NORMAL ARCHITECTURE @normalarchitecture - Tumblr Blog

ABOUT NORMAL ARCHITECTURE

Normal Architecture does not pretend to be what we are not. We do exactly that, normal architecture, in a perhaps not so normal way. The work of Normal Architecture can be seen as an attempt at celebrating the mundane, the banal, and the everyday in architecture. Often, the work simply disappears, at best they attempt to rethink the everyday qualities which we take for granted in our complex (and often confusing) urban environment.

Normal Architecture believes that architecture should no longer be limited to the job of designing buildings. It should be practiced as a discipline of knowledge and a process of cultural production. Therefore an architectural project needs to be redefined. For Normal Architecture, a drawing, a piece of text, a magazine, a book, a public forum and a building carry the same weight intellectually– if not financially- as architectural projects. Normal Architecture works on the basis of collaboration.

Contact: [email protected]

See also:

http://ordinaryarchitecture.tumblr.com/

http://officenota.tumblr.com/

MASTER BUILDERS ASSOCIATION OF MALAYSIA (MBAM) HEADQUARTERS DESIGN COMPETITION: THE PORTAL

Rethinking An Institutional Building

Institutional buildings are often conceived as enclosed, inward looking buildings where spatial relationships are limited within itself. These kind of institutional buildings - with limited connection to the outside - belongs to the past.

Our scheme proposes a rethink of what an institutional building should be. In place of a solid, enclosed building, we propose an open structure with equal emphasis on the relationship between internal spaces as well as with the surrounding. We believe that the architecture for an institution in the 21st century should be a open structure which enables and facilitates sets of relationships between the users, the city and the natural environments.

It is not enough for the New MBAM Centre to be ‘just a building’.

The Portal

Befitting MBAM’s vision to be the ‘Prime Mover and the Recognised Voice of the Malaysian Construction Industry’ our scheme proposes the New MBAM Centre as The Portal. Throughout the history or architecture, the portal has been used as a device to give buildings a sense of dignity, grandeur, monumentality and also openness. The Portal is at once iconic and inviting.

The MBAM Portal should be understood as a formal and spatial device.

Formally, The Portal is instantly iconic, a metaphorical gateway towards the future of the construction industry. Spatially, The Portal results in a monumental and generous open space framed by the building program. We call this space The Great Hall.

The Portal is more than ‘just a building’.

Formally it defines an identity, a new image for MBAM. Spatially it creates place, a location which is filled with a sense of possibility and potential.

The Great Hall

This monumental space is conceived as an experimental multi-purpose space where exhibitions, demonstrations and other events related to the construction industry could be held. It will be a vibrant, active space filled with daylight and connected to the outside. Flexible partitions and screens will allow the space to accommodate different uses. Adjustable screen doors are lowered into place when protection from the weather is required.

The activities conducted in the Great Hall will be visible to the passers by and will serve as promotion for the activities of the New MBAM Centre. It’s ever- changing nature is a constant reminder of MBAM’s commitment to innovation and creativity.

Monumental yet inviting, The Great Hall symbolizes and realizes MBAM’s commitment to demonstrate innovative design, engineering and building excellence.

The Portal was a collboration with Arkitek Foo Hui Ping and Studio Karya and was awarded 3rd Prize in the MBAM Headquarters Competition, cited by the jury as “an innovative design approach”

#mbamcompetition #competition #architecturecompetition #normalarchitecture #afhp #studiokarya #theportal

SHINKENCHIKU RESIDENTIAL DESIGN COMPETITION 2017: LIVING IN CARPARK DIMENSIONS

Malaysians love their cars. The limited access to public transportation networks forces many Malaysians to spend hours daily in the confines of their cars. Perhaps this relationship with cars also explains our preference for living in terrace (row) houses where cars are parked within the house compound and are immediately accessible.

A typical terrace house unit in Malaysia - usually 2 to 3 stories in height - averages 8 meters in width and 25 meters in length, while a carpark bay typically measures 2.5 meters in width and 5 meters in length. This proposal explores the spatial implications of reducing the width of terrace house units from 8 meters to a mere 2.5 meters- the width of a carpark bay - while retaining its length– which, at 25 meters is equivalent to the length 5 carpark bays arranged end to end.

