Curvistan
There used to be a place in Bangkok called Curvistan.
The name should probably have warned me.
by Mads – September 27, 2026
How to Own 13 Porsches and Still Let Go
Curvistan was created for people who love cars. More specifically, Porsches. Or, to be even more specific, the carefully curated idea of what loving Porsches looks like after an architect, a luxury-brand consultant and several people with expensive cameras have had a meeting about authenticity.
I went there. Twice.
It was beautiful.
It was tasteful.
It was immaculate.
And it had roughly the atmosphere of a Porsche configurator on a Tuesday morning.
The cars were magnificent. The architecture was polished. The coffee machine was present and presumably had a fascinating origin story. Every chair appeared to have been positioned by somebody with a degree.
What seemed to be missing were people. Twice.
And, somehow, life.
Perhaps I came at the wrong time, I thought.
As it turns out, perhaps everybody did.
Then I discovered Buddhism
Some time later, I came across a Porsche Newsroom portrait of Chanond Ruangkritya, the Thai businessman, property developer and Porsche collector behind Curvistan.
It explained everything.
Or possibly nothing.
Ruangkritya talks about Buddhism, meditation and the realisation that the pursuit of wealth and fame is ultimately meaningless.
Which is a beautiful thought.
Particularly when contemplated among your 13 Porsches.
Including a Carrera GT.
And several RS models.
Stored in a private garage extending over three floors.
Which has apparently become too small.
I must confess that my own spiritual development has not yet reached this level.
I still occasionally become emotionally attached to a cordless drill.
Perhaps I need to meditate more.
Or buy a Carrera GT.
Detachment, now with a car elevator
Fortunately, the spiritual journey does not end there.
There is also the Porsche Design Tower Bangkok.
According to Porsche’s own portrait, its 22 residences start at around 15 million US dollars.
Fifteen.
Million.
Dollars.
This is, presumably, where one goes after finally understanding the meaningless nature of material wealth.
And because enlightenment should never require leaving your Porsche downstairs, residents will be able to take their cars upstairs with them.
In an elevator.
Into their homes.
Which may be my favourite interpretation of Buddhist detachment ever conceived.
Let go of worldly possessions.
But not the Carrera GT.
That fucker is coming upstairs.
Passion™, professionally installed
Curvistan itself was developed with Stefan Bogner of Curves magazine, and aesthetically it showed.
A beautifully photographed road can be empty and still be beautiful.
A community space without a community has a more fundamental problem.
There is an old German saying: Schuster, bleib bei deinen Leisten.
Shoemaker, stick to your last.
Although, strictly speaking, that requires being a shoemaker first.
Yes, everything photographed beautifully.
Everything was gorgeous.
Everything seemed to know exactly what it was supposed to represent.
And perhaps that was my problem with the place.
I love cars precisely because car culture is normally a little bit wrong.
It smells.
Someone has drilled a hole where there should not be a hole.
Someone else knows an alarming amount about a gearbox nobody has manufactured since 1987.
People argue about tyre pressures.
There is coffee in a mug that should have been thrown away six years ago.
A man called Klaus has brought a differential.
Nobody knows why.
That is car culture.
Curvistan felt as though somebody had taken all of that, removed Klaus and his differential, disinfected the floor, adjusted the lighting and hired someone to explain the remaining passion in a tasteful sans-serif font.
It wasn’t fake.
That would be too easy.
The cars were real. The enthusiasm of the people behind it may well have been completely genuine.
It was something stranger:
authenticity so professionally curated that it had begun to resemble a simulation of authenticity.
Automotive passion had been handed to a luxury-brand consultant, photographed beautifully, given a coffee machine and instructed not to touch anything.
A place for everyone
One particularly lovely idea behind Curvistan was that you did not need to own a Porsche.
You could simply come in, have a coffee, look at the cars and dream.
How wonderfully democratic.
The man with the three-storey Porsche garage and the people without Porsches could finally meet in one room.
Admittedly, when I visited, they appeared to have agreed to meet on different days.
The place was so empty that the cars seemed to be practising meditation themselves.
Still, perhaps that was the point.
Silence.
Contemplation.
Inner peace.
A 911.
Another 911.
Coffee.
Impermanence.
And then Curvistan achieved enlightenment
In February 2026, Curvistan closed its physical Bangkok location.
Except, of course, it did not close.
Places like Curvistan do not close.
That would be terribly ordinary.
The announcement called it a “pit stop.”
Another message described it as a “recalibration.”
“This is not a goodbye.”
Of course not.
Even closure had been curated.
Google Maps, tragically lacking a luxury-brand consultant, was somewhat less philosophical:
Permanently closed.
And there is something almost perfect about that.
A place dedicated to beautifully presenting automotive passion ultimately presented its own disappearance beautifully too.
Not failure.
Not closure.
Recalibration.
Somewhere, presumably, a mood board is being prepared.
The annoying thing is: I love Porsche
That is what makes the whole experience interesting rather than merely ridiculous.
I love the cars.
I understand why somebody would own thirteen of them if they could.
I would happily spend an irresponsible amount of time in that three-storey garage.
And if somebody offered me a Carrera GT, I would discover the limits of my own Buddhist detachment remarkably quickly.
So this isn’t an argument against wealth.
It isn’t even an argument against absurd wealth.
Buy the Porsche.
Buy thirteen.
Build the three-storey garage.
Put your car in an elevator and take the bloody thing to bed if that makes you happy.
I probably would.
Just don’t be surprised if somebody notices the Buddhism.
There is nothing wrong with loving beautiful things.
There is nothing wrong with showing them off either.
And perhaps Ruangkritya genuinely believes every word he says about meditation, detachment and the insignificance of wealth.
I have no reason to think otherwise.
In a way, that makes the whole thing more interesting.
People are contradictory.
Car people perhaps more than most.
We can believe possessions do not matter while spending three hours looking for the correct stitching on a steering wheel.
We can preach simplicity and then spend six months deciding which wheels look simplest.
We can understand perfectly well that a car is merely an object and still turn around after parking it.
Twice.
So perhaps the contradiction isn’t the problem.
Perhaps pretending there isn’t one would be.
Curvistan wanted to celebrate passion.
What I encountered felt more like a celebration of how beautifully passion could be presented.
And those are not quite the same thing.
The cars had character.
The building had design.
The photography had style.
The branding had confidence.
The coffee had a machine.
What I struggled to find was the one thing no amount of money, architecture, branding or carefully calibrated authenticity can reliably manufacture:
soul.
Perhaps that was what they went away to recalibrate.
