INSPIRATIONS
Everybody got their own source of inspirations, and here’s how I develop and explore different kind of inspirations.
For current semester’s design, Design Studio 04’s project is to design a commercial cultural hub that serves the community of Johor and to bring out the identity of Johor itself. Our site is of Johor’s Urban Forest Park (Hutan Bandar). The way I design this commercial cultural hub is to study the site context and issues that’s around the site, then coming up with design considerations and alternatives. For each issue, I study the cause of the issue and all the other possible factors, in relation to the site condition and context.
On the other hand, for the theme of my cultural hub, I’m doing an Art & Craft revivalism and reform centre which integrate with vocational education. The reason I’m setting this art and craft as the theme to my commercial cultural hub is because Johor’s traditional art and craft, Gambus and Kuda Kepang specifically, is slowly fading away along with Johor’s rapid development. Young generations tend to ignore the sense of belonging and their true identity of who they are and where they came from. It’s such a pity because Gambus and Kuda Kepang is such a strong identity to represent Johor and that is why this issue inspired me to create a cultural hub to somehow preserve and reinvent an innovative way of doing the art and crafts, turning them into a contemporary kinda art with the traditional element still intact. Why vocational education? It’s an irony that although Johor’s rapid development is one of the main reason that leads to cultural lost, vocational education is the one which can actually boost and aid in the development of our country. It is real important to have local trained workers to work in the industry to prevent outflow of currency.
The other issue that I take main attention on is the school children around Urban Forest Park (there’s quite a few schools just opposite the park) who didn’t have a proper place to gather after school. They tend to linger around the food court beside urban park, ignoring the urban forest park. That is why, based on the schooling time and the crowd attraction which also based on different timing, I created different spaces to cater different group of people such as in the morning, crowd is limited to parents and elderly.
From the case study that I’ve done, I found out it is crucial to connect people and direct people to the urban forest park through my cultural hub. Therefore, Plassen Cultural Centre is a very good example to show that a cultural hub can serve as a connection point between two region whether to connect people of the different community or to gather like minded people.
:D
Therefore, inspired by the issues and case study, my spaces actually connects the food garden and school area to the urban forest park, enhancing the connection point.
So those are my inspiration to the space planning and circulation of my building. I notice that inspirations doesn’t have to be limited to any objects or emotions. As we go on higher semesters, site context and issues are getting more and more important. On site issues that I have to tackle and solve is also one of the source of inspiration to do space planning and design. I plan the space based on the needs of people and eventually develop the form which based on practicality. I think it’s also a good way to pull ourselves from our wild ridiculous imagination that we developed throughout lower semesters. Case studies are also one of the sources of inspiration where we as an architecture student can prove the practicality of our design by researching on other’s similar projects. It is equally crucial to act as the source of inspiration for me this semester, both on site issues and case studies. Although to be honest, this kinda inspiration is kinda lame and boring, I'm grateful to have to chance to explore different approach of design.