These photo’s were taken on one Saturday morning, trying to film for a new documentary,titled (at this moment in time) Don’t Quit Your Day Job. So hopfully this should wrap up somewhere within 1-2 months. Lets pray that it turns out well ; )

Owh, and a Happy New Year to everyone, have a great year ahead ; )

But in the words of legendary skateboarder Ray Barbee, ” it’s life, it doesn’t ever slow down.”

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At times we doubt ourselves, our capabilities, our future.

But that’s only because we judge ourselves too much, we’re our biggest critic.

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We forget that we have much to thank about, our family, our country, our faith.

Realising that what we do is only temporary within the clockwork of life that He has created. Like grains of sand in an endless desert. The wind blowing off every single particle one moment at a time.

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Smiles, laughter, sunlight, immaterial as they may be. Are the things in life that sum it up.

All the other things are covered over with a large piece of cloth, and once you focus on that small bit, a laughter from a friend maybe,

and thats what does it.

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Amongst dreams we soar, going deeper, as dreams itself turns into a blurry, murky reality,

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Before being catapulted once again into the harsh realities of life.

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The bleakest hour, 

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has descended upon us,

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But not without us giving up our soul and our will to fight.

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The bleakest hour comes, but with darkness comes

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LIGHT

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WHY? WHY NOT?! The Why Factory, here to their site

The Why Factory at TU Delft

We are now caught in a world where information is just a finger movement away. In a state of constant information overload. Through the sea of random cat videos on the ‘tube’, and of other weird stuff in the world, often times we do find amusing things, things that inspire us. But because we receive information almost all the time, most of things slowly drift back to the back of our mind. Say you do stumble upon great ideas, ideas which are so ‘enlightening’ that it sticks out in your mind like a sore thumb. But most of the time, these ideas fade into oblivion, because no further step is done to translate that idea. In other words no output. It might be the way that we live, the consumerist culture. We are so use to just consuming, that we become complacent. Cameron Sinclair of Architecture for Humanity, a NGO group which proves that small ideas can make a difference, states that although he agrees with the ‘think tanks’ and firms publishing distressing statistical research on developing communities, there’s just more than coming up with great supergraphics that tell people how poor they are. Ideas needs to be turned into action. There just needs to be a lot more ‘do’ tanks in the world.

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Design Like You Give a Damn, enough said. By Architecture for Humanity

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The Sex Pistols, that crazy ass Punk band

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Maybe what’s lost in this current society that we live in is the individual initiative. The inquisitive nature of humans, the thirst to express themselves has died down a little. Not because we don’t express it, but because we express it all the time, through social media sites, through messages by cell phone. We have all these devices keeping us occupied. That sometimes something as simple as doing a sketch on paper seems so alien now. Where’s the DIY culture? Why do we wait for other people to initiate things? i remember when the internet wasn’t so widespread, that people created zines. This was highly popular in the  music subculture where people created small pamphlets, filled with collages, photographs, illustration, then binded and photocopied before being distributed. Here, money wasn’t the aim, it was more of fighting for the knowledge you believed in. Sharing it with other people. The physical nature of the copies, made it into something special. That experience of flicking through the pages, thats something that the internet could never replace, the sensations. It’s why magazines and newspapers are still relevant even till now.

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Click here to the Archi Zine site!

ARCHITECTS ARE PRETTY MUCH HIGH-CLASS WHORES. nice.

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Punk zines clearly had an influence on the youth back then, and before you know it, it had infected architecture as well. In the 1970′s a group of architectural renegades, fighting against the dull modernism of that time, came up with their first archizine of Archigram issue 1. It came as something of a shock. At that time people understood and accepted that music had its loud graphics, its lewd remarks, and its playful take on authority. But being applied to architecture was something else. Archigram applied pop culture and crazy collages into their zines. It was revolutionary. But that wasn’t all, their ideas were even more so revolutionary. Proposals ranging from domestic “Rok Plug” a power socket disguised as a rock, all the way to mega structures such as ‘Walking City’, a mobile city with legs. Most of the ideas were unbuildable, but it sparked a whole generation of energetic archi hungry youths to imagine wild things beyond the realm that was physically possible. That was the strength of Archigram, to create hopes and dreams in the minds of people. In the end, Archigram only produced 9 issues in a span of 10 years. Never the less, consistency was never the aim anyway, more importantly was that they persisted in generating the ideas. Nowadays finding even a normal zine is a hard thing. But, to my surprise, and delight, i had found a website dedicated to displaying architectural zines from around the world. And it helped me regain my faith in the DIY culture we have.