The reduction in horizontal dimensions led to a vertical arrangement of spaces in a section with split levels. Spaces are connected to a central staircase/shelf and are always next to terraces andgardens which bring in light and air. This vertical spatial sequence culminates in an indoor garden on the top floor with a retractable roof. This proposal is not meant as a solution, or a prototype for the market, but is an attempt to question our relationship to spatial dimensions. What kind of qualities could be generated in spaces of minimal dimensions? What could it be like to live in houses with carpark dimensions?

Living in Carpark Dimensions was a submission for the 2017 Shinkenchiku Residential Design Competition with the theme of ‘House of Dimensions’

#shinkenchiku2017 #normalarchitecture #smallhouse #narrowhouse

THE GRID: INSTALLATION FOR NEUE ARTISANS 4.0

Neue Artisans is founded by BandLab: Bureau of Architecture and Design, and organised together with a collective of design enthusiasts. The initiative was to organise a design showcase in support of the ever-developing local design industry, seeking to explore improved/new techniques, experiments on possibilities and components in design, art and architecture. We encounter a pool of emerging talents here in Malaysia and the region. Neue Artisans brings together this network, and is becoming a kind of design-trade show for emerging design-makers.

For Neue Artisans 4.0, Normal Architecture together with Studio Karya were commissioned to carry out the installation under the theme ‘Technique’. Our installation took on the form of The Grid

9 POINTS ON THE GRID

• “In the spatial sense, the grid states the autonomy of the realm of art. Flattened, geometricized, ordered, it is antinatural, antimimetic, antireal. It is what art looks like when it turns its back on nature.”1 • The grid is not new, nor is it in anyway an original invention or idea. Architecture does not need to be in pursuit of the new all the time. • Any attempt to make the same grid will inevitably yield certain degrees of differences. The grid is always the same, but somehow always different. • The grid is anti iconic; it is an attempt to make architecture which is invisible, not in terms of being transparent, but rather by being a background for other things. However, the grid could also be monumental, which is different from iconic. • The grid as a construction becomes a technique to measure and frame space and events. It presents itself as a sampling and indexing device. • The grid is not formally complex, yet its apparent neutrality allows it to frame complexity. It is pointless to respond to complexity with more complexity. • The neutrality of the grid and the fact that it is an author-less, pre-existing instrument, makes it is the ideal technique for the collaboration between two practices. Without realising it, both of our practices have been fascinated by the grid. For different reasons, perhaps. • The biggest challenge in working with the grid was the discipline to stop ourselves from trying to ‘design’, beyond what is already there to be appropriated. • For us, the grid somehow addresses both the idea of limits and possibilities in architecture; both are equally fascinating and perhaps not so mutually exclusive?

1.Rosalind Kraus, “Grids” in October, Vol. 9 (Summer, 1979), pp. 50-64.

#normalarchitecture #studiokarya #thegrid #neueartisans

aroomforarchitecture

GUEST ROOMS FOR JAIN TEMPLE COMPLEX @ SODE, SIRSI, KARNATAKA - OR THE ARCHITECTURE OFF THE CITY.

The clients’ brief was simple, ‘some guest rooms and a garden with 24 different types of trees (24 because it represents the 24 messengers or preachers of Jainism who have achieved the highest state of human conscious and Moksha) and together it should form what they referred to as a ‘Wisdom Park’.

The site is a beautiful contoured tapering land facing a 10th or 11th century stepped lake. The position of the lake in the context is very precise as it is situated in the lowest part between the gentle valley formed by hill formations running east to west.

The temple complex itself is situated amidst dense forested condition with the farmlands and the temple being the only signs of any settlement.

Our response was to the tapering site was to offer a inhabitable perimeter colonnade with both public and private programs. The Private zones are formed by repeating the courtyard rooms 12 times in each wing with a courtyard - a buffer zone connecting the public programs with staircase- after 6 rooms. The same configuration is duplicated and aligned to the northern edge of the site.

