115 Bake House: Shophouse Renovation in Ubon Old Town

Ubon Ratchathani is a provincial capital in northeastern Thailand, far from Bangkok's design scene. Its old town is a grid of shophouses: two or three storeys, narrow lots, shared party walls, dark interiors. Most of them are closed up or underused. 115 Bake House and JIM's Recipe, renovated by Sutearchitect, takes one of these shophouses and turns it into two venues stacked on top of each other, connected by a light well that is the smartest move in the project.

The ground floor is a bakery and cafe. The upper floor is a Japanese-Thai restaurant. Between them, a void where the rear balcony used to be now brings daylight and a tree into the centre of a building that had neither.

The Light Well: One Cut Changes Everything

The key architectural intervention is simple. The architects removed the second-floor rear balcony, which had been enclosed as a laundry area, and left the void open. The result is a narrow courtyard between the building and the party wall, open to the sky, with a potted tree growing up through it.

This single cut transforms the interior. Daylight reaches the ground floor for the first time. The tree is visible from both levels. The exposed brick and weathered plaster of the party wall become an interior feature rather than a hidden surface. The light well costs nothing in floor area that was being used well, and it gives back light, ventilation, and a garden. It is the kind of move that should be standard in every shophouse renovation and almost never is.

Ground Floor: The Bakery

The ground-floor bakery runs the full depth of the shophouse. A long glass display counter, lit from below, anchors one side. The walls are stripped back to raw concrete and plaster, with patches of exposed brick where the render has been deliberately removed. The ceiling is left open: concrete beams, ductwork, and cable trays are all visible.

This is the loft-industrial aesthetic that has become common in Thai cafe design, but the execution here is better than average. The peeling plaster is not fake. The brick is not applied. The concrete is the actual structure. The honesty of the surfaces gives the space a texture that new materials cannot replicate.

The Stair and the Bottle Wall

The stair connecting the two floors is a concrete-and-steel element with a glass balustrade, positioned so it is visible from the street. Below the stair, a wall of bottle shelving on raw brick creates a display that doubles as a partition. The stair is not hidden or tucked away. It is part of the spatial sequence: you see it when you enter, and it tells you there is more upstairs.

Upper Floor: JIM's Recipe

The upper floor is a different venue with a different palette. Where the bakery is raw concrete and industrial metal, JIM's Recipe is warm timber, stone, and paper lanterns. The slatted timber ceiling lowers the scale. The bar counter is stone with timber stools. The open kitchen sits behind the counter. The atmosphere shifts from urban-industrial to something closer to a Japanese izakaya.

This tonal shift between floors is the project's second smart move. Two venues in one building, sharing a kitchen and a stair, but each with its own identity. The bakery draws daytime foot traffic. The restaurant draws evening diners. The building works twice as hard as a single-use shophouse.

The Street Facade

At night, the street facade reads as a lit shopfront below and a folded metal screen above. The screen filters the upper floor from the street while letting light and air through. The ground-floor glazing is open enough to show the bakery counter and draw people in. The facade is modest. It does not try to announce itself on a street of quiet shophouses. It fits in while signalling that something has changed inside.

Why This Project Matters

Shophouse renovation is one of the most important building types in Southeast Asian architecture. Thousands of shophouses across Thailand, Vietnam, Malaysia, and Indonesia are empty or underused because they are dark, poorly ventilated, and not adapted to contemporary commercial use. 115 Bake House proves that the fix does not require demolition. One light well, one stair, and a clear material strategy can turn a closed shophouse into a viable two-storey business.

If you are working on shophouse renovation, adaptive reuse in historic town centres, or small-scale hospitality design, this is one of the clearest recent examples of how to do it with economy and care.

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Project credits: 115 Bake House and JIM's Recipe by Sutearchitect. Ubon Ratchathani, Thailand. Photographs: Issira Tonehong / Kram Scene Production.