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Walking Cities, alongside Plug-In City and INstant City, by Archigram. You know these guys are crazy.

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Dude, how DIY can you get right? But the substance more than covered up for the appearance.

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Among those zines, some very basic, consisting of just captions on paper, others looking more refined and more of a magazine, one in particular caught my eye. The zine, was in fact a brochure, a large brochure. It was monochrome, and the only thing color was the paper, depending on the issue. Issue 002 was yellow, and 001 was light blue. Further reading into this zine made me more and more excited about it. The zine i’m talking about is MAP, short form for the ‘Manual of Architectural Possibilities’. “MAP (Manual of Architectural Possibilities) is a publication aiming to merge the fields of science and research on one hand, and architectural design on the other.” Spearheaded by David Garcia and his studio, they undergo rigorous amounts of research for about 3 months, before starting on the design stages. And believe me, their proposals are every bit as beautiful as Archigram. When i was in Rotterdam, i had the wonderful encounter of finding MAPs on sale over at NAi’s (Netherlands Architecture Institute) bookshop. At 3.50 euro for a double printed, folded up A1 sheet, what’s not to buy right? It costs as much as a kebab, but you get far more than just a fill for your stomach. MAPS issue 002, on Quarantine, is the one i’ve got, and i’m eagerly waiting for more to come from a friend of mine. Just to help you picture what sort of proposals they do, picture this: A sustainable iceberg living station, A universal seed archive planted in South pole, A Domestic Isolation Unit, an Instantly Quarantinable Farm, a Zoo of Infectious Species, Quarantined Library on a cargo ship, are among the proposals created. And their not just fancy graphics. But chocked full with data to back it up. You know they’ve got it all figured out. What’s remarkable about the MAP project by David Garcia, is that he manages to show that with data and figures literally at your finger tips, that these data can be used constructively. Filtering out the knowledge into something tangible. And ultimately inspiring others to dream as well. With an introduction to the theme by Archigram member, Sir Peter Cook, you know that they’ve got Archigram’s thumbs up.

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Here to go to MAPS site

“MAP aims to exercise architecture in the realm of speculation, through the boundaries and directions set by research and investigations, carried out into a series of fields and themes with direct spatial implications.  and investigations, carried out into a series of fields and themes with direct spatial implications.”

CLICK on the image to view HUGE.

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If anyone wants to see this thing, come to my studio and i’ll be more than happy to show it to you guys. You don want to miss this.

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So come on guys, lets get off our lazy arse and start something. It doesn’t need to be big, not even a revolution. Start with something small but something that you believe in. A zine, a poster, some stickers for a new propaganda, who knows, you could be the next Sherpard Fairy ; ) With this, and nearing to the end of the Ramadhan month, i’d like to wish you guys out there Eid Mubarak, and please forgive the mistakes i may have done, and i pray for a safe journey and a blessed month of Syawal for all of us. And feel free to argue if you disagree with any of the topic above ; )

Wasalam,

Shamin

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The situation still seems vivid in my mind. I had been called to an interview at the Mandarin Oriental, just beside KLCC. And this interview was to determine if you actually got the offer to study in Bartlett, this was somewhere near to the end of my A Level education. This was an open interview so you could actually see the other interviewees getting the offer or not. So there would be something like 7 to 9 people lining up for their turn. Other people had bought along their large A1 portfolios, i had only ever seen or known that A1 existed at that time. And all i had was this A3 portfolio, with the A4 assignments that the school required the applicants to do before siting for the interview. After a while of waiting, my turn came, and so i sat when asked, i did everything i could possibly think of in the etiquette book. Waiting anxiously for the answers. After checking through the measley portfolio, he closed it, then asked :

” So have you visited our website ?” me: “uhm well..no,” shifting uncomfortably. Which he says, “..well why do you want to come to the Bartlett if you don’t know what we do? ” raising his voice.