The voids left between the hilly ground and the linear organization of the courtyard rooms form the public zones of the project -almost as a negotiation between the logic of organization its residue formed as a response to the context.

If the rooms are above the public room then they have a single height courtyard with an open bathroom, a stepped bath tub and a tree. If it is below the public program then it has a double height courtyard that creates adjacent terraces for the public zone.

the building is completed by a entrance lobby on the East and a large open pavilion or Veranda on the West - framing the lake.

The building is conceived to be made of very basic and austere construction system of exposed concrete frame structure with exposed brick inlay - sometimes solid and sometimes forming a simple screen.

The courtyard accommodates the garden with 24 trees.

—

Status: To be re-designed as only a garden with 24 trees, a fountain and a fence.

We are currently developing the Garden Option.

Anecdote: The meeting was over in 5 minutes when the client said ‘perhaps me and you are not on the same page.’

me: ‘but you wanted those room.’

Client: ‘It wasn’t me it was the other person..!’ ‘I just need a garden with 24 trees and a fountaint.’

Me: ‘That would have saved a lot of time for all of us… but nonetheless, let’s do the garden.’

Client: ‘ the models look good, can I keep them? You can take them whenever you want. I just want to study them.

Team:

Room for Architecture: Shreyank Khemalapure, @ayushgangwal @misripatel Salonee Shah, Shourya Jain and Saurabh Singhla.

@normalarchitecture : Nazmy Anaur

Special thanks to Sunil Thakker of @bindcollective for offering to share the studio space for the duration of the project.

normalarchitecture

GUEST ROOMS FOR JAIN TEMPLE COMPLEX @ SODE, SIRSI, KARNATAKA - OR THE ARCHITECTURE OFF THE CITY.

text by Shreyank Khemalapure

#roomforarchitecture #normalarchitecture

NEUE ARTISANS 4.0 WILL FEATURE INSTALLATIONS BY KATOLEE DESIGN OFFICE AND A COLLABORATION BETWEEN STUDIO KARYA AND NORMAL ARCHITECTURE

#neueartisans #studiokarya #normalarchitecture

MGBC NEXT GENERATION GREEN BUILDING COMPETITION

THE MACHINE AND THE LIVING LAB

The competition brief called for the design of a Next Generation Green Office building with the intention of providing research environment for the Malaysian Green Building Council (MGBC) within the campus of Universiti Kebangsaaan Malaysia (UKM).

SUSTAINABILITY - Sustainability should be approached as an issue on the scale of an ecosystem rather than just a single isolated building. - Public awareness of sustainable issues is a key point of departure for the proposal.

GREEN FOOTPRINT - THE LIVING LAB - By stacking the building as a small tower, a significant portion of the site is given back to the public in the form of a LIVING LABORATORY which preserves and improves the living ecosystem on site and promotes public curiosity and involvement with sustainability issues. - A portion of the Langat River, a neglected ecosystem running in parallel to the site is diverted through the site as a landscape feature which also serves as the demonstration for the possibilities of treating polluted waterways.

BUILDING - THE MACHINE - The MGBC Building itself is conceived as a MACHINE which demonstrates the application of various passive and active sustainable design principles. Instead of having the mechanisms of a Green Building hidden, they will be exposed and made visible and accessible for researchers and the public. -The rooftop mechanical space – normally hidden - is combined with greenery to create the publicly accessible MACHINE-PARK, exposing the inner workings of a sustainable building to the public. - The building becomes a tool to promote stronger awareness of sustainability to the general public.

PUBLICNESS - An elevated landscape deck is connected via a bridge to the (UKM) sports field across Jalan Bangi, enabling the public life of the university to spill over onto the MGBC site. - Elevating the landscape deck above ground allows a visual connection to the Langat River, UKM gains a waterfront.

