Equator Tower

This 380 m tower responsive to its environment is a highly efficient office machine that meets best practices for office flexibility, daylight penetration, and area efficiency and creates a spectacle in the Kuala Lumpur skyline.

A slender structural core is achieved by combining an efficient vertical transport scheme of double-decker elevator cabs and two intermediate sky lobbies and a service riser scheme of three intermediate mechanical floors. Ringing the core, 12 m-wide office plates are laid on a 1.5 m planning grid and layered 4.2 m floor-to-floor. The FAR saved by the office’s efficiencies is added to the Observatory, Sky Lobbies, and Podium Lobby as “outriggers” containing extra lifestyle amenities. Clad in 3 m-wide, mullion-free, triple-glazed IGUs with clear glass spanning floor to ceiling, the façade provides extraordinarily unobstructed views.

To shield its four sides from the equatorial sun, the tower is enveloped in a transparent, PTFE-coated, glass fiber-reinforced fabric sun shade, silver on the outside to reject heat, black on the inside to enhance visual legibility of the cityscape, and segmented into shingles for air circulation and ease of retraction. This veil is stretched between the outriggers and the mechanical floors on a tensile cable net and can be retracted partially or completely to reveal the transparency of this elegant tower.