Women are right in the DNA of The Artisans Ayutthaya, the riverside restaurant that Thai architect Boonserm Premthada designed to bolster the economic prospects of the neighbourhood of Ban Run, in the city of Ayutthaya, north of Bangkok. A group of women from the historic area co-founded the restaurant, and also designed the recipes, which preserve generations of distinctive culinary heritage.

“I call these women breathing scriptures,” Boonserm Premthada says. The small subdistrict has a population of nearly 70 per cent women, many of them single or widowed. For years, they’ve cooked food in large clay pots to pack into small bags to give as alms to monks at a small run-down temple nearby. Now they gather to prepare food for local and international visitors, immersed in an architecture where vernacular materials are elevated to great heights.

The glass blocks encasing the restaurant spaces are overstock from a previous project of Premthada’s. He actually purchased them at a reduced price from a factory, where they were sitting in storage unused. Glass block hasn’t always carried glamorous connotations in Southeast Asia, where it’s more often used to create privacy around toilets or kitchens. But in The Artisans Ayutthaya, Premthada has employed the material to sculptural, poetic effect. This is characteristic of the architect, who has a long-standing affinity and eye for traditional materials, and who trained in carpentry with his father.

Seen from above, the formal language of the building complex is an architectural marvel. It reads as though a larger volume has been broken up into five triangular glass-clad blocks, with an outdoor corridor running between the them and opening onto a patio overlooking the Chao Phraya River, shaded by trees. With wooden frames and monumental operable windows, the architecture maintains dialogue with the climate and natural environment.

Ayutthaya, laid to runs by the Burmese in 1767, predates Bangkok as the capital of the Kingdom of Siam. During COVID-19, when The Artisans Ayutthaya was opened, the city was again facing hardship in a weakened economy. Today, the community of Ban Run, Ayutthaya, is experiencing a period of renewal — at the hands of the matriarchy helming the restaurant (which has a 4.9-star rating on Google Maps, with over a thousand entries) and Boonserm Premthada’s reverent design vision.