Thai Temple Roof

The Thai temple roof is the stacked, steeply pitched roof of Buddhist ordination halls (ubosot), shrine halls (wihan) and royal buildings in Thailand, recognisable by its overlapping tiers and its serpent and bird ornaments. Related forms appear in Laos, Cambodia and Myanmar.

Tiers

Ornamented, tiered roofs are reserved for temples, palaces and important public buildings. Most have two or three tiers, and some royal temples have four. The lowest tier is the largest and the top the smallest, which makes the mass of the roof look lighter. Each tier is also broken into overlapping sections along its length; a double-tiered roof may have two to four breaks per tier. Sources describe the tiering as more aesthetic than functional.

Regional differences:

• Central Thai temples: the lower tiers project only a short way beyond the top roof at the gable ends.
• Northern (Lanna) temples: the roof is larger and sweeps low over the walls, and the lower tiers telescope toward the entrance.

Ornaments

Most decoration sits on the bargeboards at the gable ends:

• Lamyong - the long bargeboard, carved in a wavy, serpent-like shape that evokes the naga.
• Bai raka - blade-like projections along the lamyong, read as naga fins or Garuda feathers.
• Hang hong - the lower finial at the foot of each bargeboard, usually an upturned naga head, sometimes multi-headed; multi-tiered roofs have one at the bottom of each tier.
• Chofa - the tall curved finial at the peak, shaped like a bird's beak and often interpreted as Garuda.
• Kranok - flame-like motifs used on naga heads and other ornament.

Some Ayutthaya-style halls, such as Wat Oi, have no chofa, and Chinese-influenced halls from the reign of Rama III, such as the ubosot of Wat Ratchaorasaram in Bangkok, have single-front roofs without chofa.

The "sagging hull" roofline

In late Ayutthaya architecture, both the base and roofline of some halls curve concavely, resembling the hull of a Chinese junk. The form is called yon thong samphao, also tok thong chang ("sagging elephant's belly").

Examples

• Wat Phra Kaew, Bangkok - ordination hall with a multiple-front roof.
• Wat Ratchaorasaram, Bangkok - Thai-Chinese hall without chofa.

Related forms

The Burmese pyatthat uses odd-numbered stacked roofs with corner ornaments analogous to the chofa. Lao temples, such as Wat Xieng Thong in Luang Prabang, have cascading multi-tiered roofs, and Khmer pagodas use double-tiered roofs.