EMPT Studio

Over & Above KL

  • Kuala Lumpur
  • Club
  • 2024
  • Photography: Moshengpeople
  • Text: Jamie

Over & Above occupies six heritage shophouses, worked for the first time as a single room. With an architect, the internal structure was rebuilt around new steel I beams so the party walls between the lots could be opened and a hall carved out of what had been six narrow buildings.

What it reads as is not a bar but a warehouse left to itself and then occupied. Brick is exposed where it survived. Plaster stays raw. Steel plate lines the entry and folds out onto the street as a blunt black mass beneath the old shophouse facade, cut by two openings and a single lit logo.

A computed light fixture runs the length of the hall, developed with a German lighting studio. A column of light hung across the room, and the only thing in the building that looks finished.

Over & Above KL, interior by EMPT Studio
Over & Above KL, interior by EMPT Studio
Over & Above KL, interior by EMPT Studio
Over & Above KL, interior by EMPT Studio
Over & Above KL, interior by EMPT Studio
Over & Above KL, interior by EMPT Studio
Over & Above KL, interior by EMPT Studio
Over & Above KL, interior by EMPT Studio
Over & Above KL, interior by EMPT Studio
Over & Above KL, interior by EMPT Studio
Over & Above KL, interior by EMPT Studio