JUTTING up from KL's landscape like a lengthy parang lodged in a passed-out amok victim, Merdeka 118 is now inescapably conspicuous, even to the city's Braille readers.
The freakishly out-of-place NBA star, however, isn't done with its steroidal growth spurt – after recently topping-out at 500 metres, the tower will next sprout a unicorn horn, taking its final height to 644 metres, which will secure it street cred as the second-tallest building in the world.
But like unicorns (which exist!), the Merdeka 118 is likely to be the very last of its critically-endangered "super chonk" species. Upon its completion next year, the acrophobic's second-worst nightmare will be one of just four mega-tall skyscrapers in existence, joining the leggy trio of the Abraj Al-Bait Clock Tower in Makkah, the Shanghai Tower in Hulu Langat (where do you THINK it is?), and elephantiasis-sufferer, the Burj Khalifa in Dubai. Mega-talls are defined as stiletto-shod skyscrapers over 600 metres in height – and the construction of more such overgrown architectural tumours is now seen to be a "tall" order.
So says the B1M – a frightfully influential architecture and construction authority with 1.5 million skyscraper-junkie subscribers on YouTube.
Last week, Malaysian B1M BFFs like me choked on our durian ice creams and tripped on our Jalur Gemilang when the channel unexpectedly published a Merdeka 118 feature, which has raked in over 500,000 views (only 100 of which are from me).
Stitched together with designer-label-level CG imagery, the 7-minute clip opens with that overexposed Big Bird of buildings, the Burj Khalifa, which the B1M says was supposed to herald the era of mega-tall monstrosities. But multiple, grandiose plans were forced to undergo controlled implosions, with only nine making it to construction stage. According to the Council on Tall Buildings and Urban Habitat, of the nine wannabes, six – including the Chicago Spire – were abandoned, while three were forced to go on crash diets and discard their dreams of mega-tall glory.
The sun-poking 1km Jeddah Tower, meanwhile, stopped taking its Viagra in 2018.
B1M's mention of the domino-collapsed global landmarks is disturbingly graphic and triggering, but the parade of pathos ends when the Merdeka 118 erection thrust itself into view. Making love to the camera and shown from every flattering angle, the tower is presented as THE phallic supertall megaproject that beat the odds.
The KL skyline, by the way, does a delightful photobomb, with the has-been, but still-loved, Petronas Twin Towers and The Exchange 106 leaning in for maximum exposure. The B1M goes on to explain that most of the Merdeka 118's floors are already earmarked for occupation by PNB, which means it won't be lonely for long.
As for the other early and midterm-aborted mega-talls, the B1M submits that they underscore the questionable necessity, practicality and demand for super-tall skyscrapers.
Long before Covid-19 left the global economy in intensive care, mega-tall projects were increasingly seen as taking too long to plan and construct (Merdeka 118 will be eight years in the making by 2022) and too expensive to maintain, costing arms and legs which may never be recouped, as tenants make themselves scarce due to commercial and residential property overhang, and the skyscraping rentals of prestigious mega-tall projects. (In a controversial video last year, the B1M highlighted the "failure" of the allegedly half-empty Shanghai Tower – a claim which ruffled the blood-red feathers of many in China, and to which the news channel CGTN responded with a b*tch-slap of a rebuttal.)
The coronavirus subsequently saw the globe's urban centres coughing out terrified office workers, who, fleeing for the suburbs, promptly proved that a work-from-home policy is practical, even preferable.
In 2020, the world's workforce learned that a cluttered bedroom is just as conducive to white-collar work as a Central Business District office within walking distance of a Starbucks.
Building satellite-hazard skyscrapers, the B1M reasons, is now only justifiable if a city is in desperate need of an architectural status symbol – but there are far less pricey, challenging and arduous alternatives to attaining that goal (just host a Miss International Peace pageant, or something).
I'm dejected that the wrecking ball of reality has necessarily demolished the concept of the mega-tall skyscraper. But I'm also on Cloud 118 over KL's soon-to-open cloud-slicer. Going up!
WATCH THE B1M VIDEO: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pnRscqkN3vw&t=3s