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Damn, i thought, i can cancel this school off thats for sure. Then he asks the default question ” why do you want to be an architect ?” and how sure i was of wanting to study it. Of which he starts to really say stuff that was kind of trying to put me off the track of taking architecture. And i was giving a load of bollock answers on why i’d want to take it and all. Clearly he wasn’t buying it though. To be honest i hadn’t actually really known about the reputation of the Bartlett, nor know that it was among the top three schools in the UK at that time. Heck, i didn’t know anything about the school at all. And who’s this guy interviewing me? beats me i shrugged. All i know was that i wanted to go to London, just because you know, its London, yeah yeah lame i know. But it was the only university in London that JPA listed down.

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So, clearly getting annoyed by me not knowing anything, he pushed to me a copy of the 2008 Bartlett Review book with orange cover, and i still have it with me. He said, ” you go to that corner, flip through the pages, see what we do, and come back to me when i call you and i’ll ask you questions again,”

Me: “Er, alrite…” taking the book and going to a window ledge, while the line of interviewees go on without me, slowly diminishing leaving me the last applicant. I really didn’t get anything from the book, i mean i didn’t understand a THING. All i knew was that the school did cool arty projects, which i was genuinely interested on, and the sheer eccentric-ness of it. Time saw it that it was my turn. Hesitantly i went back to him. Sat down.

“So..” he starts, hands together firmly on the table looking straight at my eyes. “What interests you about the Bartlett?” ..

me : “..uhm..well, i like the DIY attitude shown by the projects..” to which he asks ” do you like to make stuff? “, and i kinda lit up when i heard that question, because i love making stuff or doing things with my hands, “Yeah, i do”, in a somewhat enthusiastic manner (i hope). So he explained what the Bartlett does, and i was getting more interested, and it was funny because it was the other way around. Instead of me knowing about the school. He continues by asking “why do i want to go to London so much?” , he knows and talks about the amount of interesting things and exposure i’ll get by living in London. I gave an answer which wasn’t that honest, so he asks again , “really, what’s the reason you wanna study in London?”, face a bit calm, but firm.

I mean i really didn’t know what to say, and i said what was in my heart. “..Because i really wanted to skate there,”

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Daewon Song, i’d idolize this guy.

To SKATEBOARD there. I mean what? What sort of lame answer is that right? But i said it, i said that skaters from all over the world have video parts in London. That was the death rope right there.

But, God Al-Mighty has His ways, and the interviewer was amused. A smile came from his lips. He later said he could actually understand that i wanted to experience the life in London, and he respected that in a way. So as fate would have it, he gave me a conditional offer to study at the Bartlett. I thanked him, and that was that. There you go, a 2nd chance, he could have easily denied me a place, i’m sure there are tonnes of other legible applicants ready to fill up my place.

Needless to say, i did bring my skateboard when i flew to london. I wrapped it in cling wrap along with my bag and it went down as cargo. That’s how obsessed i was with skateboarding. It was my saviour, the tool that helped me see the world in a different light since picking the board up in Form 4 along with a good friend of mine.

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He always had a narrative style to his works, tethering between myth and reality, unfolding storylines within his design proposals. Almost wacky, surreal in a way. All above images are works by him.

