PKNS Floating Restaurant

PKNS Lakeside Floating Restaurant

Design Vision

The PKNS Floating Restaurant is located in the heart of Shah Alam. It is a single storey, 1,200 sm, building that can accommodate 300 people. The building is a refurbishment of an existing structure on the same location.

Regardless of how insignificant a building is, it is still part and parcel of a city. It embodies culture, heritage and history of a city as well as memories to the city dwellers. Besides that, a conservation effort of an old building ensures the original master planning of a city remains intact to achieve the city’s inception objectives. Due to these reasons efforts must be made to preserve buildings as much as possible. However, in doing so, allowance should be made for creativity of the designer to re-interpret the upgrading exercise to suit the current requirements, available technology and the new challenges in ensuring the preserved and upgraded buildings remain fresh and relevant to the present time.

The existing floating restaurant building was in a dilapidated state due to lack of maintenance. Some of the timber columns had degraded and a portion of the roof was also sagged. The previous haphazard additions to the original structure had also compromised the traditional Malay architecture’s aesthetic. These conditions had affected the overall building outlook and make it not compatible to the surrounding development.

Design Concept

Inspired from a ‘kelong’ concept, the naturally ventilated building adopted a low energy design in response to the tropical climate. The increased internal volume creates large airy open space that funnel prevailing wind to pass through, creating a comfortable condition inside. The large overhang on the lake side protects from rain and shades the open dining deck near to the water edges for a pleasant afternoon seating.

Sustainability

The design approach of this budget conscious project is recycling. Built on the original foundation, the building re-purposes significant amount of building material from the original structure including 40 m2 of timber decks and over 3,000 pieces of clay roof tiles. The building’s high ceiling, naturally ventilated openings and use of natural lighting enhance the building’s low-energy performance.

The large open plan volume gives flexibility to the restaurant operator and users to reconfigure the internal space according their and requirement and event functions. Composting room is also incorporated in the original planning to accommodate anaerobic/aerobic digester equipment for disposal and recycling of garden and organic restaurant waste in the future with fertilizer as by-products.

Reusing of the exiting footings minimizes wet sub-structure construction activities thus reduces pollution to the lake. Carbon footprint was also greatly reduced due to recycling design approach.

The roof is purposely designed to be flat for future installation of solar panels when the budget permits.

Community & Humanity

Commendable effort has been taken by PKNS to ensure this once famous floating restaurant of the city of Shah Alam is being preserved and upgraded as originally intended as a restaurant respecting the original city planning intention. This exercise would ensure that the public can continue to enjoy the benefits of the facilities.