Starhill Gallery by Sparch
Sparch Design Studio have completed the redesign of the existing façade of the Starhill Gallery shopping mall in Kuala Lumpur.
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Project Description:
Starhill Gallery is perhaps Kuala Lumpur’s most iconic shopping mall, featuring an extraordinary array of luxury shops and fine dining restaurants. Sparch’s design proposal dealt with the reinvention of the existing facade of Starhill Gallery facing Bukit Bintang. This reinvention of Starhill Gallery is designed by Stephen Pimbley, founding director of Sparch and the architect behind Singapore’s hugely popular Clarke Quay.
Stephen says, “Unlike many street-facing malls in Kuala Lumpur, our new facade for Starhill Gallery is firmly engaged with the public realm and generates valuable visual connections along this section of Bukit Bintang via the heavy footfall. We have designed a beacon for Starhill Gallery that celebrates its relationship with the city.”
Sparch’s design has opened up the facade which provides a lot of visual interest via a continuous shop front that wraps the existing building in a crystalline skin of glass and stone panels. The new facade resembles the “wet drapery” of the ancient statues of Greece and Rome, and the beautifully crafted gowns on sale inside Starhill Gallery. The fractured variation of solidity and transparency transforms the street facade of the existing building entirely, giving it a new contemporary classic identity that stands out amongst the quick-fix, ubiquitous shopping mall facades of many of Starhill Gallery’s neighbours.
Sparch’s lightweight steel, stone and glass facade is the first of their kind in Malaysia that embraces cutting-edge facade technology from the French engineer RFR, the team that delivered the Pyramid at the Paris Louvre.
Sparch replaced the café at the entrance of Starhill Gallery with an iconic triple height shopping pavilion for the French luxury retailer LVMH and their cosmetics brand Sephora. Sephora is, in turn, connected to Starhill via a first floor bridge that pierces the new crystalline facade. Sparch, together with YTL, has deliberately crafted a complex building envelope using only the best materials that resonate with the importance of the building’s position and contribution to the streetscape of Kuala Lumpur. The synergy with high quality of the brands/products, as well as special visitor experience inside Starhill Gallery is undeniable.
Starhill Gallery’s new crystalline facade and the Sephora pavilion have effectively established an iconic new identity for Starhill Gallery, affirming its position as the foremost destination for luxury shopping in Southeast Asia.
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Architects: Sparch
Location: Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia
Principal Architect: Stephen Pimbley
Project Architect: Michael Gibert
Team: Darmaganda, Kim-Lee Tan, Sevena Lee, Wenhui Lim
Local Architect: A. Mariadass Architect
Interior Consultant: NA
Lighting Designer: Snfor Sdn Bhd
Structural Consultant: RFR Shanghai
Main Contractor: Syarikat Pembenaan Yeoh Tiong Lay Sdn Bhd (SPYTL)
M&E: Syarikat Pembenaan Yeoh Tiong Lay Sdn Bhd (SPYTL)
Building Area: 2,000 sqm
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29 design on 27 Mar 2012 at 2:55 am #
having this structure built on our own home turf means that we can sincerely contest the architectural statement above.
“Unlike many street-facing malls in Kuala Lumpur, our new facade for Starhill Gallery is firmly engaged with the public realm”
In reality, this big, alienating structure was built to occupy almost the entire sidewalk. What was previously a wide sidewalk for one of the only pedestrian stretches in Kuala Lumpur is not a pitiful 1.5 m wide strip of pavement between the building and the road. So during the weekends when people are actually walking on Jalan Bukit Bintang, they are forced to walk on the 4 lane congested street because the building has rudely pushed them off the sidewalk! That is the reality! Such a missed opportunity SPARCH!
KP Han on 27 Mar 2012 at 6:44 pm #
I totally agree with 29 design’s comments. It is not obvious to me how it “firmly engaged with the public realm” and “generates valuable visual connections along this section of Bukit Bintang”. On the contrary, first of all it alienates the public with such montrosity scale and secondly, it blocks off all visual connection with the surrounding, as far as I can see. The architect’s statement is clearly an after-thought filled with empty gesture.
Funcaar on 28 Mar 2012 at 1:21 am #
I was there in Bukit Bintang last October… and while walking through the streets i came across an exuberant futuristic building. I was astonished to see such a complex building standing right in the middle of a very congested junction, but seeing the building there seemed like someone had tried to maneuver the straight lined buildings in its surroundings and while drawing them again he just gave the angular properties to those line, hence creating a unique space in the form of Starhill.
kokomo on 08 Apr 2012 at 6:53 am #
they should put pictures with people walking past the building, waiting to cross the street also pushes people onto the street…. because of this building, people usually just cross the street and be on the other side, which is another shopping mall with open space where people can actually walk around without getting their head hit against the tilted walls of the building… plus you need to get across the road to have a look at the massive tilted walls…