Sunday November 22, 2009

Height of design

By CHIN MUI YOON

Judging by the names involved in creating them, the properties that will be built in Kuala Lumpur’s new midtown are going to become the Federal Territory’s most desirable addresses.

EXPECTATIONS are always sky high whenever Kenny Heights is mentioned. After all, the project boasts an assembly of some of the most prestigious international designers and architects who aim to score a few “firsts” in Malaysian design circles.

Sir Terence Conran will be wielding his renowned expertise in interiors for the first time in Malaysia.

Planned as Kuala Lumpur’s new midtown, Kenny Heights’ name is a combination of two of the city’s prime areas, Kenny Hills and Damansara Heights.

The master plan for the 35ha of land that comprises Kenny Heights centres on a piazza, or public square, and a 9ha green lung. Around the piazza and lung, land will be developed in nine parcels over the next 10 to 15 years; 70% of the properties on these parcels will be commercial and 30%, residential.

First of the developments to debut is Kenny Heights Estate, which will offer 49 four-storey luxury town villas designed by Japanese architect Kengo Kuma, acclaimed for the elegance that is luxury fashion label Louis Vuitton’s Tokyo headquarters.

Kenny Heights Sanctuary, the second parcel to be launched following the Estate, will have almost 2.5ha of its 3.6ha dedicated to six spectacular gardens. They will be designed by John Van Hage, a gold medallist at Britain’s Chelsea Flower Show, the world’s top horticultural event.

Properties will be clustered in small groups – the high density, mass market look is not for the Kenny Heights Estate.

Award-winning spa group, Six Senses Spa, will open its first Malaysian outlet in the Sanctuary; and we’ll also see the country’s first restaurant by Britain’s grand old master of design and, nowadays, eats, Sir Terence Conran; he’ll be opening a “sky lounge” and restaurant in the Sanctuary.

The centrepiece of this lush oasis will be two luxury condominium towers with interiors designed by award-winning Australian firm Hecker, Phelan & Guthrie, and Conran & Partners – making the towers the first residence in this part of the world to have the Conran touch.

E-mail interviews with some of the designers involved in this project reveal that luxurious living today is all about space, greenery, water and, perhaps surprisingly, simplicity. So Kenny Heights is aimed at urbanites who appreciate casual luxury instead of overcrowded, gilded cages.

The project brings together architecture and natural greenery and water, explains Jennifer Chow, marketing head of the project developer, KH Land, a subsidiary of DutaLand Berhad.

A canvas for your life is what the Conran Residences offer. Discreet and high quality finishing will support the owner’s taste to create a unique space.

“Kenny Heights Estate, for instance, will have private residences with breathing space, which gives this project a modern, distinctive personality,” she says.

“Having these acclaimed architects and designers on board is great for our master development plan as each of them is incredible in his field of expertise. Their collective contributions will also enable Kenny Heights to offer an international selection of designs, with style influences coming from Australia, Japan and Europe.

Kenny Heights is also exclusively pairing up with Quintessentially, the worldwide, 24-hour lifestyle concierge service company. The private members’ club offers access to the finest in travel services, music, art, food, hotels, clubs, spas, and restaurants.

The estate

All eyes are, naturally, on the maiden project, Kenny Heights Estate. Some 75% of this project has already been sold with price tags starting at RM4.5mil.

Step from the bedroom into your private pool ... the four-storey villas on the Kenny Heights Estate are designed around the theme of water and nature.

Designed around the theme of water, the project capitalises on Kuma’s forte: combining nature and the outdoors with built architecture. Judging by the artists’ impressions provided, he will be using the interplay of light and shadow with semi-outdoor spaces to create the effect of a seamless transition from interior to exterior spaces.

A unique feature will be a 10m swimming pool on the top level of each unit leading from the master bedroom.

“I was strongly drawn to the unique rise and fall of the land, which makes it more interesting than a flat landscape,” Kuma says in an e-mail. “Each villa is unique, as we’ve designed each one to respond to its site to demonstrate the co-existence of diversity and harmony.”

Some villas will boast vertical landscaping to increase the feeling of living in an oasis. These will be created by French botanist Patrick Blanc, who has been making such gardens in Europe since the 1980s. He uses self-sustaining plants that can grow without soil and places them in custom made frames. These walls are integral in iconic architectural development, such as Jean Nouvel’s Musee du Quai Branly in Paris.

“Vertical gardens allow us to recreate a living system similar to the natural environment,” Blanc explains in an e-mail. “Without soil, the plants are very light. In Malaysia, some 2,500 plant species out of 8,000 grow in the wild without soil.

Kengo Kuma is known for designs that marry interiors with exteriors and allow nature to inform all living spaces.

“It’s even possible to grow vertical walls indoors, including in underground parking lots, as plant species can be selected according to prevailing climactic and light conditions.”

The sanctuary

The Kenny Heights Sanctuary will be wrapped in lots of greenery in wide, open terraces, forested walkways, and intimate, secret gardens. Chelsea Flower show winner Van Hage explains that there will be lots of private spaces although the huge expanse of land will seamlessly blend the six gardens into a single unit.

“I’ll be creating private pods fashioned from rugged, natural stones enclosed by high walls that make quiet nooks, and there will be small, quiet scented gardens as well,” he says in his e-mail. “The entire landscape will be over-planted so that it is very dense with indigenous plants and trees. There will be a canopy and a seemingly real tropical jungle as well as different levels of planting.”

The residences

Conran, among the world’s best known designers, restaurateurs and retailers, is excited about his first South-East Asian project and expects it to be as iconic to Kuala Lumpur as his famous Roppongi Hills development has been to Tokyo.

“What I think is truly fascinating about the (KL) site is that it knits together not just architecture and comfortable apartments but a whole infrastructure that will work together perfectly,” he tells StarMag in an e-mail interview.

The Conran Residences will draw on the quintessential Conran style that is based on the belief that intelligent design can improve the quality of people’s lives and will exhibit the designer’s signature strong sense of place; and, as with all interior spaces he’s involved in, they will have a finish of high quality materials and thoughtful detailing.

“At the heart of the concept for the Residences is the aim to give the occupier a canvas for his or her life, somewhere to store or display the elements of living, both practical and beautiful – we call this ‘a place for everything’.

“This concept is applied throughout each apartment in different ways, but always considered to suit its function and detailed crisply and functionally.”

All of which will surely add up to a feeling of understated luxury and space. Those high quality finishes will have an understated colour palette. Texture and softness will be added through warm timber, simple curtains in natural fabrics, screens in woven mesh or silks, and furniture upholstered in textured fabrics or leather, says the designer.

“I have always been optimistic about the role design can play in improving the quality of people’s lives, and that is as relevant to luxury developments as it is to any other project.

“Today, more than ever before, good intelligent design and green design are one and the same.”

> For more information, go to kennyheights.com.my.