As the Taiwanese brand’s flagship store in Southeast Asia, KL’s new Eslite Spectrum operates as a culture and lifestyle hub as well as a bookstore.
The much-anticipated opening of the KL debut of Taiwanese mega-bookstore Eslite Spectrum finally happened last week on December 17, and it looks like the brand-new Starhill outlet has already exceeded expectations!
For a special opening lineup, a series of 30 arts and culture events have been planned for the first month of operations that include an array of live music sessions, art exhibitions, book launches, and workshops.
As the Taiwanese brand’s flagship store in Southeast Asia, Eslite Spectrum operates as a culture and lifestyle hub, as well as a bookstore. Books occupy 35% of its massive 70,000-plus sq ft floor space, and the rest is occupied by cafes, fashion, arts and crafts, stationery, and gift items.
The vast outlet boasts a collaboration of fine workmanship by Taiwanese architect Powen Hsiao and well-known Malaysian design brand Loka Made to create the bookstore’s fundamental structure that includes a 60-m arched wall of red brick spanning across the bookstore, with ring-shaped ceilings and colourful canopies.
The interior of the bookstore is also heavily inspired by Italian novelist Italo Calvino’s classic — Invisible Cities, with the space divided into four main city themes, each with their own distinctive style being: City of Arches, The Floating City, City of Rippling Waves, and City of Eternal Day. The City of Arches is home to a huge multilingual book collection, complete with Eslite’s list of “recommended reads” curated by its staff members every month; the rest of the racks carry a truly vast collection of Chinese, English, and Malay language books.
Just in time for the school holidays, younger readers can look forward having an entire space dedicated to them at Eslite Children offering a grand variety of children’s literature and bestsellers. The children’s space will also host monthly thematic exhibitions and storytelling activities for the entire family to enjoy together.
The outlet will also have a special venue for lectures, book talks, concerts, movie viewing, and more at the Eslite Forum areas, and stationery collectors can have themselves a field day and the outlet’s very own ‘writing boutique.’
The writing boutique is said to resemble an urban speakeasy bar, offering unique stationery products from at least 36 different countries with a large variety of Insta-worthy wrapping paper, gift cards, ribbons, and all the trimmings!
As a bonus, Eslite Spectrum KL will also house hip coffee outlets, including Taiwan’s Come True Coffee, and The Expresso Bar (by Korean brand Bean Brothers).
Source: The Star
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