Whole in one.

Compared to the stuffy colonial image of many existing facilitities, Akitek Tenggara's golf club exploits spatial dynamism and fragmented informality.

Golf remains an extremely popular sporting and social pastime in Southeast Asia but high land values have limited the number of clubs on Singapore island. This has given rise to the development of facilities in adjacent Johor Baharu, the southernmost city of Peninsular Malaysia. Commissioned by a Japanese developmen company, this new golf club is located in the industrial neighbourhood of Pasir Gudang. The design, by Akitek Tenggara, is a bold subversion of conventional precedent. It represents a shift away from the familiar colonial imagery employed by most clubs, and instead reflects the industrial nature of the surroundings and the increasing technological sophistication of the game itself

The new clubhouse is symbolically positioned on the highest point of the course reached by a winding access road. Amid the undulating greens and fairways, the building appears as a surreal cacophony of colliding planes, angles and drums, like some strange, deconstructing sculpture. Very much an object building, it utterly dominates its surroundings, visible from every part of the course like marker beacon. The strong visual relationship between clubhouse and course is a critical determinant in the internal arrangement. Instead of the usual agglomeration of large buildings, the bulk of the clubhouse accommodation is contained in a circular podium half-sunk into the hilltop. This industrial-styl base is surmounted by a number of elements, including games facilities, administrative areas, restaurants and a wedge-shaped golf lounge.

Once installed at the nineteenth hole, players can still keep abreast of events out on the course. To bring the immediacy of play into the lounge and restauran areas provision has been made for large screen projection displays in the publi areas. A hydraulic crane can be mounted on the central mast to provide a mobile platform for television cameras to record play and transmit it into the bowels of the clubhouse.

A central circular ramp is used as an organising device, connecting the horizontal and vertical spaces. The ramp is intersected by a linear structure that slices through the entire composition to forge a dramatic connection between the clubhouse and surrounding landscape. Viewed from a distance, the constantly changing interplay between the disparate elements of the superstructure is held together by the discipline of the podium. By exploring the potential of technology and materiality, Akitek Tenggara has broken with th pompous formalism of more traditional golf clubs and established a new precedent, based on fragmented informality and spatial dynamism.