Community Service Initiative, Individual E-Journal

During the preliminary stage of this assignment, me and my teams decided to choose Metro Prima as our objective and we are to create something like a furniture to make up of that that area are lacking, any kind of furniture. First of all, we conducted several visitations to Metro Prima at Kepong. At the site, the maintenance on cleanliness is poor, informal spaces and activities such as hawker stalls and illegal parking can be found everywhere, and this is very common in our country as it had become a habit to the local here, so there is not much issues to be complain about this. At the commercial area, it is a mixed used commercial containing offices, shops, restaurant and other businesses and there is not much issues. The issues that raise my attention is that the residential area, there is a few apartments and a large housing area nearby, I found out that the dwelling segregation is obvious between different residential buildings. Lack of interaction between buildings and resident is obvious, there is a limitation on activities, this is one of the reason causing less occupants.

                We have conducted a few interviews with the resident who live there, and the result is pretty stunning. Most of the resident feel that they don’t need any improvement as they are being positively contented with what they have now. But for me that is not what it looks like, I feel the lack of interaction between people, those intangible feelings between the connection of people. They do what a tiny community hall over at the apartment, well-furnished and sheltered, but the lack of variety of activities, gaps between different age group also an obvious issue over the site.

                Based on all those analysis and data we have, we as a team agreed on designing a piece of furniture for the community. The reason being is that to overcome the interaction problem through this piece of furniture where it allowing different activities, children able to play on it, adult able to rest on it, celebration able to take place on it. It is more like a multifunction architecture. The final outcome is that we decide to create a pavilion while create a small plaza area for the community. The challenge is on the structural safety, we have to consider the children play space and the elderly comfort of using our pavilion. My team have changed the idea of using different material several times due to the safety issues, and we finalized with by using pvc pipe for our structure. 

Proposal 1 from hongbinng

After the submission, we found that there are alot of issues with the pipe structure, as stability and safety are concern, and we decided to change the structure itself to wooden pallets but the concept will be maintain as a modular conbination structure.

               We went back to the side with our proposal printed out for interview to get feedback from the community, and the feedback is mixed, some agreed with our proposal, which helps enlarge their variety of activities and also space, something new also create a point of attraction. The other comment was about how unsafe our proposal is, cause most of them were talking about wood’s structure problem, may cause rot and beetles due to over expose to outdoor. These issues are talking into consideration on the next design stage. Other than that, there is no negative feedback to our proposal.

                On the second stage of designing, we further explore any other possibility that can make out of just a pavilion. Then we came out with this modular design, which is having different type of modular instead of just one structure, when combining it together it creates different outcome, different arrangement affects activities, programs, vision connection, circulation and views. This idea was taken from the site which is based on different age group appear during different hours. Morning there will be more elderly, evening is where children come out to play and night is mix of both. So, with different arrangement can have different interaction between community. Total we have explore 9 arrangements out of it, including integrate, interconnect, intermingle, segregation, contrast, conform, harmonize, independent and solidarity. Each and everyone have its own unique arrangement and representing different meaning, example like arranging in a circle to increase interaction representing integration; arranging piece by piece separately giving more space while allowing different activities to be happen on the same time representing segregation. These arrangements are proposed by us, but the final arrangement can be decided by the community based on what they need, based on this able to achieve a total freedom of arranging and easy to use structure. The other issues such as safety and rot will be fix by smoothen the surface and edge of the structure and a layer of paint coat will be applied for weather resistant.

                Finalizing our design, we decide to create a series of chair with actual scale for the community to try out, a few modular so it can achieve the different arrangement. The material we using is second hand used wooden pallet. To smooth the wooden pallet, first we have to saw off the edges and sand it off the uneven surface and edge, to achieve a smooth surface for better seating. After that we start nailing them together piece by piece, by stacking four pallets together to reach the seating height, and another upright for the backrest. And lastly is coating, the stain paint helps give the pallet a rich colour and also helps prevent rot and beetles. With great teamwork, we manage to get this work done in very short time, its efficiency to share work together with team and help out with each other, great teamwork we have here.

                After finishing, the furniture is being moved to the site and for the community to experience it out. This is surely a great experience for me since I have never done something like this as hands on doing a furniture, it felt accomplishment. The community also make used of the furniture, they drew a chest layout on the table and play chest on it. But in the end, there is still some issues with it, the table height is not enough to reach, and the chairs is a little bit too solid for the elderly. But overall, it’s a good piece of furniture. Having done this assignment, I felt that how important is it to reach out to the community to understand what they need, as an architect this is very important cause we are not design for other thing, architect are to design for the people, and this is how it relate to the philosophy of an architecture.