NEXT GENERATION WORKING ENVIRONMENT - The minimal programs required in the brief are simply stacked on top of one another and connected through an internal garden atrium. - The new generation working space is approached as the variety of working conditions available to the staff – conventional enclosed environments, shaded but naturally ventilated working terraces and even working among the trees in the garden. - The new and flexible working spaces allow the possibility of chance encounters – with fellow staff and the public alike - and collaboration leading to a new modes of working and a new work culture.

LANDMARK -The tallest building in UKM is not only a landmark for the university, but will be a landmark for sustainable development.

This scheme was a collaboration with Arkitek Foo Hui Ping and Abdul Hakim Abdullah and was shortlisted in the top 16 of the AJIYA-MGBC Next Generation Green Office building competition

#normal architecture #green building

TELUK KUMBAR MARKET COMPETITION

The proposal for the Teluk Kumbar Market is centred around the idea of redefining the brief in terms of what constitute the program of a market in order to best serve the local community and the introduction of the 5 FOOT RING as a conceptual and physical ordering device to frame the existing greenery on site and bring a strong coherence to assemblage of programs and forms.

Below are the main ideas underlying the proposal:

MASTER PLANNING The large area of the site in comparison to the amount of built space as requested in the brief led us to formulate a master planning strategy for the site.

THE 5 FOOT RING Inspired by the ubiquitous 5 foot way, the 5 foot ring is here introduced as an ordering device which ties together the various components of the development. The 5 foot ring lends a strong visual identity to the scheme, while also acting as circulation and defining the area of the existing fruit orchard to be preserved as the ‘green lung’ of the development.

THE MARKET PLACE AS AN IN BETWEEN CONDITION The scheme is an attempt at mediating between the small scale of the kampong in the vicinity and the large scale of development in the surrounding area.

REDEFINING THE MARKET The market is redefined as series of spaces and events expanding the utilitarian requirements of the brief towards the formulation of a ‘place’ for the community.

MARKET HALL Market stalls are staggered around a sizable central void, providing a clear sense of orientation and view of all the stalls upon entering the market hall.

MARKET LAYOUT Stalls are laid out in a clear and straightforward manner, with clearly delineated zones for servicing and storage as well as extra spaces for informal stalls.

PEDESTRIAN GROUND LEVEL Vehicular circulation is restricted in very specific areas of the site, ensuring a ground level which is pedestrian friendly.

GENDER EQUALITY AND SAFETY Spaces are laid out in a manner avoiding hidden circulation and corners. The 5 foot ring which connects all the buildings, define the in-between spaces as well as contributing towards visually defensible spaces.

The Teluk Kumbar Market was a collaboration with Arkitek Foo Hui Ping.

#normalarchitecture #wetmarket

MUSEUM OF CAPITALISM COMPETITION: THE BIG BOX

The Big Box is a proposal for a museum stripped bare of any monumentality, identity or even character. This banal building is an embodiment of total anonymity, maximum efficiency and pure speculation - in short the key characteristics of capitalism. It is big. It is a-contextual. It is expandable. It is repeatable.It is not beautiful and it doesn’t try to be. It is architecture reduced to it’s bare essence, the provision and demarcation of empty space. Here the act of designing is denied any aesthetic role but put in the service of ensuring efficiency and achieving maximum space, in which anything (or nothing) can take place.

Typology of Capitalism The Big Box is inspired by the contemporary big box buildings which are big, generic,warehouse-like structures accommodating disparate and often interchangeable functions such as supermarkets and distribution centers.From the suburbs of America to the logistic hubs of the Euro-Delta to the mega-cities of Asia, these big boxes are now found throughout the world, often along highways on the periphery of urban areas. Through these buildings the invisible flow of capitalism is given physical- albeit temporary - form. Inside the big box, capitalism is reified.

The ubiquity of the big box buildings canbe seen as symptomatic of the homogeneity of the hegemony of capitalism. Despite their immense size, the lack of any qualities associated with architectural aesthetics renders them invisible. Ubiquitous, anonymous - with the exception of color schemes or logos announcing their corporate affiliations - and endlessly repeatable,the generic big box is the ultimate typology of capitalism.