Now knowing that the interviewer was actually Professor CJ Lim, a notable architect, not just at the Bartlett but recognized the world over. I felt blessed, bersyukur that it happened. CJ Lim was born as a boy in Ipoh, before getting tertiary education at the Architectural Association (AA). When i had troubles and on the verge of failing my first year, he advised me about what i should do, and understood how it was coming from a background that had an education system of feeding students. I was truly lost, i really didn’t feel good about myself, in fact i felt worthless. That other guys were really good, not just good, but really good. And all i studied in A Levels was Maths, Chemistry and Physics…not even Arts. And CJ opened up to me saying that he to had to strive greatly in his earlier years, he wasn’t rich, but his dad wanted to give a good education for him. There was another side to CJ, the very firm person at crits was also caring towards his students. He failed his first year at the AA as well, but he said it was ok to fail. He said that i needed to read more, to be interested in things, at which at that time i couldn’t understand because i was already reading stuff. But now i know the true virtue of those words.

the man himself

And that, that has kept me going till now, that short evening chat with CJ in his small office. And although i didn’t learn much from him, i really appreciated that short session and the words that he said to me. A year later, i still didn’t make it because of other incidents that happened to me. And so goes my education years at the school. I wouldn’t know what to say if i met him again, if he remembers me anyway. I’d say “sorry CJ,… i tried, ”  maybe next time? ; )

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 ”If you fail at something it doesn’t mean you’ll be gone forever from the subject. That experience forced me to change the way I understand architecture and be much more open-minded about what education had to offer, rather than doggedly following a textbook. I think that’s what I try to instil in my students at the Bartlett.“

-CJ LIM

Mior’s final work, kinda like Lebbeus’s drawings no?

I’ve been thinking a lot lately on how we actually use drawings, or do drawings. Having just got back from the Bartlett summer show, and seeing Mior’s huge drawing as he finished his M Arch programme at the Bartlett, and he finished with a Deans List i might add. One could not help but ponder on how exactly does this translate into a built structure, since we would, eventually have to realize structures. This makes for an interesting subject. Apparently there is a difference between architectural drawings and architectural presentation. And it seems like a simple subject to write on, but believe me it’s not. There’s a whole branch of philosophy and epistemology behind the act of just drawing a single ‘line’. Trying here to touch on the surface of the subject as i’ll leave it for scholars to probe deeper into it. Here i’m trying to move away from the normal architectural tools of plan, elevation and section.

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Underground Berlin, Lebbeus Woods.

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The theorist Lebbeus Wood‘s devoted a whole article on the subject of a “Line”. Quoting that in all his years of teaching architects, he hasn’t taught how to draw to others. Even though he is well known for his drawings. He believes that “each person who wants to draw should devise his or her own way. It makes no sense to teach a method or style of drawing, because drawing is a way of thinking, and it would be wrong to didactically teach a method or style of thinking.” In a way it’s true. The way a person draws should be a thinking process just as he writes. In an article by an AA student, she states that we need to develop a way of drawing that’s as clear as reading an essay. I believe to a certain extent that this is true. But how a person draws and what it means would totally depend on the person, as that is their own way of thinking, structuring down their thoughts, a distiller if you will. Maybe there’s a whole hierarchy of drawing techniques that we’re just not able to categorize and would never will.

Some of the drawings in the series ‘Micromegas’ , by Daniel Libeskind (1979)

If or if you haven’t realized this, i am a big fan of Daniel Libeskind’s drawings the Micromegas series. A series of impossible drawings of structured particles exploded in space. No orientation, no identifiable parts, but looking at the series you can interpret your own narratives as the cluster of particles converge and diverge within the different frames, almost organic in behavior. Just like a swarm of bees, erratic in movement. Its almost beautiful in its own chaotic way. He (Daniel Libeskind) devised Micromegas and another series, Chamberworks, when he went back to teaching, discovering that he didn’t like the way architecture worked inside firms with its restrictions and bureaucracies. Chamberworks on the other hand is unlike Micromegas, employing a similar spontaneity, but in the form of jagged, wiggled and fluid lines almost like composing music but through drawing. Developed from his interest in geometry, Micromegas could be considered an alternative blueprint, whilst Chamberworks seem to explore the interaction between architecture and music.

