Weightshifting: Leapfrog Modernism
Kuala Lumpur is a city constantly under construction. This is a skyline that didn’t exist when I left at 20 years old, after a decade in the country.
There’s a coffee shop we tried to go to yesterday after lunch, Liten. It’s housed in an old apartment building my family and I lived in for two years. The building itself is old and hasn’t been updated since we resided there. It possesses the old school cool of creative people running a coffee shop. They have a studio and creator space in the unit above the cafe. Unfortunately they weren’t open, but we got to run through the nostalgia fields. In front of the building is now a highway and a major road. It used to just be a simple unmaintained paved road where nothing was. It was so quiet then. It is not now.
There are cranes and construction armies everywhere. Every year we visit, something has changed: a new building, a new skyscraper, a new mall, endless cafes and eateries. The second tallest building in the world is here now, Merdeka 118, which recently soft opened with the Park Hyatt hotel hosting guests on its upper floors. I watched Thunderbolts, one of the latest Marvel films on the flight over, and was surprised to see that it opens in Malaysia with Florence Pugh’s character basejumping off the Merdeka 118 and landing on a roof top somewhere with the Petronas Twin Towers in the background. This country has that kind of cinematic cityscape now.
KLCC (Kuala Lumpur City Centre) is still the highlight, and the former tallest buildings in the world, the Petronas Twin Towers are still the star. We stay in this area due to the park in the middle of it all and its central aspect. My family isn’t too far and walkability is pretty good for a city that is car-centric. Public transit continues to expand and improve. It beats a lot of transit back home: fast, clean, modern.
My family jokes that they don’t know when the city will ever stop building. When yet another similar mall with 80% of the same shops will stop being desired. Southeast Asia’s construction and development investments are only increasing. Who gets displaced when the next mega mall gets erected? For now, Malaysia is toeing a fine line between new and old, old meets new.