The Big Box as Museum The Big Box is made up of two main components, the perimeter / facade whose presence demarcates the physical limit of the museum and an interior which presents itself as an absence of architecture in favor of emptiness and possibility. With services and supporting facilities concentrated within a linear strip along the perimeter, this empty space could be utilized in its entirety as one big open exhibition space, or it could be subdivided into different strips offering different experiences of capitalism. Within these strips different activities concerned with production of goods and subjectivity could take place simultaneously;film-making, artificial nature, quasi-religious motivational speeches, mini-golf. What is on display are not simply artifacts, but the processes of production. The back of house becomes the front of house. The museum utilizes the idea of flows in a distribution center as the means of circulation and display in a demonstration of assembly line - like efficiency.

The Big Box is not a museum for slow,quiet contemplation. It is immediate. Its intention is to merge the visitors with the flows of capitalism. Its focus is on speed and efficiency. In The Big Box the act of displaying and observing is recast in the mold of production and distribution, the museum as demonstration of pure efficiency, capitalism given form.

*The Big Box was awarded Honorable Mention in the ideas competition for the Museum of Capitalism.

#normal architecture #the big box #generic architecture #museum of capitalism

FRAMING THE COMMON: KL EXHIBITION LAUNCH

In conjunction with the participation of Framing the Common at the TIME-SPACE-EXISTENCE exhibition at the 2016 Venice Biennale of Architecture,the Kuala Lumpur team with Normal Architecture and Port 25 will be organizing a 'copy' of the exhibition in Venice at Port Commune, Petaling Jaya, Malaysia.The exhibition will run from 28/05/2016 until 28/06/2016 with the launch event to take place on Saturday, 28/05/2016, 3pm (KL Time).

FRAMING THE COMMON

The Common as interpreted within this collective research has a multi-fold position. It refers to the commonly–owned shared spaces of the modern project of housing, globally; but also to their condition of sameness, of repetition, and standardization, while also to processes of collectivity and commoning, and to what we already have in common as human-subjects. The deliberate aim of this research is to shift the discussion of collective housing away from the private living units towards the sphere of the Commoning; perhaps the true spatial manifestations of collective living. Freed from the individual idiosyncrasies that would sooner or later embellish—and even redefine—the living units, the Common is subjected to rules, regulations and enforcement beyond the control of any individual homeowners, becoming a strange in–between zone which is clearly no longer private, but is not fully public either. If we understand Commonness as a condition of sameness for all collective housing projects, how could they somehow still generate difference? How can the Common be framed different globally?

The four projects—in Bogota, Tehran, Mumbai and Kuala Lumpur—carried out under the banner of Framing the Common, are similar in that each are investigations of the Common in the context of the political project of Modernism and Globalization, through the lens of the most basic units of the modern society: housing. Yet, the projects are also different in the way the cases of the Common are framed in each context. Each city has a specific modern—and pre-modern—history in relation to the West, colonialism, and global relations; as well as specific experiences of modernism. How these different experiences—and their respective political implications—are translated spatially are the areas of interest explored in this collective research; an inventory of sameness and difference.

The on-going project of Framing the Common is currently being displayed at the Tehran Biennale of Architecture (12 May to 11 October 2016) and will be a part of the TIME-SPACE-EXISTENCE Exhibition organized by the Global Art Affairs Foundation as an official part of the 2016 Venice Architecture Biennale (28 May to 27 November 2016).

The exhibition in Kuala Lumpur (28 May to 28 June 2016) is conceived as a mirror or reflection of the exhibition in Venice and will serve as an overview of the entire project as well as serving as a platform for exchange and discussion on issues relating specifically to the Kuala Lumpur project, which focuses on the Razak Mansions housing estate in Sungai Besi.

Framing the Common is an independent collective project focusing on the modern home and its conditions.

