Engineering

Client : Petronas Berhad
Status : Completed 2022

Designed to nestle within a heavily landscaped estate, the new Petronas Leadership Centre is a sprawling 14 ha campus located near Bangi, Selangor. The campus is designed to encourage social collaboration and enhance future learning experiences through innovative spaces in support of Petronas’ corporate and work culture.

The design objective was to distil the essence of an experiential journey to encourage maximum interactive encounters among all employees, while retaining the integrity of the Petronas ethos. This translates into a focus that transcends imitation or pastiche.

At the same time, there was an impetus to break away from traditional campus planning, to innovate and adapt the design to the locality whilst celebrating the purpose of the organization.

The form of the 45,000 sm campus is a curved central pedestrian spine that becomes a main infrastructure focus and which links all building components. Class rooms and accommodation blocks are thus interweaved closely to create spacial cohesion. Spaces are physically connected via crossing pedestrian bridges adjoining classrooms, guest rooms and public spaces to allow seamless visual interaction and connectedness to all parts of the program.

The cascading building form, responding directly to the project’s physical demands, introduces a new skyline to the existing flat greenfield site. The campus is designed to nestle into nature and embrace a vast manmade lake which offers acoustic and visual buffers.

Status: Completed 2016

The brief was for an office building integrating all operational and administrative functions of Air Asia with supporting the conference and recreational facilities for staff and visitors. Covering an area of approximately 4.8 acres, the project site is located within the boundaries of the Low-Cost Carrier Terminal of Kuala Lumpur International Airport 2. Site restrictions include limited access via an elevated roadway that cuts into the buildable extent of the lot. A height restriction of 27m applies to the building, from the requirement that there be unobstructed visibility from the control tower directly adjacent to the building. Furthermore, the longer sides of the site are orientated along the east-west axis, maximizing the building's sun exposure.

Given these conditions, the energy performance of the building became a driving factor in the design. It was important that the corporate identity of Air Asia and the concept of 'one big happy family' be incorporated into the design as well. The building is a rectangular open plan designed around light-filled atriums that impart an invisible order to the open floor plan. Bridges connect different departments across the atrium spaces.

A multi-purpose chilled beam system is employed throughout the building, replacing a conventional A/C system with substantial savings in energy consumption. Openings are reduced to control the energy consumption of the building and where openings exist around the atrium, double-glazing which has better insulative properties than normal glass is used. These glazed areas are further buffered from excessive heat gain via a green planting screen that sits outside the glazed area. Foliage from the planting screen absorbs direct solar heat gain whilst diffusing light entering the building. Green walls within the building improve air quality and soften the interiors of the building.