EmQuartier

The Mall Group opened EmQuartier in May 2015 on Sukhumvit Road, directly across from its own 1997-built Emporium mall, as the second piece of what would become the three-building EM District. The complex, designed by New York-based Leeser Architecture at a cost of roughly $800 million, deliberately abandons the conventional flat-floor mall layout in favor of three distinct architectural zones.

The Helix Quartier wraps more than 50 restaurants around a six-story spiral ramp that eliminates the need for escalators between dining floors, while the Waterfall Quartier centers on a 40-metre indoor cascade that separates the shopping and dining sections with mist and ambient sound rather than a wall. The Glass Quartier handles the more conventional retail floors, anchoring the complex’s mainstream fashion tenants.

Louis Vuitton, Gucci, Prada, Dior and Chanel anchor the luxury floors, with Zara, Uniqlo, H&M and Alo Yoga carrying accessible fashion on the upper levels, a deliberate split that lets EmQuartier run luxury and mass-market floors within the same building rather than segregating them into separate centers the way many Bangkok malls do. The design won the Asia Pacific International Property Award for Best Commercial Architectural Design in 2014.

Direct access from Phrom Phong BTS station, and a sky bridge connecting to Emporium across the road, tie EmQuartier into a combined retail ecosystem The Mall Group has built to compete directly against the CentralWorld and Siam Paragon cluster further west, a rivalry that intensified again when EmSphere, the EM District’s third building, opened on December 1, 2023.