A heritage street, carried upward.
On Magazine Road in George Town, within Penang's UNESCO World Heritage buffer zone, a row of ten Straits Eclectic shophouses once housed local merchants and traders. Capri Penang is our first project in Malaysia, and asked us to bring a new hotel to this heritage street without losing what made it valuable in the first place. Our design keeps that heritage row as a low podium along Magazine Road, letting a tower step up behind it - its arched form carrying the rhythm of the shophouses' arcades and shuttered windows into the building above.
An old rhythm, tuned to new light.
Before any design work began, we studied the site closely - its heritage, how people move through it, key views toward Penang Hill, Kek Lok Si and the Penang Bridge, and the path of the sun. That analysis shaped both the tower's form and its facade.
We tested two directions for the tower: arched volumes, drawing on the shophouses' arcades and shuttered windows, and scalloped volumes, a more abstracted, fluted reading. Arched volumes felt like the closer fit, and carried through into the final massing. The facade followed - curtain wall glazing and lightweight cladding on an outrigger frame, tuned to the solstice sun for shading.
Podium below, tower above.
We kept the heritage shophouse row as a low podium fronting Magazine Road, with the tower stepping up behind it. The podium holds the hotel's back-of-house, a business centre, and a pool, gym and spa; the tower repeats a simple suite plan up to a rooftop bar. At ground level, the lobby, café and retail open directly onto the heritage frontage and a laneway air well, keeping street life moving through the site.
