Away from the broken sidewalk and\nwristwatch peddlers just a little further up Jalan Bukit Bintang, Pavilion\nKuala Lumpur embodies all the glory and grandeur of capitalism.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Walk into the building and\neverything just shines. From the floor tiles to the merchandise to the glass\nbalustrades, the mall is a testament to how dazzlingly far floor wax and glass\ncleaning fluid can go in projecting a desired image. And if that’s not enough\nto make you want to spend all the money you don’t have, almost every shop lot\nlooks as if a page of Vogue has just come to life.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Consumerism in KL has not looked\nthis good since Suria KLCC opened in 1998.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Common Room<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n But it’s more than that. In a city\nwith a dearth of public spaces such as parks and promenades, we need our\nshopping malls to provide us with amenities as basic as contiguous sidewalks\nand public seating. And the Pavilion provides these amenities, suggesting that\neven a bulwark of consumerism can be democratized, that it too can provide\npublic spaces for everyone ranging from weary socialites laden with shopping\nbags to foreign migrant workers on their day off.<\/p>\n\n\n\n By introducing elements such as\npublic seating areas, public access and natural lighting, GDP Architects, the\nfirm that designed the mall, has shown that it is attuned to contemporary urban\nsensibilities. They have also produced an extremely slick design. The\ntwo-storey storefronts facing Jalan Bukit Bintang, for instance, look like a\ncontemporary take on the fronts of traditional Straits shophouses.<\/p>\n\n\n\n And there’s more to come. The\nPavilion is only one part of a RM3 billion multiple-use development that will\ninclude an office block, serviced apartments and a hotel.<\/p>\n\n\n\n All this is driven by good business\nsense. Public and cultural spaces, like corporate social responsibility, are\npart of sophisticated branding and marketing strategies employed by even the\nmost hardened property developers.<\/p>\n\n\n\n And make no mistake about it — the mall didn’t look this good by accident (or by virtue of one autonomous designer’s flash of inspiration). Its image has been carefully stage\u00ad-managed down to the smallest details. Employees of one store were recently told that they were not to use Styrofoam for a temporary atrium display. Potential tenants go through what can only be imagined as a rather haughty selection process. “We want to carefully select tenants that will bring value to the shopping centre,” Pavilion’s leasing and marketing director told the Star newspaper, “As the epicentre of inspiration, tenants must be able to provide a shopping experience to shoppers.”<\/p>\n\n\n\n Epicentre of inspiration aside,\nother selling points included its significant economic potential. Among other\nthings, it was expected to create six to seven thousand new jobs and is\nprojected to bring in RM1.5 billion in retail sales this year.<\/p>\n\n\n\n The government, for its part, has\nencouraged this and similar projects as part of a larger urban manifesto to\nredevelop the heart of the city. The Pavilion even won for itself the\nendorsement of government ministries. It has been designated a tourism asset by\nthe Ministry of Tourism, but more surprisingly, the Ministry of Culture, Arts\nand Heritage has reportedly called it a centre for arts and culture.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Shortly after its inception it\nhosted gamelan and wayang kulit performances, but there seem to have been few\ncultural events in recent months.<\/p>\n\n\n\n The last event I saw in the atrium\nwas a promotion for a popular brand of shampoo.<\/p>\n\n\n\n History and Class<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n It’s hard to talk about the Pavilion\nwithout talking about what used to be there.<\/p>\n\n\n\n The site was the location of the\nBukit Bintang Girls’ School (BBGS), one of KL’s venerable\nmissionary-established schools. When it was announced that the land would be\nexchanged for a multimillion ringgit Smart School in Cheras, conservation proponents,\nincluding Badan Warisan Malaysia and the Malaysian Institute of Architects,\nfought to preserve two school blocks, built in 1930 and 1941, insisting that\nthe two blocks could be adapted for commercial use.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Were it not for the unwillingness to\ncompromise on the gross floor area of the new development, the buildings would\nstill be there.<\/p>\n\n\n\n It’s hard not to observe with some\nwryness that when the mall’s proponents tout Bukit Bintang as Malaysia’s very\nown Orchard Road, Ginza and Fifth Avenue, they forget that it could have been\nMalaysia’s own Clark Quay and Shanghai Bund (in fact even Fifth Avenue retains\na number of buildings that date to the early 20th<\/sup> century).<\/p>\n\n\n\n And let’s not forget that many of\nthe best architects of our generation have risen up to the challenge to built\non and around old landmarks, creating works that stand as dialogues between past\nand present forms. The Louvre pyramid comes to mind. As does the Reichstag in\nBerlin.<\/p>\n\n\n\n As shopping malls in KL go, the\nPavilion is a spectacular space that offers a degree of utility to the public.