Follow Framing the Common at: facebook/framingthecommon

Collaborators: CAMPO (Bogotá): c-a-m-p-o.com

Project Mosha (Tehran): worknot-sharedspaces.tumblr.com

Room for Architecture (Mumbai): aroomforarchitecture.tumblr.com/

Normal Architecture (Kuala Lumpur): normalarchitecture.tumblr.com

Kuala Lumpur Collaborators:

Abdul Hakim Abdullah

Nazmi Anuar

Bryan Chee

Foo Hui Ping

Liyana Hasnan

Noorul Fadzlee Khamis

Studiokarya

Kuala Lumpur research is supported by Veritas Design Group

#framingthecommon #venice biennale #architecture exhibition

PR1MA BRICKFIELDS:AFFORDABLE HOUSING COMPETITION

The brief for the competition called for re-thinking the idea of affordable housing for a site in Brickfields, Kuala Lumpur. The main concern of the brief was to keep construction cost at a minimum, to provide units at affordable price,community building, to imbue the development with the concept of transit oriented development and to connect the development with the ongoing Rive of Life project.

Eschewing any notions of a ‘concept’, our project is defined through THE 10 POINTS ON AFFORDABLE ARCHITECTURE, THE COMMUNITY AND TRANSIT ORIENTED DEVELOPMENT

1. Affordability is approached in our project as a basic architecture; an architecture than abandons formal invention and decorum in favour of compactness and efficiency and yet is an ‘open structure’ able to accommodate changes and individuality.

2. The proposal is basic in terms of form and in relation to the structural and construction system. The apartment slab and the podium for parking and facilities are based on the same structural division, eliminating the need for transfers. The limitation of the block height to 24 storeys produces a compact block and reduces structural and mechanical cost.

3. Our scheme presents two scenarios of affordability:

- Immediate affordability: providing the basic units to be purchased at an affordable price.

- Accommodating life: providing the possibility for homeowners to add to and expand their living units as their range of affordability increases.

The blocks are designed to be compact with clearly delineated zones of circulation (the street), servant spaces (kitchen, toilets), served spaces (living spaces) and expansion (the shelf). In this sense the design of the blocks could be understood as a framework or a series of platforms to which additional spaces or elements could be added to, contributing to a dynamic testament to the evolution of life.

4. The units within the blocks are divided into two storey ‘neighbourhoods’ served by internal ‘streets’ at every two floors. The elimination of circulation not only increases the efficiency of each block but also creates a shared common space, fostering the sense of community within each neighbourhood.

5. Communal terraces are accessible from the internal streets, these multi height spaces provides the linkage between neighbourhoods within a block, forming the next level of communal life.

6. Each 24 storey block is arranged in pairs flanking a shared facilities deck on top of the parking podium. Together, the two blocks and the podium form the ‘superblock’ community. The two superblocks proposed for the Brickfields site are further linked by a bridge at the facilities level. The superblock can be understood as almost a typology of compact living which could be applied for other PR1MA developments with careful adjustments.

7. The superblocks are arranged to act as a gateway to the river, framing the project’s connection to the issues of housing development, communal life, and the River of Life project while addressing the notion of Transit Oriented Development.

8. Vehicular circulation on site is limited to a zone along the front perimeter of the site and underneath the superblocks, clearing up most of the site area for pedestrian and bicycle movements. This is especially crucial along the river front, where the River Park provides a direct connection to the River of Life project.

9. Pedestrian walkways and bicycle tracks are provided from the nearby Bangsar LRT Station, through the site, towards the River Park. Other amenities include a bus shelter for shuttle buses and a River Pavilion which could serve as a water transport stop in the future.

10. The careful positioning and interlinking of units, circulation streets, blocks, facilities, superblocks, the River Park and various methods of pedestrian and vehicular movement creates a cohesive sense of connectivity for all inhabitants. Here, 1000 affordable homes become 1 community.

Conceived as a repeatable typology, the scheme is a demonstration of how an architecture based on efficiency and developed within a set of clear limits could still incorporate subtle but meaningful ideas on the issues of affordable urban housing. Architecture here is employed not in the creation of new forms, nor of iconic images but as a way of thinking and working within the limits of affordability.

