Thursday 21 February 2008

MAD PENANG

Hi guys...While you're zombying yourselves silly on the site model do dream away on how you might fit an architecture into an old context. You might be inspired by MAD Architects Office, Beijing.
---Don't necessarily have to replicate the existing language, not even just utilise a contemporary language...you can in fact project yourselves 44 yrs into the futre.
---Proposed in 2006, "Living in hutongs in 2050" just invites such a lively discussion! (Note the new pathway material accentuating perspective.)
---And "Island over the Central Business District of Beijing" is quite spectacular. (Note the cheeky location of the CCTV Building in the centre.) Singapore's already building a "cruder" form of something like that now. (Govin, remember the question you asked me at Khoo Kongsi? On reflection, it wasn't such a silly question after all!)
---TLM, if you're reading this...this is what I mean by letting loose and freaking out. You'll like it!

5 comments:

Euric said...

WWKS!

short for What Would Keith Say?!

ian ng said...

Hahahahahaha.... HK!

Short for Hang Keith! (And being a self-confessed Banana, he wouldn't mind me saying that. He's a good sport, really!)

---But seriously, take heart my good man! Nobody gets their way without a fight. If you want to push the boundaries, you've got to battle for it.
---Part of the assessment of the quality of a design proposal is how you argue for it. There is no easy road, really. If you see the light, then you've got to persuade the half blind and half asleep to look in your direction and in time see it. Or more poetically, if you hear the music, then you know what to do with the tone deaf.
---Pragmatically, you must have a good argument. Understand what your agenda is in this proposal. Is it merely to demonstrate competance in "meeting the requirements of the assignment"? Or is it much more than that? To show architectural vision and to lead in alternatives to the tried and tested, the run of the mill? Even if it may appear horrendously expensive, the money is in the message. Anything, but anything, can be built nowadays with the technology at our disposal. I mean, how enormously costly wasn't Gehry's titanium roofed Guggenheim in Bilbao? And do you think if you submitted that for a school art gallery project you'd want to be worried about WWKS?
---Go for it Lion! You've got the talent, you just need the guts. (Wizard of Oz?)

Euric said...

nice reference to wizard of oz. one question i have though is how to we relate or correspond to the "site analysis" if the design is proposed to be built in 2050? do we assume the context of the period?

ian ng said...
This comment has been removed by the author.
ian ng said...

No...you build for now with a solution which you either reckon will become quite common in future or which you feel initiates a conversation which revolves around issues that are relevant to the task of taking architecture forward in the context of Penang.
Which means that whatever you propose is still a buildable building now, however difficult it is to build.