by Caryl Teh
Our story today started with a tip about the renovation of Menara YTL’s surau. And we have to say, the transformation looks fantastic.
Before we jump into it, a little bit of basic background. A surau (Musolla) is a religious place of worship and prayer (solat) for Muslims. Men and women have separate surau’s, each with unique requirements. They are mandated to pray five times a day: dawn (Fajr), noon (Dhuhr), late afternoon (‘Asr), sunset (Maghrib) and night (‘Isha); facing the Holy Ka’bah in Mecca. There are also two supplementary voluntary prayers called Sunnah and Nafl.
Source: Muslim Versity
5-7 obligatory prayers a day can be tricky and time-consuming if your place of work doesn’t have a surau. But YTL has always been a family that values openness, diversity and inclusivity. That’s why if you venture to the 26th Floor of Menara YTL, you’ll see that YTL made sure their values are aesthetically portrayed. It didn’t always look this way. At the end of 2020, an in-house designer from YTL Construction really went above and beyond to ensure that the space matched Menara’s modern, contemporary architecture. Let’s have a look inside.
As you enter each surau, you’ll see that the rooms aren’t very large. But by taking down selected walls and putting up some mirrors, it feels quite expansive. Shades of beige and white on the wooden-textured wallpaper give the space a warm and inviting ambiance.
A beautifully simple Arabic geometric pattern make up the cupboard doors that house prayer shawls, which the original surau design lacked. (And no designated place to keep prayer shawls meant they had to just be lined up along the walls.)
Before
After
And those slanted dark lines on the ground? They aren’t just to add a quirky modern-looking angle. Rather, they serve the very practical purpose of giving a clear indication of the praying alignment.
Finally, as the finishing touch of her Islamic minimalist design, the designer chose to feature contemporary Islamic art. Have any of you ever seen this kind of mesmerising Kufi calligraphy before?
Needless to say, the surau’s are beautiful, clean and comfortable spaces with a slight modern twist and edge that anyone in the YTL family would be very happy and proud to call our own.
It doesn’t matter what religion or cultural background you come from, this project was a HUGE success and stands as a great testament to the fact that YTL cares deeply about providing all the facilities you need in a wholesome, welcoming work environment.
“The fact that my boss asked me to look into this project made me so happy to know that YTL cares so much that they wanted the surau to be just as good as if you went to a proper mosque outside of the office.”
If you haven’t seen it yet, head over to the 26th Floor! Just be sure to observe all COVID-19 SOPs, and take some time to admire all the thoughtful, heartfelt details that the surau holds.
