Week 2: 16 July 2016 – 19 July 2016
We continue our site analysis during the weekend to map out the site activities and build a site model to understand the site topography and also buildings scale. Our first site presentation will be on coming Thursday. During the site analysis and organizing the data collected, we are having a problem that we couldn’t find an answer: Who is the community around the site? Is the migrant worker part of the community? Are those office workers work in the nearby office tower and having lunch on site part of the community? We have some serious discussion on this but we can’t get an answer for it. We decided to bring the discussion to Kevin during Thursday’s presentation.
Activity mapping done by Kwan Seng
Review on activity mapping
Athirah working on the site model making.
Week 2 : 20 July 2016
We had a lecture on Wednesday given by Prof Shuhana on Urban Design. She pointed out that city is a behavioral setting where it should be pedestrianized. She also mentioned that the ultimate goal of Urban Design should be able to create a sense of place where the environment is a combination of physical, behavioural, psychological and social. I am thinking about the site and how we could able to do that for our project proposal.
Week 2 : 21 July 2016
We presented our site analysis and data collected to Kevin on Thursday. We also voiced out our doubt about the community around Bukit Ceylon. However, Kevin said that we shall include whoever living, working and active around the site as part of the community. He also mentioned that our proposed program should benefit the community and provide what they need, regardless their nationality, staying period and income. However, since our site current scenario already compacted with activities and buildings, his felt that our proposal should utilize the left out space or pocket space in between the buildings. We discussed a few possible programs, including back lane project, mosque, MRT station, hospital, decentralized school, market, organic composting, surface water collection and water purification system, bio-composting toilet or even a parody on the stock exchange. We are required to submit our individual project proposal on next Tuesday.
Traffic Circulation, Landmarks, Nodes and Street Elevation
Ground Activity Mapping, Site Activities, and Street Elevation
Discussion on possible program and site with Kevin
Discussion on possible program with Dr.Naziaty
I missed out the talk by Ridwan Kamil, the mayor of Bandung at KLAF due to the site analysis preparation on Wednesday. Everyone attended commented that it is a beneficial talk. Thus I took some time in the evening to watch the video on youtube.
Ridwan Kamil – IaaC Lecture Series 2015
I was amazed by his idea that happiness of the citizen should be an important part of the consideration while planning out the urban design. A liveable city is never complete without public space where people could hang out and spend their free time for social communication. I think Ridwan Kamil had succeeded to utilize the negative space in the city into usable community space, for example turning abundant space underneath fly over bridge into skate park, single park and even movie park. I would hope that these scenarios will happen one day in the city that I live in.
Elements needed when architecture meet urban life
Week 2 : 22 July 2016
Today, Jun Yi and I visited Badan Warisan at Jalan Stonor to find out more history about Kuala Lumpur and history around our site. We found out some old maps to trace back that Jalan Alor is named with ‘Alur’ which mean ‘stream’ in Malay. We also found a series of journals written by some foreign travelers which recorded their observation and feeling while traveling to Kuala Lumpur during 80s and 90s. I found the travel logs is very interesting with their hand sketches maps and description about Kuala Lumpur in the old days. We tried to skim through the information and figure out what had been slowly missing or displaced in the history.
After an early dinner at Jalan Petaling, we headed to Lostgens for a talk / discussion about the migrant worker in Kota Raya. The findings of the reporter had revealed their living in Malaysia which makes I feel that they shall deserve some respect and human rights.
Architecture Design Thesis 