This proposal was a collaboration with Abdul Hakim Abdullah and Nurul Alia Ahamad and received the Honorable Mention in the PAM PR1MA Affordable Housing Competition 2016.

#affordable housing #generic architecture #normal architecture #architecture competition

A GARDEN ROOM

Within the garden of a typical end lot in a typical suburban terrace house, the client requested us to come up with an intervention which would replace an aging timber wakaf with a more permanent structure, without extending the house or taking up too much of the valuable garden. Can a permanent addition still preserve open space? Can a space be both inside and outside? Can an intervention structure the garden?

Our intervention is a small, slightly elevated pavilion conceived as a ‘detached’ extension of the house. An additional room built in the garden. It is designed as a 3m by 3m cube with a sloping roof – an update of Laugier’s primitive hut- and built in concrete, with open sides responding differently to different parts of the garden. On one side it joins with an existing timber deck, on the other it allows occupants to sit while dangling their legs. On the side facing the house it is completely open, on the other – facing the outside of the compound- a screen is planned, but is intentionally left incomplete, subject to the client’s preferences.

The structure is designed as a robust background or an open frame to be added to and improvised on, to be completed over time and through use. Cool and shaded, it is the perfect place for afternoon tea, while its small scale turns it into a playhouse for the children. Seen from the house it looks like a freestanding object in the garden, while from outside the compound, it takes on the appearance of a part of the house extending into the garden. The intervention is a room detached from the house, an object which structures the garden, a space which is both inside and outside, a Garden Room.

A year later…

An email arrived from the client. In it, he spells out how the garden room has been a most welcomed addition to the garden. Enthusiastically, the client recounted how he has undertaken the task of polishing and grinding the concrete surface to smoothen it and bring out its textures. A metal screen has been installed on the side facing out, providing additional shade and privacy.

The Garden Room, conceived as a background, an open frame, is finally complete.

The Garden Room is collaboration with Rodzanee Rodzi

Realization with CODA

#garden room #normal architecture #concrete #folly #pavilion

MUSEUM OF KNOWLEDGE, CHANDIGARH: 19 POINTS ON KNOWLEDGE, ARCHITECTURE AND THE CITY

The aim of this competition - as stated in the competition brief - is to design the Museum of Knowledge (MoK) at the original cumulative site of the then proposed MoK and Martyr’s memorial in the Capitol complex. The competition hopes to achieve the following :

• Defining the purpose of a KNOWLEDGE/ CONAISSANCE MUSEUM in the Chandigarh of 21st century. • Contemplating the relevance and importance of Le Corbusier’s version of modern architecture in present time. • Intensify the democratic principles of the Capitol complex by incorporating the civil society inside the Museum of Knowledge. • Enrich community life by injecting, activating and rejuvenating the public space in and around the Museum of Knowledge.

Our proposal is out lined in the text below:

19 POINTS ON KNOWLEDGE, ARCHITECTURE AND THE CITY

- Knowledge, like architecture and the city, is collectively produced. - Although there is no virtual limit, knowledge is limited by what is yet to be known. - Knowledge can be classified into three broad streams Memory, Imagination and Reason. - Memory marks the deepest point of knowledge. - Imagination marks the farthest limits of knowledge. Sometimes imagination is more important than knowledge. - Reason is what gives knowledge its validity and places it in space and time. - Knowledge is no longer taught, but is inevitably produced through sets of social relations. - Inevitably, today, everyone is a knowledge producer. - All knowledge produced inherently is of common property. - The Capitol Complex is too far cut-off from everyday life of Chandigarh. Hence, the Museum of Knowledge has a vast habitable plinth called the House of Knowledge. - The House of Knowledge has patio rooms for the individual knowledge producers. - Every year, knowledge producers from different backgrounds are invited to inhabit the plinth. Close proximity will inevitably lead to sociability and collaboration, generating and expanding knowledge. - During their year- long residency, the Knowledge producers assume the role of the temporary inhabitants of the Capitol Complex. - At the end of their residency the cumulative effort of the producers are exhibited in the Museum of Knowledge. - The Museum of Knowledge does not have a permanent collection or a theme. Essentially it is an indeterminate box waiting for content. - The Museum is a monolithic volume -with brise soleil on the North and South façade opening to the views of the Himalayan foothills and the city. - The Museum building itself is a derivation of Le Corbusier’s projects based on the squared spiral and the swastika. - The Museum is no longer just a building, but a narrative machine, putting things in context and enabling the formation of new social relations. - The combination of the plinth and the squared buildings addresses both the issue of inhabiting the capital complex and the production and sharing of knowledge.

