannot currently name it.

Land under one footprint
฿16,146,875median · citywide split ฿3,568,750
District appraisal band
฿62,500฿250,000per m², Treasury appraisal

Appraised value is the base for transfer tax and sits below market, so every figure here is a floor, not an estimate.

What this page cannot tell you

Storeys are known for 0 of the 22 footprints here 22 carry none, and are left null rather than filled with a plausible number. Across the whole spine the same is true of storeys (for two-thirds of the set), tenure, structural condition, road width, build year.

  • Morphology is not proof. A narrow, deep footprint repeating along a street is the shophouse signature, but no field survey has confirmed that any individual building here is one, nor its age, condition or tenure.
  • Appraised value is the base for transfer tax and sits below market, so every land figure is a floor rather than an estimate.
  • The setback exposure assumes a road width, because per-plot road widths are not published — the assumption is stated in SPLITS and can be changed.

Where this comes from

Only nine bays, but a complete urban sentence: fort, river road, shade trees, homes above trade. Small ensembles like this are where citywide databases usually fail.

Nine-bay river-road shophouse row

Period
Early 20th century
Kind
royal frontage
District
Phra Nakhon

Documentation: Journal of the Siam Society: Old Bangkok shophouses. Every computed figure on this page comes from scripts/build-shophouse-spine.py, which states each rule in its header.

Arkara, N. (2026). Phra Athit Khao Hong row — documented shophouse cluster (22 screened footprints) [Data set]. Shophouse Metropolis, BKKx. https://shophouses.nonarkara.org/shophouses/cluster/phra-athit-khao-hong

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