6.1.2024 Saturday - feature

 

A small sense of achievement

Every second Thursday is a special day for me (us), especially in the late evening when our small editorial group completes yet another digital issue of our newsletter. There is a small but significant sense of achievement each time, almost as important as the ones related to our architectural work; another chapter filed away, another foster child set free into the world. 

The 4 of us led by Hui Joo do a final proofread; SiYong is good with names and dates, PikShia the adverts and I check the grammar and phrasing, before sending it to Ivy who as the Chapter Chair releases it to the architecture fraternity early Friday morning. 

We don't pretend that the contents in our newsletter are very high brow or even well-researched, we see it as a means of curating our local news and successes. Often it is not important to anyone other than the author and those close to her and us; the publishers, and I suspect those are the few who read the article. Nonetheless, it is an important act of recording and setting within the time-line of our community - like old Fujichrome photos of long ago birthday parties or graduations we need them as a point of reference to see how far we have come, to recall those who have left us and to cherish the ones still here and in good stead. And these references become more important as time passes, much like heritage buildings.

So, we will continue to curate and publish until such a time that we run out of money or articles or both. We have found that in recent months, many more readers have put up their hand to contribute a project, proposal or article. Hopefully they too share our sense of achievement to see their work in print as a small step in the sizeable task of curating their work.

 

Discovering Delight

Ramp access at welfare building

Stairs in a private residence

This is a recent effort to feature local design talent and to gather potential projects for our local architect's newsletter. We asked for one photo, a caption and a tidbit of information about the designer, with the aim of promoting the designer rather than the practice.

Post MCO, we felt that there was a need to raise the collective spirit of our architecture community, I started by contacting several former interns for their projects. I felt that the concise format would attract the young uns, but news travels quickly in small town and soon there were offering from older designers and architects, so we had to change the name of the article.

I think Discovering Delight is a much better title as it defines one of the criteria for a project to be put forward By the end of two weeks, there were 20 submissions of varying scales, typology and interest. All of them were included in the article, which comes out in mid-July.

This is a preview.

Private residence

Sean tells me that the jumpers from from the client's team and the builder was the photographer.

Private residence

I think this is a showroom

Upgrading of a retail outlet

Facade treatment of a warehouse factory

Sunscreens of a showroom

Ramp access in a welfare building

A sun room

Green wall for a toilet

Children playground in an apartment building

A reading room

A handmade stool

Verandah kitchen

Fashion boutique

University faculty meeting room

A palm civet who occupies the designer roof garden

A handmade kitchen extension

Confession

Forgive me, Father for it has been one month since my last blog entry...

I have been so busy with all my duties and obligations in the past month, that I had to make a list of my 'to-do' lists. Jokes aside - I have done just that, listing things that are not related to work or duties, but are important because they nourish me. This list remind me to set aside some minutes to sketch and paint, tend to the garden, to read and to continue my carpenter projects. So, here is some of last month's duties in a pictorial format.

1. Painting
 I found an old sketch of this spiral stairs - I drew it one Sunday afternoon years ago and decided to revive it with watercolors between dinner time and bed-time at the end of a particularly busy day at work.

Padungan Road back lane

2. Drawing
I am working on the design of a house which is the extension of an existing house that we designed several years ago. The link between the new and existing house is through a gallery space or a 'ruai' after the 'street' or corridor space in an Iban longhouse.

the 'ruai' is shown in orange

using the notion of served and servant spaces - Louis would have approved

the different entities of the house is unified by a roof that turns into a wall

Initial sketch of the 'ruai'

Sketch up version - the space alludes to the old streets in Chinatown

3. Writing
This is my last term as editor, next March someone else takes over. I enjoy the writing and compilation of varying tropics into a theme for each issue. But when the date lines clash - it is pressure that I do not need. I think it is a good idea to step aside and let someone else try their hand at this. It is important to have change - both for the newsletter and for me.
You can get a copy of the newsletter on-line at pamsc.org.my