Home
In commemoration on our Journal's one-year anniversary, I thought it is
appropriate to record something about the notion of a 'home' - a safe place where family members can gather and be
counted, be acknowledged and not judged. Since our launch on May 1st 2024, we have welcomed 63
projects and their designers into the BA.J family home.
In order to be fostered, you simply have to be:
1.
From Borneo, and designing/building locally or
elsewhere.
2.
From elsewhere, and building/designing in Borneo.
It is that simple.
If you already have your own website, or have been featured elsewhere -
you're still welcome. We value your company; you can have more than one home.
In our life time, most of us have lived in several homes - the one we
grew up in, the one which we build with our spouses and numerous other
'temporary' ones along the way. Each forms part of our personal history and its own cache of memories –
their importance wax and wane depending on how and what we are doing at the
time.
The family home we grew up in usually forms the strongest memory for
many of us - our young minds sponge-like absorbing stories to be re-told years
later. Like the story of how a family of 7 can live in a one-bedroom flat and
still welcome relatives from Kuching to stay with them during school holidays.
Or how Grandma would call each of her daughters on the phone each Sunday to
recite that lunch-time’s menu, as enticement (or instruction) to come ‘home’
for lunch once a week.
But it is inevitable that family home would
slowly empty, and each time we re-visit, it feels smaller and jaded. A home
must do more than simply house its inhabitants, it must continue to foster new
relationships and nurture the existing ones.
Part of growing up takes us away from home;
work or studies or relationships can momentarily relocate/dislocate us. During
those times, do we set up house? or do we ‘nest’ and create a home?. Some use
time to gauge whether it is worthwhile to create a home from a temporary
situation while others think that ‘wherever I lay my hat, that’s my home (Paul
Young. 1983)
A friend of mine travels round the world with
her favourite paintings, and hangs them up in her 'home' if she knows she is
going to be there for more than 3 weeks.
I recently experienced this first hand; a
home-invasion by 16 students from Chung Yuan Christian University arrived to
stay at No. 40 (my parents’ house or amah's house as they call it) They are
2nd Year students, here to do research
and design projects for local sites. Each weekend, we would go over and cook
for them. My friends bring food and join us, and we watch them.
I like how they gradually make themselves at
home; running up and down the stairs, hanging laundry here and there, sudden
bursts of laughter and conversation as the night draws on. At the end of their
stay, I asked them to send me photos of their time at amah's house, and they
sent me these photos which I am sharing as part of this article. It would
appear that they know how to make themselves ‘at home’. They are coming back
later this year, this time round I have no doubt that they will hanging up paintings,
and not just laundry.
Many of us experience having to leave our home
country ‘tanah-air’for further studies, some of us returned and many more did
not. In a recent conversation with friends, we talked about our individual
reasons for returning home to practice architecture. When I turned to the
prominent Taiwanese architect for his answer - his was simple ‘you should never
need a reason to come home’. The most succinct remark in this matter is from my
tennis partner (not an architect) - who wished his children were working in
Malaysia and not overseas - ‘they should come home to serve the community that
grew them’.
To conclude, we simply encourage you to join
us, and make yourself at home.
End
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