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Asymptote’s latest project is a massive 10.7-million-square-foot development in . all images courtesy asymptote

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.

Atelier Seraji of Paris, which also competed for the project along with OMA and Morphosis, was awarded the master plan for the Penang Global City. London-based atelier ten serves as environmental consultants, a daunting task considering the massive complex is intended as a model for sustainable development throughout the NCER, the country, and the region. The green systems consist of everything from micro-turbines to micro-photovoltaics, from grey water to trigeneration.

Rashid said Asymptote had been reluctant to join what the firm saw as a green bandwagon, but now that much of the focus of green design is on technology, “we find ourselves increasingly thinking about it. It has to lead to better buildings,” he said. by MATT CHABAN via archpaper.com

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