KL, City of Museums

Rethinking Kuala Lumpur around its Museums

Within a 5km radius of Kuala Lumpur’s national Muzium Negara there are 18 other museums.

The museums are in disrepair, the sites they occupy underutilised and their exhibits tired and poorly maintained.

No wonder then that KL is not known for its Museums.

This studio will examine the potential for the city to become known as a City of Museums, and how site planning, architectural language, and exhibition design can facilitate this.

Each student will be assigned a museum, will analyse its governance model, its funding base, its audience reach and its curatorial agenda. Also, students will collect the data outlining the relationship between each museum and accommodation, transport, retail, the river and other cultural institutions.

Armed with this information, each student will propose a re-design of their assigned museum with a view to more efficient use of space – and in doing so make available a piece of land on which they will propose a design for a sympathetic yet commercially viable development.

Students will be required to fund travel to, and accommodation in, Kuala Lumpur for one week in March.