From the beginning till the end, we develop the design. At the schematics stage, we did not have time to detail properly. Now at contract implementation stage, we want the design to look aesthetically pleasing so we need to review the design.
How quickly can we do it?
Yesterday I was given a task to look and review the design of various parts of the building, so that we can give the main contractor the information and they complete their shop drawings for approval.
An architectural practice that makes it a point to control the design right up till the end during contract implementation and construction phase, it is not easy to do. The designer comes in and advice, often the director and associate themselves, requesting and involved with the project team to develop and fine tune the design.
I learned about professionalism at the office. This is a personal learning experience which I have lost somewhat being caught up in being an academic environment with too much freedom and less of the bottom-lines and deadlines.
In order to run an architectural practice, you need to be a ‘super’ manager, well organized and some business sense. Basically it has to be profit making with a strong idea on the form and shape of your organization.
If you have good people working for you, try to keep them as long as you can if not you have to handle the job yourself. You need to just face it if you don’t have the talent or skill required to do the work and just get the money to get the people to do the work instead. Like CAD drawing skills or drawing 3D, especially if you were trained to do manual drawings earlier.
In an office like GDP where I am working at during my sabbatical, there is not much difference in terms of managing people compared to when I was running a design studio. We worked as a team as well.
There were bottom lines where in an office you work for pay and in a design thesis studio you work for the certificate of getting a degree.
I am now at GDP office, just trying to be useful to Team 7 office. I am learning a lot.
I can’t do CAD so I asked that I could join the contract implementation project and there were a few, so I tagged along the Utusan Melayu project team.
I am just trying to understand how design office as big as GDP where a team numbers about 50 people control the design, from beginning till the end. It is not easy but GDP try to have reviews done periodically. You can know when the partner and design director would come around and ask for certain things. Design development does not stop at design development stage before tender. During construction, it’s possible to change but it should be for the better and not downgrading the design.
The photo above is a random photo taken in the design office’s strewn paper on top on the table. The plan shows a semi-d of sorts, probably a resort design. You can see it’s form-driven but is it successful as a design where you try to fit in the function.
The issues are fundamental and the integration of technical constraints ie services integration and the usability of space could be better explored.
The design if it’s not sorted well at this stage will be problematic in later stages.
The design directors need to anticipate the design to be able to work later. His advice is as good as his experience.
The will to know and get it done likewise is essential.
There was a PAUSE in activity where I slowly stopped working full time at Juteras because the bungalow project is still waiting decisions.
Due to me needing to get some experience in the few months given, I have decided to work closer to home at GDP.
Just tagging along now with the technical manager
Shopping complexes adopting the street concept evident in Jaya One and Plaza Damas, for example, are still commercial buildings adopting another angle for sale and marketing purposes.
Ideas like the street is popular. Of course the headache is with management and operations. Ticket collectors on motorcycles whizzing around demanding payment. Another problem is the drainage system in conflict with accessibility for example. Humps created at ramps for disabled access to not allow rainwater to flow down to another level. So the building manager decided not to maintain the ramp at Jaya One but to build something else, not knowing that the ramp is useful still and other features like high drops were created that could not make access possible via two sets of lifts.
Went back to the office after a two weeks hiatus but just for an hour. Just to catch up with the feel of things.
Well, the bungalow project is in second boss’s hands when I left it.
Had a chat with a really good friend over Teh halia and learned a few things and what I am good at.
Don’t know what else is expected of me.
I am borrowing Kevin Mark Low’s (KML) quote: the sketch is thinking in process; because it says precisely what I believe as a designer and a teacher.
If you are bad at sketching, you will not be able to communicate well what you are thinking at that particular process point or stage of producing the end product. Hence you must be able to sketch well.
Another quote from KML:
The sketch is a hand drawing that explores an idea.
What does all these means taking them all to be true?
1. That in order to be a good designer he or she must sketch well manually
2. Sketch is not mechanical production but means of expression by thought on an idea
3. You cannot produce a sketch with a computer fast enough.
“Computer illustrates the known quantity for presentation whereas exploration with a hand drawn sketch is private and experience for discovery” (KML)
The illustration above was taken courtesy of Kevin Mark Low’s book Small Projects Figure 3, page 023, published by Adaptus 2010, on “Detail Sketches for a handrail”.
Kevin Mark Low (KML) said in his book ‘Small Projects’ that: Relevant design was not simply about the form of the project, it was about why and how the project was formed.
Reading KML’s first paragraph of his book summarizes his philosophy which had been influencing my thinking in the last three years, sharing the Design Thesis studio with him and others.
Another important quote on page 006 is “it is about a process grown from the specifics of context”.
His ideas really got me thinking about things I take for granted like context. It made me be a better teacher and academic. I was trained like many others did in UK’s schools of architecture based on the ‘formalistic tradition’. I wish to write about this properly later, but in a nutshell what it is about what i had been learning so far is focusing on form and the shaping of it, albeit neglecting other aspects so important like ‘context’. There is ‘contextual design’ which really deals with a method exploring on the surface issues and done quantitatively but it is not a philosophy on design done with more depth and qualitatively.
KML is very scientific and analytical in his approach even though some designs maybe whimsical or romantic. Inspecting and exploring the parts that inform the whole, he takes contextualism to another level.
My view on this while thinking about my situation and problems that I encountered doing this bungalow design is it provided me some answers to the questions I am asking.
I have to admit that I learn about design through teaching it. It is not the most desirous way but as long as I kept on thinking, asking questions and view myself as a designer and most of all accept the challenges of being a coach and mentor to my students and never be satisfied until they are satisfied with the learning, then only I will be able to improve myself and understand and talk about the critical work of others.
Much critical work is borne out of research and academia, and KML’s forays into teaching and his dedication to his professor’s influence shows that assertion to be true. Even Kamil Merican’s involvement meant the importance of our academic institutions, like so many I know, Lok Wooi, Huat Lim and Susanne Zeidler, Amna Emir, Chris Wong, Ngiom, Anthony Too, Syed Sobri, Sonny Chan, Lillian Tay and many more would come to our crits without us giving them a single cent.
“Institutions of higher learning is a Non Government Organization ” says the Dean of Hong Kong University, Professor Ralph Lerner, and I believe that statement more and more each day.
We are poor to do the great things. The relevant and necessary things to shape our students great are being drowned out by the unnecessary things. We get punished when we do the right things even at times.
Just checking up with CAD assistant and designers.
Here is my text conversation with my dear esteemed architect friend:
NY: Not really good isn’t it when someone else interprets yr design in CAD
Friend: Hehe, now you have it!
Now I know why he does his work all manual. Something to really think about.
I reckon even if I had a really good designer working on CAD with me also the end product would be left to be desired. Plus the issue of control.
Who would want to listen to you if you lack power.
