Architecture firm Asymptote unveils zero-carbon project in Malaysia

Asymptote has unveiled another major Asian project, extending the complexity and scope of their kinetic work with a 10.8-million-square-foot mixed-use, zero-carbon complex in Penang, Malaysia.
In a statement, Prime Minister Abdullah Ahmad Badawi called the
project, known as the Penang Global City, “a high-caliber development”
that will serve as “a catalyst for the NCER and an important factor in
the Malaysian economy as a whole.” The NCER is the Northern Corridor
Economic Region, a recently created development zone along Malaysia’s
northern border.

“It’s certainly a place that’s off the map, but it’s trying to get on there,” Asymptote principal Hani Rashid told AN.
He said that in ambition, the city’s goals are analogous to those of
Bilbao, Abu Dhabi, and Kuala Lumpur, all of which have used
architecture to raise their global profile in one way or another. “When
people think of Malaysia, they uually think of the Petronas Towers,”
Rashid said. “Now the government wants to bring that attention to the
northern corridor.”


Rashid and his partner Lise Anne Couture, who have been
working on the project for four years, and wanted Malaysia’s
multicultural character to guide the look and spirit of the building,
just as it did for Cesar Pelli at the Petronas Towers. “The buildings
should somehow allude to the two cultures,” Rashid said, referring to
the country’s Muslim and Chinese heritage. As a result, Rashid said the
two 60-story towers “twist and spiral,” and suggest the form of a
pagoda, but the project is also suffused with abstract Muslim
patterning. “It is symbolic gestures that people respond to,” Rashid
said, “not the explicitly symbolic.”


In addition to the two towers, which are dedicated to
residences and a five star hotel, there is smaller office tower, a
one-million-square-foot convention center, anad a shopping and retail
complex. These are incorporated into a massive stepped plinth that
provides the project with its considerable public space. The project is
expected to take 15 years to complete.
It is the first phase in a 256 acre development project for the island.