Livable Kuala Lumpur

Milieu and Objectives
Traditionally, since it first started in 2007, the UPM Bachelor of Architecture program has conducted various urban studies on Malaysian cities and town centers which are outside of Kuala Lumpur and the Greater Kuala Lumpur conurbations. As this was the inaugural fifth year architectural group of students to occupy a new ‘enlarged’ studio space at the UPM Faculty of Design and Architecture, it is decided for the studio to also shift from the ‘traditional’ norm and be valiant to identify the Malaysian capital as the chosen city of study. As Kuala Lumpur is a relatively sizeable and dynamic international urban centre, detailed urban studies of only three chosen urban centers within the city, which are Bangsar, Pudu and Sentul are proposed. These three localities present their own rich and localized diverse historical and cultural prosperity that would provide the students with ample research avenues of the lifestyles and socio-cultural concerns affecting the KL urbanites.

Bangsar, Pudu and Sentul studies

The first semester was delineated via the ARC 4002 Advanced Architecture Studio program primarily for macro site specific urban historical and contextual studies of the three urban centers with micro analytical studies of chosen individual sites. In line with the theme of ‘Livable Kuala Lumpur’, each group was then initially tasked to propose public urban amenities rejuvenation programs with architectural and/or social strategies and propositions that could elevate and invigorate the living qualities and further appreciation of each of the three urban centers. The 2011-2012 Year 5 group of 21 students was evenly divided into three groups for the entire duration of two semesters of ARC 4002 and ARC 4003. The site analysis of Bangsar, Pudu and Sentul was carried out as a collective effort among the 7 members of each group, with great encouragement and emphasis on students working on sites which would or could be neighboring to each other. This was quite successfully done with the Bangsar group of students of whereby 4 of the group members worked creatively on the former Lever Brothers land at Jalan Bangsar, designing schemes that actually link thematically and physically, while the Pudu and Sentul group were quite individualistic to a certain extent. Subsequently each student was required to develop and propose several potential projects and typologies with probable sites for their individual ‘Comprehensive Design Project’. All projects were encouraged to ‘fall back’ on the theme of making Kuala Lumpur more liveable as a city.

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