BUILT AREA - 4,650 SQM
LAND AREA - 4,406 SQM
BUILT 2017
LAYERING FORM_ Commissioned to design a show gallery, MOD responded to the client’s programmatic need to operate 2 separate and autonomous galleries, but yet have them project an image of seamless unity. Employing an organically-inspired language of curves and gradients, the design is a series of more inclusive plans which could be seamlessly combined or segregated as the program required. The resulting overall layout comprises 2 autonomous halves, yet visually linked by a projecting canopy brim, and shared vehicular drop off.
The 4-storey gallery is located minutes from Kuala Lumpur’s city center on the former Pudu Jail site and serves as the “face” of a multi-billion-dollar project by joint developers UDA, Ecoworld and Malaysia’s sovereign funds, EPF. It also hosts a separate show gallery for Ecoworld International, showcasing and providing a sales platform for their numerous overseas projects.
Next, we extruded this organic plan incrementally, layer by layer instead of imagining as a single vertical wall. This “stacking” method of form-making allowed us to fine tune the volume of the building, pinching it smaller when we needed to reduce its volume, or protruding it outwards at the canopy brim level to emphasize the reading of the building as a single form.
Also by subtracting specific layers, we were able to create visually integrated fenestrations for doorways or picture windows, that avoided the conventions of a door or window frame. The office spaces also open out to a series of green terraces, which enjoy a view of the surroundings including the on-going construction site behind the gallery.
MOD’s interior architectural planning carries the overall language through to the open display galleries, discussion and function rooms, show unit mock-ups and office spaces. Naturally-lit through a series of skylights and fenestrations, the 50,000 square feet space serves as a verdant backdrop for the client to personalize and update the interior experience constantly over the 5 to 10-year lifespan of the gallery.
