London mayor Boris Johnson announced today that Bjarke Ingels’s architecture firm, BIG, will design a new public square at the Malaysian-owned, former Battersea Power Station. The aptly titled Malaysia Square, part of a commercial redevelopment project estimated at $12.5 billion that has tapped several other architects, will unite the elements of the project—Frank Gehry’s apartment building development, Foster + Partner’s roof gardens, and the reimagined power station by Wilkinson Eyre. The first U.K. project for the Copenhagen- and New York–based firm, the curvilinear public square will feature bridges and stairways that undulate within a two-level urban area inspired by Malaysia’s landscape. Made of the country’s native materials like limestone, granite, marble, sandstone, gravel, and dolomite, the sculptural space mimics the caves found in Gunung Mulu National Park. And in one more symbolic gesture, the central amphitheater will contain a fountain fashioned in the shape of the hibiscus—Malaysia’s national flower.
