Design = 70% Thinking + 30% Drawing

After a break of 3 years from the architectural industry, it is such a coincidence that my first major design project is related to education. I’ve always believe that education and profession must have strong link in order to push the industry forward, that was exactly the reason why I decided to teach 3 years ago. It is interesting to note that when I get myself involved again in building design after a long period of absence from the industry, I noticed that my approach in making architecture has somewhat changed from where I stopped. I found myself able to look at the entire scheme more holistically and with a more tranquil mind too.

I guess the management skills that I’ve learned from KDU College really benefit me after all. 3 years ago, I used to design building in a very ad hoc manner, in other words chaotically and without any clear sense of direction. The painstaking scheduling exercises that I’ve been through as the Academic Department Head of KDU College really transformed me to be a more organized and focused person. Now, I treat the design process as management of problem solving exercise.

I was trained that drawing is a very crucial exercise in designing. I didn’t understand this when my lecturer first told me that our drawings will have to ‘speak’ for themselves. He was right but what he forgot to emphasize to me was that thinking is inherent in drawing. Whenever we draw a line, our minds are actually processing various information about that line such as:
Is it a wall?
Is it transparent?
Does it have rough or smooth texture?
How will it affect the perception of the space?
What is its impact in three dimension?
Has it got any cultural significance to the place?
etc……etc………etc………

In other words, if we spend 3 minutes drawing perspective of a room, we actually have to spend 7 minutes conceptualizing the spatial significance of the room. After this thinking process, we may decided that what we’ve drawn does not work at all and we spend another 30 minutes amending our drawing which lead us to think for another 70 minutes of a revised design! This is the truth about designing. No one ever said that design is easy, it is tough and time consuming. However, once we clear all the contradictions in our minds and convince ourselves that we have arrived at the best solution at the end of the day, it will be a rewarding experience to just sit back and enjoy the creation of our design endeavor.

Design Is.....

I have a T-shirt with its front printed "Design Is" while its back printed "A Better Idea". This is how we have been taught as designers, to always come out with something new. But is design only about that? There will be those days that we keep scratching our head trying to figure out how to put our pens down the butter paper in order to solve problems. We keep on pressuring ourselves that we are going to design the next award winning buildings. However, we end up staring at a blank sheet of butter paper most of the time. Perhaps if we don’t focus so much on making a breakthrough, wouldn’t that make us feel better. The problem lies in us focusing too much on trying to be different from other people.

Philip Johnson, an internationally acclaimed American architect once said that he just want to be second best, not the best one. And I think he got a point there. If we think about it deeper, design is actually about solving problems. If we are designing an apartment unit, the problem is how can we design a conducive living space. Besides solving problems, design is also about making the decision which we think are right on that particular moment. The reason I said this is because there is no right or wrong in design, any design we create is justifiable depending on the particular angle one looks at.

Unbuilt Works II

I've selected a few of my favourite projects which I've designed a few years ago but unfortunately were never built for some reasons. Looking back at these proposals, I do see several areas where I could still improve on. Our sensibilities towards aesthetics will change as we become more exposed. It is important to be critical of our own design. We must be able to identify the strengths and weaknesses of our proposal even before the client notices them. Be humble and learn from others.

Unbuilt Works

For those of you who take design as a career will know or will soon find out that it is a long journey that you have decided to take. You find yourself doing a lot of proposals but only a handful that will eventually be built. Such is the thrill and despair of the design process. The only way to sustain your endeavor is through passion and the desire to create a better living environment. The 3 images shown here are my initial proposal for the KDU's Walk Of Fame or commonly known as the 'tunnel' area at ground floor where the new curve white wall is located. This original proposal cost too much (about 5 to 6 times higher to be exact) and the management asked me to come up with a revised design. The 2 curve white walls that is there right now is the result of the cost cutting measure. Although never got built, the 3 images up here represent the unborn creation that will unfortunately remain forever in my imagination.

Take a stand!

Years ago I was asked to design a 3 storey bungalow by a developer. When I presented my proposal to him, he gave me his feedback very politely. He said to me in Hokkien: "Tan r...lu eh cit le TOWER eh sai mai cuan poh e boh? Co si kak heng AND THEN CORNER eh wui e toh ho liao..." In case you are wondering what the hell does it mean, allow me to translate for you. He asked me whether I can do away with a tower that is purely cylindrical in its form (apparently he thought that it would be more costly to construct curvy structure but he was too proud to mention it out loud), he suggested that a rectilinear tower with round corners would suffice. I defended my decision of having a curve surface in order to establish a prominent achor point for the entire building. I told him that if I were to follow his suggestion, the characteristic of the entire building would be altered. I guess he didn't want to sound like he was completely ignorant of aesthetic, so he agreed with me in the end. We as architects or designers must always take a stand professionally to justify what is right to us without offending our clients. Sometimes we even have to educate our clients simply because it is our duty to do so. We must not blindly follow instructions otherwise we will have to bear the consequences eventually.

House 00

This is an imaginary house that I designed while in KDU as an exercise to brush my rendering and planning skill. Still need a lot of improvement in the rendering part, takes time to master the lighting though. Anyway, this house demonstrates that we don't need huge space just to live comfortably. A house for the contemporary family which constitutes of 4 people at the most need only two rooms, a kitchen/dining and living areas. Design of houses should focus more on how the interior interacts with the external environment. The house is open in the sense that daylighting can be easily introduced into the interior of the living quarters so as to 'enlarge' the space visually and emotionally. As the name 'House 00' implies, this is the prototype of my imaginary house, I hope to design more houses in the future. So stay tuned for House 01!!