A Country house

A rough sketch I did for a client who did not continue our design conversation, perhaps he didn't like my idea of retaining the existing single storey house.

Sean has been asked to design a house for Sam (she is the client) in Batu Kawah. A minimalist house with perhaps one room and another which is the study and guest bedroom when friends come to visit from far away, interns from overseas, for Sara during confinement, for me during isolation or exile during failed attempts to dominate my wife. 

I would like to have it built before I turn 60. The house will have a wall for books and an Italian coffee machine (a real one, not an Nepresso), built from hardy materials for the inside and outside. Lock up and go convenience, and a built in music system - songs from the rafters. 

One thousand ringgit per sq metre and about 80 to 100 sq metres of enclosed space. We will have to sub divide the plot as Ho and Constance owns one half of the 2-acre lot.

WK showed me this photo (of Richard Lepastrier) years ago, and said this is me when I am old - still sitting and drawing - I would like a space like this.

More soon.
 

Travel sketches - Georgetown

I thought it would be a good idea for Sean to travel with me to Penang when I visit my job-sites - he could eat some nice food, meet my friends at work and we can do some sketching. And if time allows, we can talk about his studies and plans for next year.

Building Bridges

My friends think that I drive my children too hard and force them to do too many chores. I do not agree. Chores are those tasks that you instruct someone to do while you stand and look, it is not a chore if you do the work with them.
I see physical labour as a way of bonding with my family.

Sean testing the ramp as Felicia looks on

the landing is formed by stacking 5x5 " belian posts - the ramp is simply held on place by its weight

we try to use as many of the things we have around the house as possible, or bought cheaply from the hardware store

That is what Sean and I were doing last week - building a bridge between father and son, between the garden and the pavillion. He is a good work partner. Usually I start first, by going into the garden and preparing the materials and he quietly joins me a few minutes later and stays until we are done for the afternoon.

My plans for the weekend

Another guerrilla carpentry project carried out with a few students and cohort, running coach and English teacher, Lim Eng Hooi. The client is a friend from our running group, he has seen some of our self build projects and started asking me about sourcing materials, construction methods, etc.

So, I offered to design and build one for him with the help of Joel (high school graduate) and Sean (Architecture student). I sketched out some ideas based on simple joints and off the shelf materials to achieve a departure from 'closed' boxes for the shelves, opting instead for one that snakes its way from top to bottom.

Sean and Joel what's app this image to the client - explaining to him that the heights of the shelves varied according to the user's height; the lower shelves are for their 3-year old Nicole to store her Jenga and Lego, and her hard cover story books. The middle shelves are for novels while the upper most are some important files to be kept out of reach by little fingers.

Approval was given, so we started sourcing for material - the shelves are 25 x 200 mm dressed medium light hardwood while the vertical supports (which double as book-ends) are cut from a single piece of 12mm plywood.

Jointing methods have to be simple when the carpenters are amateurs and the car porch is your workshop. We started at 10:30 a.m. one Saturday and finished at 3:30 p.m. which is not bad if you consider time out for lunch and to teach a lesson or two about counter-sinking screw heads and taking a plumb-line.

Eng Hooi (representing Malaysia) was instrumental after lunch when our energy waned. The other man in the photo is Kueh, our client

The finished product

Sean

This was our 'home' in Rome - four of us in one large room with a balcony. It is not St. Regis but we were happy to be in Rome and I was happy that my children still travel with me; part of our family 'tradition'.
Recently, I bunked in with Sean before our race, I sat on his sofa and watched him getting my bed ready, doing his laundry and cooking pasta sauce and was reminded that he is 'all grown up' and studying / living away from home.  Not the 'chubby chickadee' anymore, he is his own man and still has time for his old man. Good to know.

Sean at work in Rome

Two dudes at Bawa's Seema Malaka Temple in Colombo 2007

Sketching with Sean

On Friday, Kok Ming invited Sean and I to BC's architectural tour of some of his buildings (truth be told we invited ourselves to the trip) which I will share in a separate post.

Later that evening, Sean and I went and stayed at a hotel in the KL city centre when I discovered that I have booked a single room for the two of us. So, Sean and I split one pillow, the doona, bed-sheet, the bed and a tiny bit of clear floor space for the night and slept surprisingly well. On Saturday, we decided to preview his sketching assignment starting with the Sultan Abdul Samad Building near the Merdeke Square.

After lunch at KL Sentral, Sean took the cab back to his apartment and I got on the express to the airport - ending a very fulfilling weekend with him. 

Several days later, Sean sent his sketches to me and here they are...