Zaha Hadid Architects’ design for Sunrise Tower in Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia, engages with the city in multiple ways. A mixed-use tower with offices, commercial, hotel and residential aereas.
Sunrise Tower engages with the city in multiple ways. By exploring potential synergies at different levels and anchoring itself to the existing urban fabric, it creates a platform of services that engage with neighbouring developments, sustaining critical mass and a sense of community. The scheme merges all programmes into one building, distancing itself from the traditional tower and podium typology. Through a detailed landscape strategy the design interweaves tower and ground, extending and connecting the different parts of the site, integrating the new pedestrian routes and internal road system, structuring the fabric of the new development.
The design houses 5 different programmatic components: residential, hotel, offices, retail and parking. Connectivity between these parts becomes central to the project in order to produce an articulated design that encompasses both the scale and the different qualities of each of the parts, fusing them into a coherent scheme. The program is stratified, stacking one function over the other, or carrying them in parallel when the tower branches. Programmatic synergies are created by blending certain programmatic aspects that are common to create powerful spaces that not only differentiate between programs but also enable a system that separates public from private, yet integrating the necessary security features to organize a seamless transition between environments. The design concept creates spaces that blur the difference between building and landscape, intensifying the fluidity between interior and exterior.
The programmatic parameter also develops a grid of occupation, a modular system for hotel rooms and residential apartments. Because this grid is integral to the buildings topology and structure, tube-in-tube system, the partitioning system becomes interchangeable, constructing a flexible landscape to be tailored to the client’s requirements, capable of assimilating changes in short, medium and long terms. The created pattern is supported through the structural frame elements, carrying the building’s façade and generating interesting elegant views through the tower. Its design concept integrates natural light, shading, program, access and views, making the component the key operator of the transition between interior and exterior spaces.
The building is designed through a series of independent flows that map the tower and organize different routes for different programmes. Along these routes the lobby and shared facilities floors work as communication hubs, like intersections that enable flexible itineraries and changes between uses. Similarly to the skin, the circulation materializes as a multi dimensional spatial grid, inclusive of the program, treating interior and exterior in a seamless way, thus maximizing the clarity of the scheme and the perception of the different levels. The design of a clear navigation system for lobbies, atria and common areas, enables visual communication as well as access through the cores, ensuring fully accessible environment for all users. The building’s complex programme is distributed through 66 floors in total, 4 bellow ground and 62 above ground, with an absolute height of 280m. The ground lobby is the primary hub of the tower, defining 4 different dedicated lobbies for residential, hotel, offices and general public.
Gross Floor Area 150000 m2
Site Area 6800 m2
Footprint Area 2800 m2
source Zaha Hadid Architects
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