By Ar. David Teoh, Director, PAB Architecture
PAB’s mission is Healthier Ecologies, and the way we pursue it is through a transdisciplinary working culture. Both ideas grew out of our history: five decades as consultants for the built environment, and a long run as pioneers in health facility planning in Malaysia. This is the story of how the two came together.
Pioneers in health facility planning
Before the National Heart Institute (IJN) was completed in 1992, Malaysia had built up some local healthcare design expertise. For the more complex facilities, however, the country still relied largely on foreign health facility planning consultants.
PAB’s founders, Dennis Teoh and Shamsul Bahrin, set out to change that. They offered bright, promising team members the chance to pursue specialist Master degrees in health facility planning at universities in the United Kingdom. A key pioneer of that generation was former PAB Director, Chiam Tat Hong.
That expertise was put to work early. From 1981, PAB worked for over a decade on the Universiti Sains Malaysia (USM) Teaching Hospital in Kubang Kerian, Kelantan. Then, in 1992, came IJN: the first hospital fully designed by a Malaysian health facility planning team, with PAB as its architects.
Many others have since walked through our doors, gaining knowledge and experience in the field. Together they helped build what is now a vibrant healthcare architecture community in Malaysia. PAB itself has been involved in hundreds of health facility projects of every scale, offering single-discipline consultancy to fully integrated design.
Pioneers in green healthcare design
PAB has also led the way in green building design for healthcare in Malaysia. Two PAB projects set national firsts: Gleneagles Hospital Kuala Lumpur was the first Malaysian hospital to achieve a Green Building Index (GBI) Gold rating, and Cyberjaya Hospital was the first to achieve GBI Platinum. The GBI tools are amongst the most stringent in the industry at this time.
Our transdisciplinary team is well-versed in the matrices for green building compliance required by various tools (GBI, GreenRE, MyCrest, PH-JKR). Rather than treating certification as a checklist at the end, we apply a first-principles approach from the schematic design stage, as a natural part of our workflow and thought process.
Rebuilding the ship while it sails
When I was made a director in 2021, we set about restructuring the practice after the pandemic. It was, in a way, rebuilding and future-proofing the ship while it was sailing.
We began by identifying our “Why”, following Simon Sinek’s Start with Why. The answer was to place the design and realisation of healthier ecologies at our core.
Why Healthier Ecologies
The mission came from two strands of our history.
From healthcare to salutogenic design for every building. We have been pioneers in healthcare architecture in Malaysia for half a century, but we wanted to go further. Our niche specialisation in health could shape salutogenic, health-promoting solutions for everything we design: homes, schools, hotels, offices, transport hubs, industrial, and institutional facilities.
The legacy of our name. PAB stands for Perunding Alam Bina, ‘consultants for the built environment’. Since 1974, the firm has been multidisciplinary from the start, offering architecture, urban planning and landscape architecture under one roof. Alam bina can also be read as “built ecologies”.
Put the two together, and the mission names itself: Healthier Ecologies.
Transdisciplinary: learnt from healthcare
The word we use for how we work comes from the field we have served for decades. In healthcare, the best care for a patient often needs doctors, nurses, therapists and psychologists working as one team. They share knowledge across professional boundaries and plan together around one person. Clinicians call this a transdisciplinary approach.
Through decades of working alongside medical professionals, we learnt from the field and adopted the same approach for our internal process. A hospital, a school or a home should not feel like the sum of separate consultants’ drawings. It should feel shaped by one team that understands health, place and people together. I first described PAB as transdisciplinary in a talk at the Malaysian Institute of Architects (PAM) in December 2022.¹
Transdisciplinary architecture in Malaysia: how it differs
The three words are often used interchangeably, but they describe different ways of working.
| Model | How the disciplines work | What the client gets |
|---|---|---|
| Multidisciplinary | Side by side, each in its own scope, coordinated at handover points | Several consultants under one contract |
| Interdisciplinary | Exchanging information and adjusting to each other’s work | Better-coordinated packages |
| Transdisciplinary | Sharing one set of goals and crossing professional boundaries from the first brief | One integrated design shaped around the people who use it |
What this means for your project
Working with a transdisciplinary mindset lets us offer solutions and insights that set us apart from our competitors. For clients, it shows up in four ways.
- Insights from beyond architecture. Our health facility planners, town planners, interior designers and landscape architects contribute to shaping the brief from day one. A hotel or office gains from what we know about how buildings affect health. A hospital gains from landscape and urban thinking.
- Fewer gaps between disciplines. Because the team plans around one set of goals, issues are resolved at the design table rather than discovered on site.
- One coherent design. You receive a project shaped by one team’s shared understanding, not a stack of separate drawings to reconcile.
