There sits a glass box of a building across from the shopping centre
at Bangsar. Love it or hate it, no one building in the city of Kuala
Lumpur has provoked as much comment as this has in recent years.
Most people love it, from architects and students to lay people and
clients who have done their share of travelling. There are some people
who hate it for its coldness, or loudness, or, quietly now, just because
they are jealous that it succeeds where they fail.
Time for some middle ground.
I like this glass box for its structural resolution and the fact that the
architect took time to look over and make decisions on structural
dimensions. It is bold. The fact that it is loud or overt is less an issue
of bad architecture than it is a requirement of the fashion and retail
industry: the building shouts for good reason.
Where the glass box fails is its slavery to its own fascist symmetry; the
fact that since the clients wished for the option of being able to return
the building to its semi detached state, that blind symmetry was the
obvious solution. Where it succeeds wildly is also in its symmetry,
not just in form but with form in relation to material, because in its
hedonistic and unrestrained choice of cheaper and unfinished raw
materials, it reintroduces a contextual aesthetic as acontextual style
and, in doing so, represents fashion at its stylistic and fascist best.
This glass box succeeds brilliantly as a statement for a retail and fashion
outlet. But it fails because it is fashionable.