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©The Sun
(Used by permission)
by Lillian Tay
In imagining the future, the biggest challenge is envisioning solutions of
growth that will maintain the balance between continuity and change.
Change is inevitable as a city outgrows itself. Change is the engine of growth
while continuity maintains its sanity. Change brings vitality while continuity
creates the sense of history and belonging that preserves the identity of cities
and their people.
A balance between order and unplanned untidiness animated by the requisite
moments of frustration and chaos - this is the defining character of Kuala
Lumpur and other spirited cities elsewhere. If there were no discontent and
tension, there’d be no conversation and communion. And it’d be predictably dull
if all were in perfect order.
The scale and density of cities today no longer affords the traditional model of
a single centre surrounded by neighbourhoods and sprawling out to suburbia
beyond.
In 1957, the heart of the city centred around the meeting of the rivers from
which Kuala Lumpur took its name.
On one side of the confluence lies the Dataran Merdeka around which the stately
emblems of the past colonial era remain today; on the other side, trade,
commerce and community flourished amidst the crowded bustle of the old city,
from the Central Market to the now narrow streets of Jalan Sultan and Jalan
Petaling.
New institutions of the infant Malayan nation soon sprang up around it,
proclaiming their independence from colonial domination - the Merdeka Stadium,
the Parliament House, Muzium Negara, Bank Negara, the National Mosque,
Universiti Malaya, the General Hospital, high-rise flats and schools. These were
great nation-building efforts, brimming with promise and a great faith in the
future.
By 2007, the Petronas Towers in a single bold move, instantly put Kuala Lumpur
on the world map. The twin towers shifted the city’s centre of gravity from the
old historical centre to KLCC. This iconic symbol of prosperity and progress
spurs a new era - Kuala Lumpur is becoming a world city. This is the era of
‘Malaysia Boleh’.
The skyline is fast filling up. The city is being split up into myriad pieces of
dizzyingly expensive real estate. Divisions of wealth are being overlaid over
the old neighbourhoods as the more affluent move back into the city and the less
are forced out. Public housing make way for exclusive condominiums and
‘lifestyle’ homes become vanity objects.
Old buildings are demolished to make way for more towering structures, even
parks and the riverbank reserve are not spared as unbridled commercial
enterprise, private and public or the even more expedient partnership of both,
eke out every bit of land for more building.
The streets are choked with cars, the trains are packed - the urban fabric
thrives, the underlying infrastructure is stretched. Now and again, the city is
visited by sudden floodwaters and the smoky haze which lingers for weeks,
obliterating the sky and the sun.
In 2057, Kuala Lumpur will have multiple centres forming multiple nodes of
intensity, all inter-linked by multi-tiered networks of access and public
transportation and rings of new public spaces, lifted above the ground, floating
above the city below.
The pinnacles of the Twin Towers still gleam, if now just one of several
landmark icons in Kuala Lumpur. An extensive community of more glass and steel
towers has mushroomed around KLCC. The old venerated KLCC park lies in their
shadow.
Our zest for building and development has not abated and we have found new ways
to further densify and intensify the city. Original land on the ground is fully
built up – new ground planes are created, elevated high above the streets,
swirling around the multitude of towers.
Many more get to live in the city centre in this vertically-layered city. As
they come together across the social and economic spectrum, cultural borders
merge and dissolve, spawning new generations of Malaysians, a Bangsa Malaysia
finally in the making.
The building skyline of Kuala Lumpur is entwined with elevated infrastructure
systems and a new public realm in the sky, reclaimed from the restructuring of
air rights. A noiseless train network hovers 100m high, forming a connective web
above the street traffic with stops at the 25th floor of the buildings.
Rising even further above are green belts weaving their way around the tops of
the office and apartment towers, swirling rings of floating public parks and
plazas. Elevated 50 storeys high above the shadowed streets, trees again
flourish on the sunny decks.
The floating Sky Gardens restores public space lost at the ground level.
In 2057, we have learnt to love and respect nature. Amidst the concrete and
steel jungle, the last original forest reserve at Bukit Nanas is preserved and
nurtured within a dramatic cluster of gigantic glass domes held together by a
web of steel.
The Glass Bubble filters out the impurities of the city air creating a sanctuary
of tropical rainforest where birds and butterflies, now rare, find precious
refuge in the city. In the morning, bird songs are acoustically magnified and
reverberate within the spherical glass haven, the insect chorus in the evenings.
In 2057, we have learnt to cherish our history. At the Dataran Merdeka, a
shimmering Mega Wall of glass protects the old city from the relentless
encroachment of development. The memory of the past is preserved within this
soaring trapezoidal showcase within which the birthplace of KL lies.
In 2057, our appetite for shopping has not waned. A proliferation of
inter-connected sprawling shopping malls has now entirely invaded the Bukit
Bintang district, obliterating its streets. Life here has moved entirely indoors
into an unbroken frenzy of retail mania.
By 2057, we have fully embraced our diversity. The ethnic boundaries
historically encoded in the genetic blueprint of the city have been erased. The
enclave of Kampung Baru once fractured by fragmented land parcels, has been
inundated by waters drawn from the same rivers around which KL grew and
prospered.
From this vast artificial lake, arises a dazzling new city within the city, an
egalitarian commune of pure abstract building forms with no cultural or
historical baggage. From its midst, a gleaming new icon, a Super Skyscraper
twists its way up, soaring above the nest of mini-energy cells on the
multi-faceted roofs.
The land lots have been amalgamated and redistributed and its residents rsettled
in resplendent but compact, carbon-neutral homes of the future, floating above
the tranquil waters of the Great Lake with lush gardens and parks along its
banks.
Here, they look beyond further to 2157, in a city still brimming with hope in
the future.
Lillian Tay is a practising architect. She and her design team at VERITAS
Architects Sdn Bhd are happy to live and work in Kuala Lumpur now or in 2057.
Despite watching the gridlock at Jalan Ampang everyday from their office
windows, they wouldn’t trade its heady mix of the banal and the exhilarating for
anywhere else.
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