top of page

Profile

Ridwan Kamil,one very well known among the community of Bandung as the leader who brought changes for Bandung. He is a mayor and architect. Ridwan Kamil was born in Bandung on 4 October 1971 and was elected as mayor in September 2013

kuala lumpur architecture festival 2016

organized by pam

pam public lecture 

“Thinking big but think small and detail at the same time”, quoted by speaker of PAM Public Lecture, Ridwan Kamil, a city mayor with a “degree” in social media. Why he called himself a city mayor with a degree in social media? With 2.8 million followers on Instagram, 1.3 million on Twitter and 2.3 million likes on Facebook, you won’t believe that he’s an award–wining architect and a mayor at the same time.

Ridwan Kamil with a background of professional architect was elected as a mayor of Bandung on September 2013. Although he’s a politician but he’s different from the other. He involve himself in community services like a normal people, he queue for movie like a normal people. He’s a leader from crowd. To him, there’s no difference between a mayor and normal citizen except job scope. The best example who have a similar ideology with Ridwan is our 25th Sultan of Johor, Sultan Ibrahim Ismail. The similarity is that they blend in themselves in the community so that they can understand the community more. The best way to understand someone is to put yourself in someone’s shoes. He learn from the community and the community learn from him as well. That’s the reason why he gained so much of respect from the citizen and followers in only 3 years of service.

                                                                                Ridwan with age of 44 has done a lot of things to make Bandung a                                                                                   better city for living. Bandung, the third largest city in Indonesia                                                                                       has transform into an attractive city which is overwhelming by                                                                                         artistic elements. A modern city doesn’t mean that it’s a happy city.                                                                                   What Ridwan wanted to do is to bring happiness to Bandung. And yes, he did it. Bandung has won the title of Clean & Happy city in the year of 2015. The question is, how do he bring happiness to the city? Believe it or not, he collects the ideas from citizen through Facebook and Twitter. People are free to voice out their idea and thinking through social media. The reason why he do so it’s because the city belong to the citizen, not only him. Citizens might have idea to makes Bandung better so he’ll get one idea each month and develop it. For example, the bus station on the roadside is never a boring place to wait for public transport anymore when the seat is replaced by a swing. People would enjoy while waiting. Little things like this can make a big change to a city. That’s one of the lesson that I have learnt from Ridwan.

One of the highlight of this lecture is one of the Ridwan’s policy called “Don’t give me ugly building” policy. It might sounds funny but that’s the thing that I agree the most, at first. In order to protect the architectural style of Bandung, Ridwan will filter and select the architecture which is more suitable for the city. Not every design is the best so it’s better if we could choose which to build and which one not to. If I am a mayor, I would do the same to create an ideal city of mine. That’s how to collaborate architecture with politics. You have the power to choose but is it fair to everyone?

In conclusion, I admire how Ridwan manage to gain people’s respect even though he’s an architect which is so busy all the time. A mayor with architecture mind could do better because we’re trained to design and solve problem. He is able to carry out so much changes in order to make Bandung better. It is so worth it to attend this PAM public lecture. Ridwan had presented a city which is on the track towards a greener and happy city, Bandung. I would like to pay a visit to Bandung to see how creative this city is and why our country can’t be like them. There’s too much to learn from them.

 

 “Learn by yourself is smart, but learn from the other is wise.”.

How do you define a beautiful architecture? Minimal with

sober exterior? Contemporary with dramatic play of angle?

Le Corbusier’s brutalist? Design is so subjective, there’s no

right or wrong. One may like your design but the other

might not. According to Ridwan, he prefer art déco architecture. In my opinion, it’s a smart policy at the surface, but if you could think deeper, it is quite a selfish policy. Mayor can control the style of city according to his wish. Pros, the city will be more organized and harmonized instead of a mass consist of different kind of architecture which speak different kind of language. Cons, selfish policy.

This micro-library in Bima, Indonesia was designed to improve literacy in the middle class and poor neighborhoods it is close to.

This micro-library looks modern and stands out in the neighborhood while simultaneously using "green design" to create a learning space for children.

Project

bottom of page