Urban Parlour

Short Stories 1.0

Urban Parlour;

Cultivating Everyday Moments through the Female Gaze Aishah Mokhtar,2017

It is easy to forget and missed the sensitive aspect on how we view and valued the city in our daily routine. Everyday movement became a mundane experience, lacking series of urban exploration, sensitivity to surroundings and engaging in intimate conversation with one another. Urban public space became unresponsive and unused, wasting away potential spaces from creating interactive everyday experience.

When the delicate aspect of a city slowly vanishing from the context, it is common to disregard potential issues relating to gender inclusive design in urban public space.

Women’s perspective rarely was taken into consideration and goes unappreciated, sometimes easily dismissed. I aim to question, reflect and review – through the mechanism research by design – what could an inclusive public space for ‘her’ would be.

In order to understand how can we build an inclusive city for Kuala Lumpur, the role of the women’s everyday narrative need to be explored as to reveal fragments that are missing and needed to be addressed properly through design.

“In short everyday life is ‘real life’, the ‘here and now’, not abstract truth.”

(Gender Space Architecture, 2000)

The everyday notion is crucial to offer an alternative look into the true everyday experience, and not by offering architectural intervention practices that based on assumption and imagination. The everyday narrative and my personal voice act as a mechanism to capture the sense of everyday life then to be translated into series of architectural intervention that address the matter.

Wanita by Aishah Mokhtar

Everyday life can be approached as a process and practice in which people shape their homes, at work or in the living environment the structural conditions into lived life (Fair Shared Cities, 2013). The everyday life creates a definite pattern in social construction and the use of public spaces. It allows us to study and observe the sensitive aspect through public habits and activity based on their everyday schedule.

Starting from the basic and taking an existing gendered space in the city as a starting point, it was used to portray the everyday notion and highlighted the norm on what kind of scenarios women in the city encountered by daily basis. These urban transitional spaces are constructing the urban fabric as the public goes through it and passing by, unconsciously collecting memories and experiences, which depend on the physical condition of each space.

As career women in the city, like many other practicing Muslim women, prayer space has always been a major component in their daily routine. It is a norm for practicing Muslim to find a functional prayer space for him/her to refresh and perform prayer, five (5) times a day. For someone who spends majority of him/her time in a rapid moving city lifestyle, prayer space becomes a definite daily experience whether you realize it or not. The space condition dictates your spiritual mood, level of comfort and urban experience.

Differently than mosque and rest & service area where large space is not an issue, public building on the other hand faced different challenges in providing adequate prayer space especially in retail buildings as it is seen as a not profitable space. In the end, most prayer space became an afterthought design that ended up at the very end of any public buildings. Most public have no other choice but to conform with facilities given where mostly lacking in comfort, fresh air and lighting. Having the sensitivity towards women’s behavior in certain spaces, I cannot help but to notice there is a certain complex pattern that can be mapped in such a tiny space of women’s prayer space in public building.

The everyday moments portray series of normal behavior that usually the space did not addressed, forcing them to make-do and improvised according to different facilities provided. Women used prayer space quite differently than men, as women may faced extra condition that needs to be taken care of such as, extra layer of clothing, taking off make-up, making sure your personal items secured, hold on to their running children and so on. It’s not as simple by entering the space, perform ablution and pray. There is an additional movement in between, that is always been there as due to women behaved differently than men in a certain type of space, that needed to be acknowledge.

Parlour by Aishah Mokhtar

The type of events that are usually found in female prayer space are for example, while waiting their friends and family performing prayer, a group of women on their menstrual period (as they are excused from prayer activity) can be seen sitting at one corner of the space. Another scenario is where women also used the space as a resting place, comfortably removing their scarf and decide to cool down from outdoors heat. A group of children also can be seen running around while waiting for their mother and may lead to discomfort for the mothers worrying disturbing others.

It seems that the female prayer space function as more than just a prayer space, but rather a collective space for women. It acts as a refresh space for women to have a moment and collect themselves before going out again to fast moving urban lifestyle. The interventions proposed was not intended to portray as a solution, but rather a starting point to acknowledge the difference in how women used space differently and how design can act as a mechanism to captured the moments and mapping urban behavior.

The role of designer and decision-maker should always be challenged by the public to bring out a better way of living and to offer a stable social mobility, especially for the minorities. To start at the very fundamental, investigating the existing urban spaces and identify elements that are missing and can be improved so the focus group will have a more inclusive experience in urban public space. Apart from questioning the role of architects and designers, this topic involves in having human sensory and experiences through collective everyday views on their daily spatial experience. I hope by opening this topic, especially in a background context that rarely has the opportunity to be discussed, can offer and provoke a complex architectural thinking in handling social issues through architecture while giving a chance to re-imagine the kind of urban space that is more inclusive and welcoming for the daily urban journey.

Wanita by Aishah Mokhtar

Female Prayer Space in Public Building

...A series of continuous adaptive structure, forming according to every specific function trailing the movement flow in the space.

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......Women’s space has always been a mystery and fascinating when the everyday moments were revealed. Looking through a frame with layers of fabrics as depicted would like to portray the complexity in women’s everyday notion. Behind every doors, underneath every layers of her clothes, tells a different story and choreographed peculiar movements in particular space.

The movement flow paints a narrative to be told and to be re-imagined towards a more inclusive daily urban experience and appreciate social mobility among women in the city.

Acting as an URBAN ARCHIVIST, #wanitakualalumpur will collect, documenting and assessing series of everyday life stories of women in the city, then translating these fragments of stories into arrays of (re) imagined design that could be renditions of space, product, crafting, or mechanism depending on various techniques of idea representation. Establishing #wanitakualalumpur means to address unseen daily situation and try to reconstruct those moments for a better tomorrow, something the women can look forward to.