During my stay in Hong Kong, a family friend invited me to attend a debate organised by RIBA HK Chapter. The topic: “Linear Design Process = Efficient Design Process”.
Guiltily, I admit that I didn’t give the topic much of a thought initially, as my mind initially jumped to the literal thought of a straightforward process: narrow-minded, rigid and unforgiving in alternatives. Needless to say, I was rather perplexed by the argument itself considering that design processes (at least from my design experience at university) requires various hoops to jump through and elaborate conversations in order to successfully reach our destination.
Read MoreLast week, my friend and I were polishing off our pancakes on our long overdue catch up when he asked me the question. Our conversation has reached a point where our doubts and wariness for our future has us questioning about the choices we have made in our lives so far. The amount of studying and measures taken to achieve our ambitions was evidently wearing us down. "I guess it's because we know that we may not get the opportunity to design something like the way we do again - in a practice at least..."
Read MoreAfter fours years of studying architecture, it was the first time a tutor challenged my architectural beliefs. At that point I never really thought of the implications honestly, I used to believe that as an architecture student, so long as we have good contextual and background knowledge and attention to detail, we should be able to produce an infrastructure that would serve a good purpose.
Read MoreWords are an extremely powerful weapon. Whether it'd be vocal or written, whatever comments made directed to you can always have an overwhelming impact. It's a common thing to talk about among my group of friends (whether they're from Architecture school or high school) about the comments that really places us on the edge - which in turn has catalysed extremely cautious personalities within.
Read MoreWe’ve reached the semi end goal.
Penultimate that is. And believe me – it was pretty fun trying to present ourselves like a commercial, albeit – it was quite cringe worthy when I was listening to my own voice on the television (after all, nobody likes to hear their recorded voice). There were a lot of discussion about our project on whether it was viable in comparison to just simply building a house in your own yard and renting it out, and it made us really consider our arguments on the reason why our project would be more successful in comparison to others, let alone be better than others.
Read MoreUp until this point – everyone started to evolve their opinion towards the sharing economy however, we were unable to articulate it in our designs or at least, in our presentation.
Which brought us to the fateful night in Fitzroy, hangry and nervous for our debate.
Being someone who hasn’t debated (or even dare I say properly debated) for more than five years I didn’t know how I would react or respond as a second speaker – let alone, being on the negative team I didn’t know whether I would come up with any rebuttals against the second speaker on the affirmative team.
Read MoreWeek 4 and we are diving deeper into our project. We began to focus on the issue of rising house prices. It’s so defeating to just think that our future will be bombarded with high buying prices when the job that we decided to do will not be suffice to guarantee me to accomplish owning something. On the other hand, there’s that gnawing tension between different classes, and also the loopholes of house ownership – overseas investors buying things up and the amount of investment properties accumulating overtime is terrifying.
Read MoreThis semester has been one heck of a roller coaster of self discovery and trying to understand our own position within the world of the Sharing Economy. During those twelve - thirteen weeks I've been keeping track of my weekly thoughts and reflections towards the Sharing Economy. Overall it has been quite eye-opening and it is intimidating to think that these issues really affect the way we work act and live overall. For this series I will most likely split them over in three to four parts since some entries are rather long. Overall it is a documentation of my progress over the twelve weeks.
Read MoreThis semester I have taken on an elective that requires putting your own personal spin to hand drawings. From designing interventions for a specific group of people to creating wearable architecture out of party supplies to designing a facade, it was rather cathartic to apply my own personality to these drawings (I also forgotten how much I missed hand drawing). But it was onto our third assignment when my friend and I were discussing about how we have to present our drawings that she said something that struck me.
Read More‘Love at first sight’ - it is a cliche that I am a constant victim to. Whether it’d be a quick eye contact at a party, or in a queue at the art gallery, a conference in Europe, if my heart is already missing then I know I will be spending the night trying to figure out where to meet that person again for the fatal encounter.
And it goes the same for me when I see a lovely three by three image on my Instagram feed.
Read More