\nBut was there a bolder, more imaginative and more courageous alternative?<\/p>\n\n\n\n I think the answer is yes.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Miseducation<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n I graduated from BBGS in 1998. The\nschool was demolished in 2001. I will not, however, exaggerate or romanticize\nBBGS’s merits in education and scholarship as many conservation proponents did\nseven years ago.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Here’s the paradox.<\/p>\n\n\n\n As an institution of learning, BBGS\nwas, perhaps no less or no more than any other school, an incubator for the\nkind of values that brought about its own demise.<\/p>\n\n\n\n In school, we got our first lessons\nin glorifying material development over intellectual growth, in defining\nambition as economic ambition and little else. We didn’t see the inherent value\nin the things around us, and least of all in the pursuit of knowledge.<\/p>\n\n\n\n ‘History’ was an exam in which we\nhad to answer 40 multiple choice questions and write four essays.<\/p>\n\n\n\n We hardly noticed that every day at\nschool was an encounter with history.<\/p>\n\n\n\n That our classrooms were surrounded\nby Neoclassical-style colonnades that were older than our parents.<\/p>\n\n\n\n That BB Park just up the road was\nwhere our grandparents used to joget and where cabaret shows got so raunchy\nthey became subject to police raids.<\/p>\n\n\n\n (Did we even know the name Rose\nChan?)<\/p>\n\n\n\n Across the street, the old market\nbecame Lot 10. What was once a squatter settlement transformed into the Starhill\nGallery. We saw one of the few public swimming pools in the city, the Weld\npool, get vacated because it too was sitting on land designated for what would\nbecome the Pavilion.<\/p>\n\n\n\n As schoolchildren, we were placed on\nthe path to be the kind of people who would bring the shopping malls of the\nworld into existence, or at least the kind of people who would welcome its\nexistence as long as it doesn\u2019t get in the way of things that have sentimental\nor material value to us. Build your shopping mall, just not on the site of my\nold school or in the green lung near my neighbourhood.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Big budget developments don’t just\nreflect shortsighted urban planning or ruthless expansion.<\/p>\n\n\n\n They are a symbol of our times. <\/p>\n\n\n\n ~ <\/p>\n\n\n\n First Published: 15.05.2008 on Kakiseni <\/em><\/strong><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" Away from the broken sidewalk and wristwatch peddlers just a little further up Jalan Bukit Bintang, Pavilion Kuala Lumpur embodies all the glory and grandeur of capitalism. Walk into the building and everything just shines. From the floor tiles to the merchandise to the glass balustrades, the mall is a testament to how dazzlingly far […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":11,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"iawp_total_views":16,"footnotes":""},"categories":[3505,34,3897],"tags":[3917,4435,4439,2893,4434,4443,2772,4444,4440,4436,4433,859,4442,4441],"language":[7523],"writer":[7613],"class_list":["post-27926","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-architecture","category-articles","category-history","tag-architecture","tag-badan-warisan-malaysia","tag-bb-park","tag-bukit-bintang","tag-bukit-bintang-girls-school-bbgs","tag-gdp-architects","tag-history","tag-jalan-bukit-bintang","tag-lot-10","tag-malaysian-institute-of-architects","tag-pavilion","tag-rose-chan","tag-shopping-mall","tag-starhill-gallery","language-english","writer-gabrielle-low"],"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/myartmemoryproject.com\/ms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/27926","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/myartmemoryproject.com\/ms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/myartmemoryproject.com\/ms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/myartmemoryproject.com\/ms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/11"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/myartmemoryproject.com\/ms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=27926"}],"version-history":[{"count":4,"href":"https:\/\/myartmemoryproject.com\/ms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/27926\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":38986,"href":"https:\/\/myartmemoryproject.com\/ms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/27926\/revisions\/38986"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/myartmemoryproject.com\/ms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=27926"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/myartmemoryproject.com\/ms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=27926"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/myartmemoryproject.com\/ms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=27926"},{"taxonomy":"language","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/myartmemoryproject.com\/ms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/language?post=27926"},{"taxonomy":"writer","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/myartmemoryproject.com\/ms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/writer?post=27926"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}