COMMERCIAL LOBBY

ministry of design

YTL Corporation Berhad, Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia

This project neatly toggles betweengrandeur and intimacy. The soaring entry rises no less than 82 feet. “The challenge was how to enhance the majestic quality yet not dwarf human scale,” says MOD founder Colin Seah of the 32,700 square feet of lobby and amenity spaces he and his team designed for a construction conglomerate’s headquarters, which occupies a Kohn Pedersen Fox Associates skyscraper. Their solution was to clad the colossal columns in white marble, etch the stone with vertical grooves, and then anchor and interrupt them with base insets and horizontal ridges of bronzed aluminum, which break up the dizzying height. Further tempering the vastness isLeaves, a commissioned sculpture by Studio Sawada Design of thousands of silver- and bronze-tinted aluminum shapes that descends like a glimmering cumulus.

In the café on the eighth floor, MOD went warmer and smaller scaled, employing oak-slat paneling, granite flooring, and seating clusters offering partial privacy. Linking levels eight and nine, where the meeting and function areas are, is a spiral statement stair encircled by golden rods of powder-coated aluminum—akin to an opulent birdcage.

—Georgina McWhirter

PROJECT TEAM: COLIN SEAH; JOYCE LOW; RUTH CHONG; KEVIN LEONG; DAMIEN SAIVE; NAMRATA MEHTA; FAI SUVISITH; JUSTIN LU; ZHANG HANG; MAGGIE LEK; KAYE MOJICA; RICHARD HERMAN; RAIS RAHMAN; TASMINAH ALI; AZILAWATI WANTI; FAIZ JASNI.

bestofyear

commercial lobby/amenity