Beauty To Beast

I was driving into town this morning when I missed a turn and had to make a U into Karamunsing Complex. Has anyone been there recently?

Work is halfway done to add more space to the building and some of the columns are right on the side of the road. I see this happen again and again in this town: Lintas, with the new multi-storey carpark on the fringe of the road, the on-going construction of Harbor City opposite Sutera Magellan, which juts into the only boulevard in KK, a new building in Asia City which also suddenly juts into the road, next to Chung Hwa School and perhaps many more that I'm not aware of. If these buildings were built a long time ago, it is understandable. All these buildings with shallow setbacks have been built the last few years and continue to be built without regard to setbacks bylaws, provision for road extensions or future expansion.



Part of Asia City. Asia City blatantly creeps onto the roads, here facing the road leading to KK, and the back too, facing Centrepoint. There are only two roads parallel to the coast, this one and the coastal road. If road reserves are taken up by (new) buildings, where's the room for future expansion??



Another outrageous building that seeps onto the road is the new multi-storey carpark at Lintas. It's so near the road that there's no path at the side of the building because it is right on the road. What the??



So you are driving along my favorite road, one I call The Boulevard. You come down the new flyover and suddenly the road narrows; it merges into the right lane. Why? Because further up, a new mass of shoplots is being built, on the zig of the road, making it a bottle neck.



You drive past this awful building ("With a giant colander on top" said my daughter) and the road zags in. Which means the road can't be expanded because the building is in the way. A building that wasn't built 10 or 5 years ago when planners didn't know better.

This Harbor City project is an extension of the ugliness of Asia City. Right across is the famed Sutera Magellan Resort, one of the top 2 most well-designed and maintained hotels in KK. It's like black vs white, good vs evil, ugly vs beautiful, a contradiction of tastes and vision.

Karamunsing Complex is the best example of the reasons why this city is called 'cowboy town'. Anything goes. Rules can be broken as long as you have the might and power. Prominent politicians have been known to pull an OJ Simpson. I remember more than 10 years ago when I was working in Tun Fuad Building, just opposite from Karamunsing Complex, people in K Complex suddenly rushed out onto the roads. They had heard a loud crack and parts of the building were indeed to have been found with new cracks and barriers were set up to cordon off certain areas. Within a few weeks, people slowly went back and the whole thing is forgotten. Since then, the building has been renovated and revamped by its new owners with such blatantness it makes me wonder if they are free from the city's building codes and regulations. Inside the podium, new space was added by cantilevering into the sides of the wall next to the elevators on each floor. How did the authorities find this acceptable? Is is really safe, have they considered the loading? This is the reason I just don't go to Karamunsing Complex, period.



This one takes the prize. The columns of the new addition are FRIGGING right ON THE ROAD.



Drive further up and this is a completed part of the expanded building. Was any piling done? Don't we need a safe distance from the walls of any building to the road?? So okay those are just columns, not walls. You have a driver ram into this column and see what happens to the building. Besides, the way it goes, very soon there'll be walls. Right after they get the O.C. Look what happened to Warisan Sq.

And now, they are adding more space and spilling onto the road. On top of the safety factor, these new additions are pure eyesore. This city has turned from a nice, pretty town into a hotch potch haphazard ugly maze, both macro as in overall orientation of the buildings and micro as in the individual ugliestness of each building. And it will get worse as more buildings are added with no proper planning, vision and aesthetics. We will get as ugly as Bangkok. Politicians willing, we'll get uglier than Bangkok.

Which is truly a shame, because KK hugs a long shore & coast line so that if you drive on the coastal road, you have a breathtaking blue sea on the left. And you have the ugly city on the right. I've always imagined how the city will look if we had good architects and planners. But the truth is, we just don't have the right authorities or even attitude to build this city. Politics and other factors rule the shaping of our skyline.

One of our most beautiful area is the Likas Bay coastline. Truly magnificent, on a sunny day when the sea is blue and the coconut and casuarina trees are swaying in the breeze. Even on stormy days, the long lines of swaying trees and the waves on the grey sea makes a gorgeous scene. When they started work on the esplanade (the plan apparently is to make the whole of the coastline from Tanjung Aru to Yayasan Sabah Building a long esplanade), I was happy. I imagined a simple, natural walkway where families can walk, looking out at the sun setting over the sea (yes, we are so lucky the sun sets over the sea and not the mountain as in the case of the other towns like Tawau and Sandakan). The coastline is so beautiful you just cannot build anything to distract the beauty of the area.

My heart sank when I drove to 1 Borneo last weekend. Midway along the Likas Bay road, the new esplanade stood out obtrusively. Instead of the beauty of the sea, the casuarina trees and the shore, you now see the man-made concrete walls, and strange enough, some totem pole-like lights, and worst of all, a 2-storey intrusive bright orange building that looks like a public toilet right in the middle of it all. I truly want to cry. I beg the authorities to please stop the further building of the esplanade. I can imagine the whole coastline marred by these concrete walls and dotted with orange buildings. That would really be a tragedy for KK, like plastic surgery gone wrong on a natural beauty. The worst thing would be if different sections of the esplanade are designed by different people, as I heard they are, because the section in front of the Promenade apartments is reportedly assigned to a middle east group. Imagine a different design and concept every few kilometres. Have we not learnt from Kuala Lumpur's LRT?

I will be taking some pictures of these absurd construction in the city. I am also going to make a list of the top 10 ugliest buildings in town. Please tell me what your choices are, and after compilation, I will post The Top 10 Ugliest Buidlings In KK. I need your input.