Verandah Extends: A Climbable Verandah That Turns Medan Pasar's Clock Tower into Civic Infrastructure

Q: Who wrote "Verandah Extends: A Climbable Verandah That Turns Medan Pasar's Clock Tower into Civic Infrastructure"?

This article was written by UNI Editorial and published on uni.xyz, a platform for design professionals and creative thinkers.

Q: What is "Verandah Extends: A Climbable Verandah That Turns Medan Pasar's Clock Tower into Civic Infrastructure" about?

This article covers topics related to Parasitic Architecture, Installations, Concept Architecture. Ismail Rahim wraps a Kuala Lumpur clock tower in a rising verandah of ramps, platforms and roofs, turning a visual landmark into a public route upward.

Ismail Rahim wraps a Kuala Lumpur clock tower in a rising verandah of ramps, platforms and roofs, turning a visual landmark into a public route upward.

5 min read·41 reads

UNI Editorial published Results under Parasitic Architecture, Installations on Jul 23, 2026

Most city monuments ask to be looked at. The clock tower at the centre of Medan Pasar in Kuala Lumpur has done exactly that for generations: it marks the square and anchors its identity, yet it gives the people gathered around it little more than a reference point. Verandah Extends asks a sharper question. What if the landmark could be climbed, occupied and used, without being replaced or overshadowed? The answer is a vertical structure that grows around the tower, turning a passive marker into a working piece of public infrastructure.

Designed by Ismail Rahim, the proposal received an Honorable Mention in Parasitic Architecture 2020. Rather than building an independent object beside the monument, Rahim treats the clock tower as a host and wraps it in a layered system of walkways, platforms, verandahs, roofs and event spaces. The ambition is adaptive reuse at the scale of the square: keep the familiar silhouette, and expand what it can do for a busy commercial and cultural district.

A Public Route That Rises Above the Shophouse Line

Section elevation drawing of the stacked timber tower with layered pitched roofs and a ramp, set against a pale sun disc and rows of arched shophouses

Rendered view of tiered timber roofs and glazed balconies with visitors, facing a distant skyline of towers over low city blocks

The section elevation sets out the project's argument in a single frame. Stacked pitched roofs climb against a pale sun disc while a ramp threads up through the structure, and behind it runs the low, repetitive rhythm of arched shophouses that define Medan Pasar. The drawing makes clear that the intervention is not a tower extension in the conventional sense. It is a route, a piece of street lifted and folded upward, so that visitors move from the square into the structure and gradually rise above the surrounding rooftops.

The rendered view from the upper tiers confirms why that rise matters. From the glazed balconies, the distant skyline of Kuala Lumpur's towers sits above the low city blocks, giving the square something it currently lacks: an elevated viewing platform from which the public can read its own city. The tiered roofs below act as a visual staircase, each level offering shade and a different relationship to the street.

The Tropical Verandah, Turned Vertical

Rendered close view of a timber-framed landing with glass balustrade, a walking man, stair flights and floodlights on the concrete base

Close render of a timber pavilion on a mesh-guarded platform, with a woman in a grey jacket walking past a timber post

Rahim's core move is to borrow the verandah from tropical architecture, where it serves as a shaded threshold between inside and outside, a place for movement along a building's edge and casual social contact. Here that element detaches from the conventional building and becomes a continuous pathway climbing around the clock tower. It widens into gathering platforms, narrows into circulation, and turns between levels. The close render of a timber-framed landing shows this at human scale: a glass balustrade, stair flights stepping onward, and floodlights mounted on the concrete base, hinting at the lighting infrastructure the square needs for evening events.

The second close view, a timber pavilion on a mesh-guarded platform with a figure walking past a timber post, reads almost domestic in scale. That is the point. The project produces a sequence of sheltered spaces rather than a single enclosed volume, and each stop along the route feels like a place to pause rather than a corridor to pass through. The verandah earns a civic role precisely because it keeps its intimacy while multiplying vertically.

Filling the Gaps Temporary Event Kits Leave Behind

Aerial axonometric drawing of the tiered tower and ramped roofs among dense blocks, with birds, yellow floating shapes and a text panel

The aerial axonometric places the tiered tower and its ramped roofs among Medan Pasar's dense blocks, and it reveals how carefully the proposal reads the square's shortcomings. Rahim identifies a missing set of facilities: shaded event areas, backstage space, elevated viewing, public-address systems, lighting and organised circulation. Today these arrive as temporary equipment that blocks pedestrian movement and clutters the square. By consolidating them into a permanent structure anchored on the tower, the design frees the ground plane and gives events a dependable armature.

This is where the project's parasitic label becomes more interesting. The new structure depends on the clock tower for location, identity and organisation, yet the relationship is pitched as symbiotic rather than exploitative. The host gains relevance and use; the parasite gains a centre of gravity it could not have generated alone.

Six Roofs Wrapped Around a Dark Shaft

Exploded sectional axonometric drawing of the tower, numbering six roof levels and the entrance ramps beside a dark clock tower shaft

The exploded sectional axonometric is the most legible drawing in the set. It numbers six roof levels and the entrance ramps, all arranged around the dark shaft of the clock tower, which remains visually distinct at the core. That contrast is a smart representational choice: the original monument is never absorbed or disguised, and the timber layers read clearly as an added system that could, in principle, be understood as separate from the host.

Breaking the tower apart also shows how programme stacks. Ramps handle arrival and accessible movement at the base, while the roofs above stage a progression from street-level activity to elevated observation. The structure is organised less by floors than by thresholds, each roof marking a shift in view, shelter and use.

Why This Project Matters

Verandah Extends is a useful corrective to the idea that heritage landmarks must be either frozen or replaced. Rahim proposes a third option: keep the monument, and let a new architecture lean on it to serve the public more fully. The use of a regional typology, the verandah, gives the intervention cultural grounding, and translating it into a vertical route turns a familiar climatic device into urban infrastructure for performance, gathering and viewing.

Questions remain about structural loading on the host and the long-term maintenance of an exposed timber structure in a dense square, and a fuller study would need to address them. But as a competition entry, the project makes a clear and persuasive case. It treats parasitic architecture not as provocation for its own sake but as a practical method for giving a city's existing symbols a second, more generous life.