Starhill Gallery
KUALA LUMPUR – The façade of a famous shopping mall in Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia, has had a facelift.
The existing Starhill Gallery building, which hosts a slew of luxury stores, has been draped in sheets of crystalline glass and stone panels. The shell-like façade seems to wrap around the structure, creating a graphic mass of both solid and transparent forms.
‘Unlike many street-facing malls in Kuala Lumpur, our new façade for Starhill Gallery is firmly engaged with the public realm and generates valuable visual connections along this section of Bukit Bintang via the heavy footfall,’ says architect Stephen Pimbley, founder of Spark.
The luxurious appearance of the façade reflects the high-end brands inside; at the entranceway is a triple-height retail space for LVMH and Sephora. The façade’s effect resembles ‘wet drapery,’ a technique used in sculpting drapery on ancient Greek and Roman statues.