An innovative sports park engineered by the Web Structures’ team has delivered a gold medal winning performance in prestigious awards for Malaysian architectural excellence.
The PERMATApintar Auditorium and Sports Park, designed by GDP architects, also won a silver medal in this year’s PAM Awards, the premier award for architecture in Malaysia.
The judges described the striking design of the park, which includes an auditorium, running track, football field, Olympic-sized swimming pool and spectator facilities, as “excellent and inventive”.
The auditorium and sports park has been built on a 20-acre site at the University Kebangsaan Malaysia campus in Bangi, Selangor.
As part of the PERMATApintar education programme, the school provides gifted Malaysian students with a focused and holistic learning environment. The sports park development was commissioned by the Albukhary Foundation.
Web Structures used its concept of Fusion Engineering to help turn Kuala Lumpur-based GDP’s vision for the park into reality. It is the latest in a series of GDP projects that the practice has worked on.
The Web Structures team provided civil and structural engineering consultancy services for the RM 27.5 million construction development.
The main intention of GDP’s design was to deconstruct the rigid constraints of a conventional sports complex, allowing the building and environment to assimilate.
Using the existing slopes students are able to view sporting activities while engaging socially on the green space.
The new auditorium, made up of three connecting levels, acts as a primary gateway to the sports park and includes a 600 capacity hall and a public space foyer that links to a plaza as a meeting place. A seamless aluminium cladding scales the façade.
Dr Hossein Rezai, Web Structures’ Group Director, says: “The design concept involved harnessing and using the cascading topography of the site and its natural valleys. The sports park was to be an active landscape.
“The main design approach was one of strength and simplicity, using the different levels of the sloping landscape in creative ways to devise new avenues for spectators to view the sporting events while making connectivity between the levels as seamless and friendly as possible.
“It was an interesting and challenging concept and we’re delighted that the project’s innovation and creativity has been recognised in Malaysia’s top architectural awards. It is much deserved.”