Producing ideas, like eating, drinking and going to the loo, is part of the life we live. Some ideas may be practical while most of the time they are in the realm of dreams. Having to undo what we have learned by doing or in class, to turn it into purely practical design is one huge task, but not impossible once we free ourselves from this dream box.

I remember my childhood moments when making catapults, bird traps, guns, vehicles, costumes, etc was just another one of the daily activities mainly regarded as "main pondok" (literally, playing huts).

At ITM (now UiTM) however, design was very much narrowed down to architecture, except in Mr Reid's Environmental Science class where we were assigned to design and build paper light-fittings.

Later at RISD it was re-expanded to include industrial design, sculpture, photography, illustration, with a dash of history and American poetry.

My sophomore design teacher, Ken Keegan (our studio used to hang my "A Sketch A Day Keeps Keegan Away" posters) once said,  "if it's a good idea, put in on a good piece of paper."  Ever since, the black A4 skectch book, pens and markers became our esssential tools to express and share our ideas (very crucial in design communication). And it has remained as the single most important tool despite technological changes indicated in RISD's nanoarchitecture today.

What is happening here in the School of Housing, Building and Planning (see Studio500, 2006)  is unfortunately less exploratory. Refusing the "Future Studio" proposed by Dr Zin Kandar and I in 1994 when MIT adopted the change (Dr Zin has now left HBP for UTM). HBP's architecture studios still seem to want to hold on to the pedagogy which even the Fine Arts based RISD has decided to shift (and has generated quite interesting proposals, see Peter Yeadon's RISD Future Studio).

In the 80's there was a case with a USM architecture student who couldn't draw, but was a superb modeller. While I saw him as an "A" student, other studio masters didn't, and the poor student failed (the same way that Antonio Gaudi would have, I guess). In the early 90's there was yet another student who failed because his wire-frame model was misread by lecturers who preferred glossy water-color drawings.

As CAD programs improved, when it was possible to do water-color renderings just by a click of a button, in the late 90's, I suggested to yet another student (who also failed),  that if artistic renderings from computers were seen by HBP as being "too perfect", the student would have no other choice but to spill water on to the hard copy.:)

Let us learn that ideas don't stop where skills do. Architeture is not about drawings skills alone, it's idea-generating skills. As is, ideas may be generated in a space-time very far or distantly near (see Secret Worlds: The Universe Within) or borrowing a quote from The Book,  "...nearer to him than his jugular vein".

Selected Notes/ Papers/ Articles:

1. The Production of Knowledge City. Invited Speaker's Paper. International Seminar on Knowledge City: Spirit, Character, Manifestation, Universiti Sumatera Utara, Medan. 13-14 November 2007.

2. A Decade of Architecture Education in Universiti Sains Malaysia: Preparation for Asian Renaissance. Paper. International Conference On Challenges and Experiences In Developing Architectural Education in Asia
Islamic University of Indonesia, Yogyakarta, 8-9 June 2007.

3. Introducing Datuk Lim Chong Keat, @Archiwave, Pusat Seni, Saturday 26 Feb 2005, 09:30am.

4. Serpih & Seluruh. Seminar Intelektual, Pusat Pengajian PBP, Universiti Sains Malaysia, PPinang, 24 September 2003.

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5. Menjelang Bengkel Urban Ubiquity di Universiti Malaya, 11-14 April 2003.

6.Politics of Tropical Modernism. Letter to Editor, RIBA Journal, December 1989, p19.

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 Malay House: Rationale and Change. Masters Thesis. MIT. 1981.

 

On Archiweek2009 USM's Architecture Class of 09 have created a forum and allocated a corner for their teachers (u have to register to join in). I don't know how long I would be contributing to what almost seems to be a monologue (and I hope that'll change). But a place for monologues is better off here On Archiweek2009.