Penang | Global City Center | Asymptote

[lllARKlll]

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By Rebecca Ward
During the 18th century, spice attracted both traders and pirates to Penang, an island harbor for ships on the Strait of Malacca in Malaysia. Now, government officials are hoping that 21st-century vanguard architecture and luxurious beachfront resorts will once again draw international visitors to the island—this time, investors and tourists. To aid in the effort, municipal authorities have tapped Asymptote Architecture to design a $7 billion, 256-acre mixed-use complex called Penang Global City Center (PGCC).
Lise Anne Couture and Hani Rashid, principals of the New York–based architecture firm, unveiled their design for the nearly 11-million-square-foot PGCC development in September. Their project takes the form of two sinuous, 60-story steel-and-glass-clad towers that reach skyward from a stagelike plinth. The towers will house luxury residential units and five-star hotels; the plinth will function as a public plaza and contain retail, a performing arts center, and a convention center. “(Our project) is a harmonic assemblage of distinct historic and cultural references set against contemporary dynamics of fluidity, transformation, and flux,” Rashid says. Asymptote drew on Penang’s heritage of Chinese, Indian, and Arabian influences to create fenestration patterns inspired by arabesque motifs. “The towers allude to Asian mythical symbols and Islamic minarets,” he adds.
But the PGCC will also have a high-tech, sustainable sensibility: The project aims to be carbon-neutral. A central mechanical system will utilize trigeneration, including wind turbines and a thin-film photovoltaic facade.
Penang’s government expects to begin construction in 2008 and finish by 2012, but it is facing criticism about the site’s master plan, overseen by the Parisian firm Atelier Seraji. Opponents say that the PGCC fails to provide enough affordable housing and that it will create traffic congestion.

Fonte: ArchitecturalRecord

[mrc64]

wow!! Parece porreiro. Não arranjas umas imagens maiores?

[Tiago Garcia]

go google slaker :p

[Dreamer]

Penang Global City Center by Asymptote

September 21st, 2007

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Architects Asymptote have announced Penang Global City Center (PGCC), a large development in northern Malaysia.


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The million square metre mixed-use development features two sixty-story towers and is part of the Malaysian government’s plans to boost economic growth in the area.


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It was unveiled in Penang last week by Malaysian Prime Minister Abdullah Ahmad Badawi last week.


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Image credit: Asymptote: Hani Rashid + Lise Anne Couture.

Here is Asymptote’s press release:

–

ASYMPTOTE ARCHITECTURE
PENANG GLOBAL CITY CENTER (PGCC)

PGCC – Design Concept

Asymptote’s design for the PGCC complex is centered on the idea of creating a new and powerful image for the city of Penang and the new initatives associated with the development of the Northern Corridor of Malaysia. The design achieves its elegance and stature through the simultaneous embrace of natural landscapes and contemporary urbanism. The PGCC will become a vital new precinct that complements and enhances the unique characteristics that typify Penang as a remarkable island metropolis. The design of the iconic towers in particular draws inspiration from not only the lushness and drama of the surrounding mountains and seascapes, but also from the rich and diverse cultural heritage that makes up the Malaysian nation and Penang in particular.

The forms of the two towers are comprised of both horizontal and vertical elements: sculpted horizontal components move across the plinth, rise up and transform into articulated vertical structures. Set against the backdrop of the nature reserve of Penang Hill, the twisting, glass façades of the towers “perform” various surface effects—reflecting, refracting and distorting views of Penang, the surrounding landscape and the seascape beyond. The vast, cascading plinth, which functions as a public plaza with multiple gathering spaces, are venues for the performing arts center, convention center and various facilities for residential, office and urban life.

PGCC – Program

The PGCC project is remarkable for its monumental proportions and programmatic diversity as well as its innovative design. The main components of the program include:

Retail Complex: 400,000 sq. m.
Convention Center: 100,000 sq. m.
Penang Performing Arts Center (PenPAC): 75,000 sq. m.
Condominiums: 70,000 sq. m.
Hotel and Service Apartments: 50,000 sq. m.
Offices: 25,000 sq. m.
Observatory: 1,500 sq. m.
Parking: 190,000 sq. m.

Many aspects of the PGCC incorporate the latest in sustainable design and engineering technologies including building-integrated wind turbines; high-performance façade engineering and design with integrated, thin-film photovoltaics; high-efficiency central mechanical systems utilizing trigeneration; comprehensive storm water management and water recycling. The incorporation of these site-wide strategies into Asymptote’s design represents the highest commitment to the creation of energy-efficient and environmentally conscious architecture.

