lightness perfected

Apple's first store in Malaysia combines architecture, interiors and hardscape into a floating edifice of precision engineering.

-  Nizar Musa

Official Apple stores are distinguishable by their crystalline aesthetic, the sheer glass shopfronts very much a part of the tech giant’s physical retail identity. Yet while transparency, lighting and customer touchpoints are arguably retail cornerstones, store designs can – and have – varied between cities and regions. The brand’s inaugural Malaysian store is one such spectacle, an endeavour that brings together multidisciplinary talents both east and west under, and inside, one iconic roof.

poetic touch

The store’s public unveiling in June 2024 revealed a 2,400 sqm, three-storey premise within Kuala Lumpur’s upscale The Exchange TRX mall. Where the first two floors are characteristically Apple, it is the space above that figuratively, and literally, shines. The topmost viewing deck, connected to the mall’s roof-level park and surrounding apron, presents an ultra-clear monolithic façade crowned by a cloister vault of bespoke glass and sleek horizontal fins.

There are classical undertones within this orchestra of precision, intentional or otherwise. Orthogonal symmetry governs axes and form, the vaulted roof and oculus Pantheonic. The rounding of hard edges are a poetic touch – the roof more domelike because of it, the glass façade more inviting than securitising – that draws parallels with Apple’s own product design language.