- Green performance from the start. Green building requirements are designed in from the schematic stage, not retrofitted later to pass certification.
A lived office culture
Our goal is to make transdisciplinarity both an approach and a lived office culture, one that everyone adopts openly and freely. Today PAB brings together architecture, medical and health facility planning, town planning, interior design and landscape architecture.
There is a real culture of learning among our staff. We deliberately designed our new office to facilitate the interactions necessary for its success; project discussions happen on the open floor and draw in people from across the practice. Our landscape architects work alongside our architects as collaborators. No one feels inferior or superior. Each grows by learning from the others, and each defers to the subject matter expert in the room rather than working in silos. That is what Healthier Ecologies looks like from the inside.
Five years on
Five years after we began rebuilding the practice, the transdisciplinary approach is producing results beyond individual projects.
Recognised internationally. Cyberjaya Hospital won the International Health Project (over 40,000 sq m) category at the Design & Health International Academy Awards 2026. The awards were presented at the 15th Design & Health World Congress in Kuching, Sarawak. PAB served on the project as architects, health facility (medical) planners, interior designers and landscape architects. It is the clearest demonstration yet of what our transdisciplinary approach delivers: four disciplines, one team, one integrated hospital.
Leading conversations beyond our walls. PAB’s leaders now help shape policy on a national stage. That work ranges from healthcare planning standards and guidelines to industry-adopted guidance on designing for safety and health, such as CDM 2024. We have taken this a step further by exhibiting our ethos and work internationally, in Jakarta and Tokyo in 2026.
People who grow beyond their professions. Our team members do not stay within the confines of their individual disciplines. They learn what it takes to put whole ecologies together: how a building, its landscape, its interiors and its health outcomes work as one.
Work with us
Whether you are planning a hospital, a school, a home or a new township, we would like to hear about it. Get in touch with us and we will contact you within the next working day.
Graduates and professionals who want to grow in a transdisciplinary practice, and partners looking to collaborate in Malaysia and ASEAN, are welcome to reach us there too.
Frequently asked questions
What does Healthier Ecologies mean? It is PAB Architecture’s mission: designing every building and place, not only hospitals, to support the health of the people who use it.
What is a transdisciplinary architecture practice? It is a practice where architects, planners, designers and specialists share one set of goals and work across professional boundaries, deferring to the expert rather than working in silos.
Where does PAB’s transdisciplinary approach come from? It is adapted from healthcare, where doctors, nurses, therapists and psychologists plan care together around one patient. PAB learnt it through decades of working with medical professionals.
What does Perunding Alam Bina mean? It means consultants for the built environment. Alam bina can also be read as “built ecologies”, the root of PAB’s mission.
What is health facility planning (medical planning)? Health facility planning is the specialist work of organising how a hospital or clinic functions: its departments, patient and staff flows, and space standards. It happens before and alongside architectural design. PAB has offered it in-house since the 1980s.
What is salutogenic design? Salutogenic design creates spaces that actively support health and wellbeing, rather than only avoiding harm. It builds on sociologist Aaron Antonovsky’s concept of salutogenesis.
Does PAB only design hospitals? No. Healthcare is a core specialisation, but PAB applies the same health-led thinking to homes, schools, hotels, offices, transport hubs, industrial and institutional buildings.
What services does PAB offer? PAB offers architecture, medical and health facility planning, town planning through PAB Planners, interior design and landscape architecture.
Which notable hospitals has PAB worked on? They include the National Heart Institute (IJN) in Kuala Lumpur, the USM Teaching Hospital in Kubang Kerian, Kelantan, the National Cancer Institute in Putrajaya, Temerloh Hospital, the Cheras Rehabilitation Hospital, Cyberjaya Hospital, the Institute for Endocrinology, Gleneagles Kuala Lumpur (Block B), KPJ Tawakkal Hospital, KPJ Damansara Specialist Hospital, the Centre for Forensic Medicine at Kuala Lumpur General Hospital, and City International Hospital in Ho Chi Minh City, among others.
When was PAB founded, and by whom? PAB was founded in 1974 by Dennis Teoh and Shamsul Bahrin.
Where is PAB based? PAB is based in Kuala Lumpur and works on projects across Malaysia and ASEAN. In 2026 it exhibited its work at Malaysian Architecture Week in Jakarta and Tokyo.
Notes
¹ Ar. David Teoh, Evolution & Renewal, presented at PAM POP Workshop 5.0: Resilience & Innovation, organised by Pertubuhan Akitek Malaysia (PAM), Dewan Presiden, PAM Centre Kuala Lumpur, Saturday 10 December 2022.