Link:
http://www.dezeen.com/2007/09/21/penang-global-city-center-by-asymptote/

[Dreamer]

For the future; look up

http-~~-//www.eikongraphia.com/wordpress/wp-content/Asymptote_PGCC_1%20small.jpgAsymptote: Hani Rashid + Lise Anne Couture - PGCC, Malaysia (Copyright Asymptote)

Whereas Geoff of bldgblog has suddenly turned into a condo-expert ever since he started working for Dwell, here at Eikongraphia we continue to discuss the cool architecture, the orgasmic, and even the monstrous.

The just released design by Asymptote for Malaysia for me is both supercool and a bit awkward. Let’s start with the sweet, before we come to the bitter. The two sixty-story (180 meters high?) towers are absolutely fabulous! The combination of continuous, flowing, double-curved perforated surface with a flickering, crystalline, transparent single-curved surface that is triangulated on an enormous scale, is just… well, this is a sneak preview of the architecture of the future. It is! And there is no iconography I can think of. What a relief.

Personally I have always been a fan of the work of Asymptote, but their early work for me was a bit too blobby, too round, too Teletubbies. But with their Photoshop Scape-studies (see their website) Hani Rashid and Lise Anne Couture already showed something about what they were thinking about for the future – subtle, flowing forms with a sensible, transforming texture and materiality. We, as public, basically just had to wait until they had figured out how to build these ideas. If they would ever find a way. And I don’t know about you, but I think they are getting there.

What worries me though is the plinth-building. It beautifully stages the forms on top of them, a decoding platform before the recoding sculpture, but it is actually stuffed full of program. It looks like a nondescript box full of program that – in the eyes of developers – doesn’t need any daylight. Details about the project haven’t yet been unveiled, so I don’t know yet, but it looks like a horrible box. Just look how one enters on ground level. There is hole, and that’s it.

It seems like the architects have considered the first roof-level like the virtual ground floor, ‘draping’ the snaking towers on top of it. But there also seems a hesitation: why not connecting this plaza directly to the hill behind the project, why not letting the tram stop on top of the plaza. It’s commercial logic: seven floors of retail and leisure, putting an attractor up (roof, condo’s), in the middle (tram), and down (ground level, parking garage). It’s a sponge that needs an even hydration all over.

But why not make something more open to the adjacent city and ‘the weather’, something more transparent? A sort of city-fabric, if you like. This isolated consumer paradise just seems so autistic to its context. I am hesitating to use the word ‘sustainable’ as it is misused too much (Just reed Inhabitat to see what I mean). I am thinking more towards something like ‘sensible’. It is just a pity that the architecture stops where the bulk of the program starts.

At least we have these magnificent towers. Let’s try to forget about the rest.

So beautiful.


http-~~-//www.eikongraphia.com/wordpress/wp-content/Asymptote_PGCC_2%20small.jpgAsymptote: Hani Rashid + Lise Anne Couture - PGCC, Malaysia (Copyright Asymptote)


http-~~-//www.eikongraphia.com/wordpress/wp-content/AsymptotePGCC%20small.jpgAsymptote: Hani Rashid + Lise Anne Couture - PGCC, Malaysia (Copyright Asymptote)


http-~~-//www.eikongraphia.com/wordpress/wp-content/AsymptotePGCC4%20small.jpgAsymptote: Hani Rashid + Lise Anne Couture - PGCC, Malaysia (Copyright Asymptote)


http-~~-//www.eikongraphia.com/wordpress/wp-content/AsymptotePGCC3%20small.jpgAsymptote: Hani Rashid + Lise Anne Couture - PGCC, Malaysia (Copyright Asymptote)


http-~~-//www.eikongraphia.com/wordpress/wp-content/AsymptotePGCC2%20small.jpgAsymptote: Hani Rashid + Lise Anne Couture - PGCC, Malaysia (Copyright Asymptote)


Post Script: The program noted in the press release:
- The main components of the program include:
- Retail Complex: 400,000 sq. m.
- Convention Center: 100,000 sq. m.
- Penang Performing Arts Center (PenPAC): 75,000 sq. m.
- Condominiums: 70,000 sq. m.
- Hotel and Service Apartments: 50,000 sq. m.
- Offices: 25,000 sq. m.
- Observatory: 1,500 sq. m.
- Parking: 190,000 sq. m.

Related Asymptote: Chewing Gum, by Asymptote, Airplane, by Asymptote, Clouds, by Ten

The project is added to the Architects page.
Update 21 September 2007

The suggestion of Casper, two seals:
http-~~-//www.eikongraphia.com/wordpress/wp-content/210004159_fb5f31c797%20small.jpgTwo seals (Photographer: Bombhead)

Link:
http://www.eikongraphia.com/?p=1829

[joaoneves]

http://www.arquitectura.pt/forum/f11/asymptote-architecture-announces-the-design-of-penang-global-city-center-7873.html


.....:cross-eyed: