Florian GypserBangkok since 2004

I design places, I have run them, and now I build the memory they lack. From a restaurant on Songwat Road to private diners in twelve cities, I kept seeing the same thing: what matters most is judged by a person and gone twenty seconds later. Symbious™ keeps it.

01 Now · 2026 · the current project

Symbious™: operational memory for the built environment.

A threshold is where a place changes purpose. You cannot see it on a plan, but every venue has them, and almost nothing about them is written down.

How it works
Each chip sits at a threshold. A person taps it, answers up to three yes/no questions, and the moment is recorded. It works without AI, and a venue gets value from the first day.
The rule
The record is about places and moments, never people. That rule is written into the Concordat, ten prohibitions published to the public domain.
Where
Two test sites run in Bangkok: a restaurant and a leather atelier.
Contact
symbious.io · florian@symbious.io
02 DWNTWN · over a decade

DWNTWN, the atelier in Bangkok’s Chinatown.

Handcrafted natural cowhide leather goods, and the place where I develop new concepts.

Atelier
DWNTWN Atelier and showroom in the heart of Bangkok’s Chinatown. Handcrafted natural cowhide leather goods, made and sold in the same two shophouses. It is also the workshop where concepts are developed and tried out.
Upcycling
A leather upcycling concept: offcuts and leftover hide get a second life as finished pieces, in keeping with the earlier work on re-using industrial waste at Scrap Lab.
Online
dwntwn.io · hello@dwntwn.io
03 Hospitality · fifteen years

Running places, at home and on the road.

From the pass to the front door, in Talad Noi and Songwat Road, and then in twelve cities.

Baan Rim Naam
Baan Rim Naam, the restaurants in the Talad Noi and Songwat Road district of Bangkok. Fifteen years in the district, close to the neighbourhood’s makers, shops and families.
Nang Gin Kui
A well-acclaimed private diner. Pop-up diners in twelve cities from the USA to Europe and Asia, each one a new room, a new crew and a new set of thresholds to run in a single evening.
Front of house
Moved ordering and payment from paper to QR at the table, and saw each generation of tools digitise the transaction but not what staff judge by eye.
What it taught
In every kitchen and every pop-up, the knowledge that mattered lived for twenty seconds in someone’s head. That is the problem Symbious™ is built to solve.
About me

An architect, from Vienna to Bangkok.

Master of Architecture in Vienna, in the master class of Zaha Hadid. A master plan for Bangkok as the thesis. Architect Hans Hollein, designer Paolo Piva.

Born
Vienna, 1974. Third-generation architect and designer.
Education
M.Arch, University of Applied Arts Vienna, with an exchange at Silpakorn University, Bangkok.
Studio
Furniture and product design from a Bangkok studio, shown at Salone del Mobile in Milan in 2011.
Teaching
Visiting lecturer at three architecture faculties in the Bangkok area, and design researcher at Kasetsart University.
Scrap Lab
Co-founder of a project on re-using industrial waste.
Atelier
Based at the DWNTWN Atelier, 903 and 909 Songwat Road, Talad Noi, in Bangkok’s Chinatown, where concepts are developed.
Press
Elle Decoration Thailand, Bangkok Post, Profil, Die Presse, and “Once upon a Chair” by Die Gestalten.
Archive: fairs and exhibitions
  • Salone del Mobile, Milan, 2011
  • Biff & Bih, Bangkok, 2011
  • Big & Bih, Bangkok, 2010
  • Spot on Wien, Tokyo, 2009
  • imm cologne, Cologne, 2009 and 2008
  • Design Fair Kortrijk, 2009
  • German Technology Fair, Thailand, 2008
  • 100% Design Bangkok, 2008
  • Scrap Lab exhibitions, Bangkok, 2008
  • Bangkok Design Festival, 2008
  • DESIGNMATCH biennale, Prague, 2008
  • Casadecor, Madrid, 2008
  • TIFF Thailand International Furniture Fair, 2007
  • Architecture biennale, Rotterdam, 2003
  • Biennale Venice, student work, 2002
  • “Water in the City”, Wiener Künstlerhaus, 2000
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Florian Gypser · Bangkok since 2004Symbious™ · DWNTWN Global Pte Ltd