05.08.2020 Views

CC Jul-Aug 2020

  • No tags were found...

Create successful ePaper yourself

Turn your PDF publications into a flip-book with our unique Google optimized e-Paper software.

CASEstudy<br />

Merdeka 118<br />

The creative capabilities of Archicad were used throughout the design and construction of Malaysia's<br />

tallest building, Merdeka 118, scheduled for completion in 2024<br />

Merdeka in English means<br />

independence and the Merdeka<br />

Stadium in Malaysia, designed by<br />

architect Stanley Edward Jewkes, has a<br />

special significance. It is the site where the<br />

Federation of Malaysia was formally<br />

declared on the 31st of <strong>Aug</strong>ust 1957,<br />

transferring power from the British Empire to<br />

the new Malaysian Government, and was<br />

the first modern building of the Federation.<br />

In 2008 the Stadium Merdeka received<br />

the UNESCO Asia-Pacific Award for<br />

Excellence for Cultural Heritage<br />

Conservation because of its<br />

significance. Any further developments<br />

of this important site would need to be<br />

equally noteworthy, and the new<br />

Merdeka 118 tower is well on the way to<br />

completion, scheduled for next year.<br />

Funded by Permodalan Nasional<br />

Berhad with a budget of RM5 billion, it<br />

will be the tallest building in Malaysia<br />

and will comprise 400,000 square<br />

metres of residential, hotel and<br />

commercial space. The name Merdeka<br />

118 reflects its 118 storeys, 83 of them<br />

office space, with 12 storeys of hotel<br />

rooms, 5 storeys of hotel residences and<br />

a retail business centre - occupied by<br />

Park Hyatt Kuala Lumpur. The rest of the<br />

spaces are taken up by elevators,<br />

recreational and maintenance facilities<br />

and parking space for 8,500 cars<br />

The site at Petaling Hil has a number of<br />

other historic landmarks which won't be<br />

included in the development, but<br />

Merdeka Park, where Merdeka 118 will<br />

be built, had actually been turned into an<br />

open air car park. Instead, the Merdeka<br />

118 development will have access to the<br />

newly built MRT Sungai Buloh-Kajang<br />

Line, excavated underneath the southern<br />

end of Kuala Lumpur old town.<br />

Affirming its cultural significance,<br />

118 Merdeka has a unique faceted<br />

design, a mixture of diamond<br />

shaped facets which echoes the<br />

diversity of Malaysians, and also<br />

resembles the raised hand of<br />

Tunku Abdul Rahman when he<br />

proclaimed independence at<br />

Stadium Merdeka.<br />

FENDER KATSALIDIS<br />

Merdeka 118 was designed by<br />

Australian architects Fender<br />

Katsalidis, using Graphisoft's<br />

Archicad 24 as the core<br />

application. In fact the project<br />

has been through a number of<br />

revisions of the software, the<br />

earliest being Archicad 14 -<br />

and all the iterations have<br />

brought fresh and useful<br />

tools to the process,<br />

according to Daniel Goldin,<br />

CAD leader for the practice.<br />

Karl Fender, who founded<br />

the firm in Melbourne<br />

along with Nonda Katsalidis, spoke<br />

about his experiences over the last ten<br />

years and why Fender Katsalidis chose<br />

and continue to use Archicad as the<br />

core software for their projects. Fender<br />

Katsalidis is well known for producing<br />

distinctive landmark buildings in<br />

Australia and South East Asia. One of<br />

their earlier projects, the Eureka Tower, is<br />

Melbourne's tallest building and one of<br />

the word's tallest residential buildings. It<br />

was completed in 2006 but is now<br />

dwarfed by the 650 metre plus height of<br />

Merdeka 118.<br />

The distinctive features of many of their<br />

earlier sculpturally interesting designs<br />

incorporated a variety of natural<br />

materials and textures, such as exposed<br />

steel left to weather and rough-hewn<br />

timber. Merdeka 118 is no less<br />

interesting because of its angular<br />

shapes and extensive use of irregularly<br />

shaped curtain wall sections.<br />

Explaining his use of Archicad<br />

throughout the project during the<br />

Graphisoft's press launch of Archicad<br />

24, Karl said that the software was able<br />

to satisfy all of the practice's creative<br />

ambitions with no software limitations,<br />

that it is intuitive and easy to use, and<br />

the work processes they were able to<br />

adopt enabled them to work on bigger<br />

projects in a smaller time frame.<br />

22<br />

<strong>Jul</strong>y/<strong>Aug</strong>ust <strong>2020</strong>

Hooray! Your file is uploaded and ready to be published.

Saved successfully!

Ooh no, something went wrong!