continuity of

This is a delayed post.wow. a month back a couple of classmates and i worked on an entry for

PAM Rumi-esthetic Competition

which ran through the P

AM Architectural Workshop 2009

. we won first place! the following is a write up of our ideas.

the theme was to propose a redevelopment of the walkway down at Jalan Bukit Bintang (from LOT10 to KL Plaza) in efforts to sort of 'revitalize' the urbanized conditions. and well, bluntly, the competition assumes that, the walkway sucks and someone needs to do something about it-

we had about a month prior to the deadline to work something up, and just as predictable as we all are, we waited till we had about a couple of weeks left before we started sketching (...)

with such impossible time constraints, the endless meetings among the group exchanging sentences that start with "maybe we can do this (sketches on paper)", "why not we try this (sketches on paper)", "we shouldn't do this and that (more sketches on paper)"....did not help one single bit! i have to say, the production phase was so crucial that ignorance and incompetence to a singular mode of practice in software rather than a few was all the more frustrating. the burden was unfair ... it was downright unfair.

so anyway

,

...our approach for the design was to acknowledge that pedestrians moved along the path in such a linear direction that it would be

so unnecessary

to redirect the traffic flow. Also visual connection with the opposite side of the street was retarded. Our idea of

undulating

the

floor plate

to new pedestrian heights would (as we thought) bring new visual contact between both sides of the street.

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With alternating floor levels, we could then segment the long stretched walkways to 7 subdivisions, each offering new activities in

completely outdoor

spaces. Another reason for these subdivisions, is to give someone, who walks along this long stretch of screed, a

sense of distance

. That every segment he/she walks past, a new activity arises. It is in these partitions that we decided to have 7, 3m x 3m x 9m exhibit spaces. Each of them are characterized by activities that are temporary and (probably in a way) completely useless. Some of these box spaces would feature a ladder that leads to a window for someone to climb up and gaze through into the steel web and etc.The idea behind this was for these spaces to act like rectilinear tunnels/pathways for people to use when they want to cross the street. It's like walking through a gallery, all you see are walls and completely useless stuff to gaze at.

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We assumed that, with all the highrises around (in such proximity), we could just neglect a monolithic roof. The walkway would then sit in between these highrises, completely in the outdoors and have its shading

animated

by the profiles of the surrounding buildings and the positions of the sun in the sky. It was purely for aesthetic reasons. To carry that idea further, we wanted something architectural (a bigass structure perhaps), to sit through these spaces as if it was NOT for the people, but rather for some greens. (I was so interested, in this idea that I struggled to push it through! … I mean, think about it, how often would you have something built on a large scale for your plants instead of for you?) The outcome, are to have large steel webs that weld the 7 cubes all together, undulating through the walkway, representing the sinuous line (imaginary sinuous line) that directs the eye of everyone who walks along the path to realize the difference in floor height.

Alright that's all for now.

I have to say though, since this competition didn't require a physical model, i had lots of fun experimenting with drawings that i most probably would never be able to translate into a some chipboards or balsa. alot of people are saying, physical models are all that close to reality and that if you can't build a model of it then it's probably structurally questionable. well, i might be a fool, but i'm beginning to think otherwise. some of these 3d techniques are very much architectural. some of the tools are powerful, that you have more control over alot of things, and at the same time, it's as complicated ...it's so different from drawing on endless butter papers.

.credits to ky & gary