/// East Malaysia Property News
Masterplan Aimed at Capitalising on Kuchings’s River
population will be required to
live in higher densities.”
Multi-storey apartments were
designed with internal courtyard
spaces, LCDA said, “which could
be used as playground for the
older children or for neighbourly
interaction”.
Govt Will Buy Viable
Land Offered by
Owners
Four types of houses are
included in the Darul Hana
masterplan namely:
•
Slated for heightened progress: The Darul Hana mega project comprises
12 Malay villages along Sarawak River, starting from Sarawak
Legislative Assembly Complex to parts of Bintawa
The team behind the ambitious
Darul Hana redevelopment are
Australia’s Cox Architecture (CA)
and Sarawak’s Jurubina Unireka.
CA is notable for building a
number of award-winning
stadiums in Australia, and
also for drawing up the latest
masterplan for Singapore’s
Orchard Road shopping district.
Just as impressive, Unireka
is the firm behind the state’s
first Green Building Index
(GBI) certified facility, the
grand Sarawak Energy Bhd
headquarters at the Isthmus.
The Darul Hana masterplan is
CA’s second project in Malaysia
after Kuala Lumpur Convention
Centre.
The Land Custody and
Development Authority (LCDA) is
overseeing the implementation
of the project, which it said
would take between 10 and 15
years to complete.
The mega project comprises
12 Malay villages along Sungai
Sarawak, starting from the new
Sarawak Legislative Assembly
Complex to parts of Bintawa.
All together, it involves 2,389
houses, consisting of 3,647
families with 14,680 residents.
Presently, the villages cover
approximately 300ha but the
redevelopment would more than
double the Darul Hana area to
over 721ha.
The masterplanners said
the project was designed to
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capitalise on the “magic” of
cities upon rivers and parkland
areas, where there was harmony
between the built environment
and nature.
“Darul Hana is conceived as a
series of neighbourhoods linked
by nodes of activities, which
define the linear parkland areas
extending across valleys and
ridgetops. The vision for Darul
Hana is to see it evolve into a
sustainable new township,” said
LCDA in a media statement.
Key features include the addition
of another pedestrian bridge
across Sarawak River apart
from the already-announced
upcoming S-shaped Golden
Bridge, a new civic centre, a
commercial precinct, as well as
adaptive reuse of village houses
as tourism products.
“The Malay kampung (village)
of old had little demarcation
between public and private
spaces, due to a preference for
community intimacy over public
privacy,” LCDA said.
However the combination of
villages and higher density has
created problems like narrow
roads, limited expansion space,
poor drainage and even toilets
“facing the front of other
houses”.
“The ‘contemporary kampung’
seeks to capture the key
aspects of tradi tional lived-in
environment while meeting the
needs of contemporary life.
“By necessity, a growing
•
•
•
mixed-used shophouses
for commercial purposes
on the lower levels and
residential spaces on the
top floors.
low-rise apartment units
that prominently feature
courtyards.
“park-edge” detached and
semi-detached houses.
medium and highrise apartments and
condominiums.
At yesterday’s unveiling,
Chief Minister Tan Sri Abdul
Taib Mahmud said the
redevelopment would help
eradicating the creation of a
slum in the middle of a thriving
city.
“More than that, I have very
fond memories of the kampung.
When I was a secondary school
student, I would visit the villages
here come every Hari Raya.
“I will never forget how
welcoming the villagers were. As
the hosts, they would keep you
in one house for so long you
almost could not go to the next
one. I used to start (visiting) at
8am and would not finish until
1am,” he reminisced.
The name “Darul Hana”, Taib
added, was chosen as it had
been unofficially adopted to
refer to the villages here for
centuries.
“(In Arabic) Darul means house
or state, while Hana is peace and
harmony. This is a way of life that
must be retained in the middle
of the city. It reminds us that in
Sarawak, we are genuinely living
in harmony,” he said.
The Urban Wellbeing, Housing and
Local Government Minister Datuk Abdul
Rahman Dahlan
The Urban Wellbeing, Housing and
Local Government ministry will accept
offers from owners of viable residential
land for development of people’s
housing projects (PPR).
Its minister Abdul Rahman Dahlan
said this was because suitable and
strategically located land for housing
development was lacking.
At the same time the aim was also to
provide housing for urbanites, that
are integrated with facilities such as
a recreational ground, kindergarten,
playground and surau.
He said this at the handing over of
the Sibuga PPR project to the state
government comprising 500 residential
units valued at RM23.7 million. Chief
minister Musa Aman represented the
state government in the ceremony.
Abdul Rahman said the project, marked
under the Ninth Malaysia Plan, was
one of 27 PPR projects implemented in
Sabah involving 19,491 units of houses
costing RM600 million.
Another 4,750 units would be built
in the state, with Kota Belud and
Sandakan getting 1,000 units each, Kota
Kinabalu, Kota Marudu, Tuaran and
Kudat, 500 units each, Lahad Datu (400)
and Tawau (350), he said.
Meanwhile in a press conference,
he said other state governments
should adopt the Sabah government’s
approach to initiate urban PPR projects.