Imagine planning an outing with the family one day, and you’re looking for something that caters to everyone in the family. You come across a place that takes you not only on a complete shopping tour but also a gastronomical adventure while being surrounded by lush, natural greenery and a huge lake, busy with folks enjoying fun water sports. You’re taken on a journey through carefully curated spaces and corridors showcasing the best of the best brands and designs, each store inviting you in as you go. All within the city’s reach, just a short train ride away. Welcome to the new shopping haven, created to stimulate all your senses – Silverlakes Village Outlet.
Being the first premium shopping outlet in northern Peninsular Malaysia, Silverlakes Village Outlet was designed to offer specially curated spaces for all walks of life. The core concept driving this project was Modern Eclecticism – a notion that reshuffles the rule book to mix and match opposite elements together, such as old and new, east and west, luxe and humble, showy and quiet. The most significant design approach was to complement the existing natural context of the land, which includes a secluded lake, flatlands, and rainforest. One of the challenges was to incorporate and preserve the large rain trees on site without any hewing. Another site constraint was the large lake that was once a mining pool – which was successfully transformed into the site’s key attraction as an extensive waterfront, giving the mall its distinctive characteristic.
Lightweight blocks, brick walls, and red brick veneer were used for the cladding of this project. The idea for the face brick walls of the building originated from the historical Kellie’s Castle, which is located near the Silverlakes site. The red brick veneer exudes a warm and rustic feeling to its surroundings. Inspired by De Stijl, the Architect also created exciting – and not to mention – very Instagrammable spaces for the younger crowd using coloured glass for the roof. This beautiful feature breaks up the monotony of the facade by casting shades of primary colours onto the users, ground, and walls. A time-lapse will show the colours dancing across the surface throughout the day as the Sun moves. You will find these spaces of light and shadow play at the North and West porte-cochère to celebrate the ingress of the crowd.
The West entrance is situated directly opposite the Batu Gajah Railway Station, making it convenient for visitors and shoppers from out of town. For those who drive over, there is ample parking located at both entrances. The mall comprises 27 blocks with 146 retail lots, an expansive food court, 20 bazaarstyle retail units, kiosks, and pop-up booths. The North and West Villages are connected by one of the longest floating bridges in Malaysia, which doubles as a scenic viewpoint in the centre of the lake. The entire mall is also wheelchair accessible.
Visible from the aerial view, there is an organic flow of form with its obvious meandering circulation. This was integrated into the layout to soften the visitors’ vision while walking through the approximately 3.5km loop of shopfront street. This idea was a way to entice the user to keep walking to see, quite literally, what is around the corner. As for the retail units, the designers worked with a simplified module where the height of the retail blocks was set to vary from one another to offer physical individuality for retail tenants to express their brand concept and designs accordingly.
“To summarise, we’ve created something for a hybrid of functions that synergises all fragments of activities within it, crafting this development to be one of its kind. It could only have been done at this spot specifically. Our intention was always to let the surrounding nature be the main act while making the retail and visitors the supporting characters, and finally – for the physical architecture to act as the driving force working behind the scenes. We see this project as an active intervention on the existing ground. Being unrelenting in retaining most of the rain trees and finding a way to circulate ourselves around it, was truly a deliberate effort to create a sympathetic journey when experiencing the site.” (Zone Architect)
