CARTOGRAPHIC ARCHITECTURE:

Specific Interventions that project the rural revenge of Indigenous Papar

My esis began from a personal question of how and when should Architects act when the site presented hosts predominantly untouched landscapes and lacks Architecture. In a site where the human population is not a majority, should we, as Architects, still approach the site with an analysis that is similar to how we would in an urban or even suburban site?

e Papar river in Sabah, East Malaysia was chosen to be my case study of this question. It runs from the Crocker Mountain Range for roughly 60km before merging into the sea. It meanders through the unforgiving terrain of the Crocker Range mountains and passes through small autonomous indigenous villages, plantations, agricultural plains, the sleepy Papar town and fishing villages. Like many tropical rivers, the Papar river has been used as infrastructure for transportation, resource, livelihood and is still contested over by the Government and various groups of locals.

In the middle of 2019, the Malaysian government confirmed the new site of the Papar dam, estimated to be around 150-200m deep. If built, it will flood half of the indigenous kampungs in Ulu Papar, forcing them to relocate to another location that does not allow them to continue living their unique way of life and basically, plummets them into poverty. e Papar dam is not merely a search for resource, but is a war for land ownership and power.