Misleading: Bangkok building’s twisted columns are design feature, not earthquake damage
On March 30, two days after the powerful earthquake in Myanmar caused a 30-storey building to collapse in Bangkok, Thailand, a video was posted on Threads showing a high-rise under construction with twisted external columns. The user questioned in the post whether the columns became skewed as a result of the quake.
Similar claims alleging that this building was affected by the earthquake appeared in a news article by Taiwanese outlet Tai Sounds, as well as in commentaries on Reddit, YouTube, X, and Threads, in Chinese, English, Japanese, and Korean.
Dimsum Daily, a Hong Kong online news website, described it as “showing continued signs of deformation” and claimed “engineers have deemed the structure unsafe.”
However, Annie Lab’s investigation found that the skewed columns are part of the building’s original design, not the result of earthquake damage. The floor plans we obtained from the building’s main contractor feature this design. Numerous online images taken before the earthquake also show the same twisted structure.
Identifying the location and construction company
Threads user @fridge_sung, who posted the video, told us the exact location where he recorded it while passing by the area near BTS Thonglor Station.
In the original video, we noticed a yellow logo with the text “SFC,” which belongs to Sangfah Construction Co., Ltd, a real estate and construction company based in Bangkok.
Sangfah’s website details an ongoing hotel construction project along Sukhumvit Soi 55 in Bangkok, titled Hotel Indigo Thonglor (archived here).
This hotel is expected to open in 2026, featuring 37 floors and 250 rooms, according to IHG Hotels & Resorts and Sangfah.
Sangfah posted images of the construction on March 26 (archived here), two days before the earthquake, showing the same appearance and structural features seen in the video.
A similar photo (archived here) was posted by PropCons, a Thai property information page, on Facebook on March 22, four days before the quake.
Architectural design
Annie Lab contacted Sangfah by phone and email. An officer provided the official floor plans for the 19th to 22nd floors of the building, where the columns appear most visibly skewed.
Law Sai Ho, a land surveyor with decades of experience in supervising infrastructure construction and a Professional Member of the Royal Institution of Chartered Surveyors, reviewed the floor plans for us and confirmed that the concrete columns were designed to look this way.
Law noted that on the floor plan, a straight concrete column (highlighted with a green box) is drawn as a single circle, while a curved column (red box) is drawn as two overlapping circles, indicating that the column’s position from the soffit of the 19th floor to the 20th floor is not vertically aligned.
Visual comparisons between the floor plan and construction photos further confirm this.
“On the 20th floor, the overlapping circle in the floor plan corresponds to the red arrow, while the single circle corresponds to the green arrow,” Law said.
Annie Lab also checked the Traffy Fondue, a local complaint platform managed by authorities and used to collect earthquake damage reports.
On May 25, a citizen submitted a report regarding the appearance of the hotel construction site (archived here). The Civil Engineering Department of the Watthana district responded a day later, stating that the columns are a design feature of the hotel project.
