Equity By Design

GDP Architects’ new AICB building balances the complexities of need, function and context in a multi-faceted institutional training centre.

- Nizar Musa

The Asian Institute of Chartered Bankers (AICB) Building sits a stone’s throw west of downtown Kuala Lumpur, buffered against the quotidian drone of Jalan Kuching traffic and trundling train carriages by a band of dense foliage.

Those trees, coupled with elevation, have made this half-a-million-square-feet of GFA surprisingly easy to miss by commuters plying those routes.

Keener eyes, however, will have little difficulty spotting the distinguishing features of this low-key/ high-value piece of city architecture.

COLLECTIVE THINKING

The training centre lies within a financial education enclave that includes notable buildings such as Sasana Kijang, and the recently completed Asia School of Business campus and its residences.

The enclave, a secluded hill belted by green reserve, makes for an exceptional quasi-urban setting that GDP Architects, one of Malaysia’s premier practices, would embrace in their AICB scheme.

“Of course, our first instinct is to be explorative (in design). At the same time, we’re factoring in client expectations, and the surroundings,” says Shah Iskandar Siow, partner at GDP, on balancing architectural expression and appropriateness.

“So our collective thinking was that we could have this exploration internally, while creating on the outside a sense of formality and order that befits a banking institution.”