This proposal was shortlisted in the Top 50 from a field of 308 international submissions for ideas competition Chandigarh Unbuilt - Museum of Knowledge.

All text, drawings and images were collectively produced by Felipe Guerra (Estudio Altiplano), Shreyank Khemalapure (ROOM for Architecture) and Nazmi Anuar (Normal Architecture)

#museum of knowledge #chandigarh #le corbusier

FRAMING THE COMMON INAUGURAL EXHIBITION IN BOGOTA

Normal Architecture was recently involved in the inaugural exhbibition for Framing The Common hosted by CAMPO in Bogota, Colombia. Featuring projects from the participating teams from Bogota (CAMPO),Tehran (Project Mosha) and Mumbai (Room for Architecture).

The exhibition concluded on 3rd October 2015 with a discussion between the participants on the definition of the Common within each context.

#framingthecommon #common space #exhibitions

FRAMING THE COMMON: THE CASE OF RAZAK MANSIONS

Framing the Common: A Project on the Shared Spaces of the Apartment, is a group project working to shed light on the common idea of home that started in Autumn 2014 with a workshop first phase. Now the second phase is a ‘parallel studio’ project involving teams from Tehran (Project Mosha), Bogota (CAMPO), Mumbai (ROOM), Rotterdam and Kuala Lumpur (N/A + A/H.a) to locate the current condition of housing in the thorough project of modernism.

THE CASE OF RAZAK MANSIONS

In approaching the subject of the ‘common’ in the context of housing development here in Kuala Lumpur, we have decided to start by focusing on one very specific example of a collective housing project. Razak Mansions - officially launched by the second Prime Minister of Malaysia in 1962, and hence bearing his name - is the second realized of a series of three collective housing projects in Kuala Lumpur launched by the government in the late 50’s - early 60’s. It is the only one remaining, the first - Suleiman Courts - wasdemolished in 1986 to make way for a Japanese department store and the third - Pekeliling Flats - is in the process of being demolished to make way for luxury apartments. It is crucial to stress that these apartments played a key role in the common project for a modern Malaysia, since they were designed and built to accommodate the migration of the population - hence the ‘workforce’ - from the countryside to the city during the post independence years.

In April 2014 Prime Minister Najib Razak - who coincidentally is the son of the second Prime Minister -visited Razak Mansion, declared his attachment to it - since it was officiated by his late father - and then declared that it will be demolished to make way for a ‘modern and comfortable’ replacement apartments.While the residents will be compensated accordingly - a one to one replacement of units will be the development policy - nothing which was shown of the new scheme speaks of the quality of the new development - much less the common spaces which had played a very central role for the Razak Mansions community - but rather it will be just another ‘tower on podium’ development. A truly modern project will be scrapped for a supposedly modern project.

URGENCIES

It is at this moment and in light of what is being planned that we find it timely to do document Razak Mansions before it is demolished. By ‘document’ our intention is not only to document the physicality of Razak Mansions as an architectural object but also to use Razak Mansions as a ‘frame’ with which to look at a period of the country’s history in which modernity was an urgent common project. The physicality - of the blocks as well as the common spaces- will be looked at as an enabler or background for a way of life and a community that was described as ‘living in a world of its own’.

We believe that history is not simply the past but rather something that we live with and something that should be continuously open to debate and reassessment. Documenting an architectural project then becomes not just a method to talk about common spaces in the context of built space but ultimately as an instrument to address a common history.

More updates soon.

The Case of Razak Mansions is a collaborative project with Abdul Hakim Abdullah of A/H.a

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