MALL (v.)

2016 ALLTHATISSOLID Led by Alex Chew, Max Kuo, and Danielle Wagner
In Collaboration with Beverlea Low and Fatin Rosly

Kuala Lumpur (KL) is a sprawling accumulation of the ultra modern and vestiges of the not so recent past; modernist bungalows, shimmering sky scrapers, 80s housing projects, and malls...big malls, small malls, vacant malls, mega-malls, and mega-mega malls.

In a climate as sweltering as SEA’s the air conditioned mall is the defacto public realm, the piazza, the third space. This competition entry is equal parts provocation and serious proposal; it amplifies, rather than rectifies, trends within contemporary malls; the necessary novelty and spectacle of increasingly extreme programs (theatre, ski slope, water park, theme park, housing, office).  Our proposal takes on the typology of mall-as-plinth and instead horizontally organizes retail, office, and residential into quadrants allowing for interwoven, layered, and nested zones of encounter and proximity.