‘Chamberworks’, a series also by Daniel Libeskind

And it may seem that these drawings have little or nothing to do with the act of architecture itself, the built form, but it’s drawings like these that Libeskind and many other avant-garde architects employ and which pushes further the boundaries of what architecture could actually do. These drawings becomes a tool, a thinking tool which escapes the normal conventions and ideas of how architecture is perceived to be, and so they are able to move away from the constraints to develop into what architecture could be instead of what it has to be.

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A drawing (above) by Thom Mayne

House X axonometric, Peter Eisenmen.

A model of House X, this model runs away from the normal conventions of how we see models. Only conforming to a correct ‘view’ from one angle.

So it comes as no surprise that eminent architects of our time all started with drawings which were in no way understandable or logical in its presentation. Thom Mayne, Zaha Hadid, Peter Eisenmen, Bernard Tschumi as well as Daniel Libeskind are among those architects that during their earlier phases in their architectural life, must have hidden themselves away from the world, slaving away at their works, drawing laboriously. And some of them didn’t get comissions to build anything for a long period of time. But those earlier years of ‘meditation’ albeit laborious, must have served immensely later on in their life as the built form or ‘translations’ of the drawings took place. It’s remarkable that built works such as Daniel Libeskind’s Jewish Museum, how his vision, borne in these drawings, have been realised in his projects. Clearly based on his drawings, Micromegas and Chamberworks, on which Libeskind’s theatrical and geometrically complex architecture was developed.

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CJ Lim’s model/drawing

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Going back to the idea of drawing, since the 1980′s onwards, schools such as the Bartlett and the AA have started to teach their students about drawing as a thinking tool. Their drawings in their normal sense are not architectural drawings at all. I had stumbled upon a third year crit while roaming around the school, and decided to stay and listen. And this guy had a wall full of sized A0 drawings and sketches. Of what looked to me, like a constellation of stars and planets, a universe even. His explanation was that he was mapping out the movement of the universe while he was having tea, or as he was stirring tea, in London. So London as the fixed point and everything else revolves around it. That to me was enough to make my jaws drop, as well as other students of his year and the panel of tutors too. And he’s one the best in his year i heard. So in an attempt to break the silence, a tutor finally asks, “So all this is..interesting..but  where’s your building?,” to which everyone waited for intensely, before he answered, ” ...it’s drifting further away into space,“. What an answer.

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Works from the Bartlett

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Many people question the role of the Bartlett, heck alot of people even despises it (other institutions) for the way they teach architecture. The fact is that they don’t teach. They just don’t teach what you’re suppose to as in normal schools, but come up with briefs that facilitate the thought process and raises questions. This is in the subject of Design i mean, they have other subjects just as we do (History, Construction technology, Environmental Studies, etc.). Tutors in the Bartlett extract whatever is in the students mind, their interest/s or inclination, and amplifies that a hundred fold. Guiding and trimming the ideas as it develops. Maturing it. Kind of like a brewery. A brewery for ideas. The system doesn’t work for everyone, but it does produce some of the most dedicated and passionate students. The passion that these guys have for their work is immense and is highly inspiring. Their drawings have evolved into one which moves from the conventional method of presentation into one which involves other senses as well. Incorporating a wealth of emotions and inviting its readers to freely speculate and interpret on it. Here in these drawings, spaces take on a different dimension as narratives unfolds itself as you examine closely the drawings.

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The biggest achievement that i find in drawings produced by progressive schools such as the Bartlett and AA is that the visions continue to stick inside the mind long after viewing them. And its the interpretive visions of them that we take away with us, chunks of the image, and not or rarely the idea of it as a whole. So it becomes a part of our subconscious, where it then mixes with other ideas , condensing itself till the right time comes for us to express it. Relating it back to UiTM, I believe we have to let go of the fear we have in producing our drawings, to test our limits, to not merely be satisfied by what we’ve done. As a friend of mine once stated, to be truly creative, you have to let go of fear. This write up has been also to remind myself that i need to strive further, and to bring my fellow comrades along in the process. With this i end this topic.