Readers

Think Sheet No. 3 Reader: Blink Name: Chen Rou Ann. Student ID: 1001G76463 Date: 17/9/2014 Instructor: Tony Liew This book reminded me about when I first started the Architecture degree. I sat in the studio cramped with semester 1 students, eager for the class to start, eager to learn all about ‘Architecture’. The lecturer walked in, briefed us on our course outline, projects, and it pretty much took me by surprise. ‘Representing me’ was the title of the first ever architectural project I had and wasn’t even remotely close to architecture. I was already excited about my classes and this got me jumping in my seat (quietly, ‘cause I knew absolutely no one and the guy that sat right by me was particularly menacing looking).

Before the first semester of Architecture, I had no clue about what exactly to expect from the course. I was half expecting the first day of lecture to be as followed: “Okay class, this is how you design a building. Wall, floor, ceiling, columns. You put this here, then that there, people come in out, now go design some stuff.’

I want a life full of colours (yes, money green is a colour but COLOURS), a life that makes an impact on someone else. I want to do something that people can experience along with me, not only to colour up my life but also to brighten up someone else’s day. I want to do something significant, that when a person looks at it, it puts a smile on their face. The complexity of a building amazes me yet it scares me. How does one envision something at such a scale and still remain sane?

I had been fighting to study Architecture since I was 16. Two years of studying in something I was not passionate about, a terrible breakdown and a heart to heart talk with my parents later, I signed up for Architecture. My days were then (and still is) filled with plans, sections, elevations, lines upon lines, concepts, designs, UHU glue, modelling boards, final Presentation and -very very very- often, sleepless night rushing projects and stuck in the studio cracking heads instead of sleeping, and that to me, is heaven.

In the beginning, I was worried I wasn’t good enough, seeing that i had no prior experience in architecture, being in a disadvantageous position since I lack the basics, the terms were unfamiliar and carried a completely different meaning to me. Eventually, I figured out that even the most complex structures consists of simple geometries and shapes. Things started to make sense and I found myself slowly getting used to the pace.

Now, looking back at what I did in the first semester and the things I am doing now, there is a vast difference of quality between them. I use to think buildings were a combination of walls, floors collumns and ceilings, but now, buildings are an art piece. It is the essence of an architect, every wall, every curve, every inch meant something and was taken into consideration.

Think Sheet No. 3 Reader: Blink Name: Chen Rou Ann. Student ID: 1001G76463 Date: 17/9/2014 Instructor: Tony Liew Personally, I am a book lover. I read a lot, and there are a few cupboards full of books I’ve devoured. When I finish a book or a series, I go out to hunt for more. The process of my book hunting process looks something like this. I skim through shelves and shelves of books, looking at book covers. If a certain book cover and the title peaks my interest, I pick it up.

Turning to the back, I read the synopsis. If I find it pleasurable, I flip to a random page and start reading. If the one or two sentences managed to pull my attention, then only I’ll buy the book. That is the usual way of me searching for something to read.

The phrase ‘don’t judge a book by its cover’ is strongly emphasised throughout (probably) everybody’s process of growing up. A lot of time, people do judge, by appearance, by what other people think or by the way something is presented. A person’s perspective of things is easily wavered. The shape, the colour, the name, a whisper of judgement, the advertisement can simply play a huge role in deciding a person’s decision. The ugly truth is that the content usually doesn’t matter; all that matter is the packaging.

‘Would you rather be smart, or have good looks? It’s either you’re really smart and have below average looks, or really good looking and not so smart.’

I asked a lot of friends this question, and a lot of the answer I got back was ‘of course I want to be smarter.’ With that, whatever answer that I got, I followed up with another question ‘Tell me honestly, do you judge someone by their looks when you first meet a person?’ The answers are usually yes.

That sparked up interesting conversations. On one hand, intelligence is a very important thing, but there’s a very important factor: people tend to stereotype. In the society now, looks are pretty much everything. No matter how intelligent is a person, first impressions are usually based on looks, and how a person presents him or herself. Research shows that attractiveness correlate positively with some traits such as intelligence, income, social skills and self-confidence. Physically attractive individuals are regarded more positively in first impressions and are more likely to be employed and have a higher wedge.

I’m all for high intelligence and inner beauty and I try to refrain myself from judging before I get to know a person, but honestly, it’s easier to throw in assumptions. A painful truth, like any product in the market, as great as you are in the inside, how far you get in life in the world now depends on skin deep factors, such as skin colour, gender and appearance.

Think Sheet No. 3 Reader: Blink Name: Chen Rou Ann. Student ID: 1001G76463 Date: 17/9/2014 Instructor: Tony Liew Personally, I am a book lover. I read a lot, and there are a few cupboards full of books I’ve devoured. When I finish a book or a series, I go out to hunt for more. The process of my book hunting process looks something like this. I skim through shelves and shelves of books, looking at book covers. If a certain book cover and the title peaks my interest, I pick it up.

Turning to the back, I read the synopsis. If I find it pleasurable, I flip to a random page and start reading. If the one or two sentences managed to pull my attention, then only I’ll buy the book. That is the usual way of me searching for something to read.

The phrase ‘don’t judge a book by its cover’ is strongly emphasised throughout (probably) everybody’s process of growing up. A lot of time, people do judge, by appearance, by what other people think or by the way something is presented. A person’s perspective of things is easily wavered. The shape, the colour, the name, a whisper of judgement, the advertisement can simply play a huge role in deciding a person’s decision. The ugly truth is that the content usually doesn’t matter; all that matter is the packaging.

‘Would you rather be smart, or have good looks? It’s either you’re really smart and have below average looks, or really good looking and not so smart.’

I asked a lot of friends this question, and a lot of the answer I got back was ‘of course I want to be smarter.’ With that, whatever answer that I get, I follow up with another question ‘Tell me honestly, do you judge someone by their looks when you first meet a person?’ The answers are usually yes.

That sparks up interesting conversations. On one hand, intelligence is a very important thing, but there’s a very important factor: people tend to stereotype. In the society now, looks are pretty much everything. No matter how intelligent is a person, first impressions are usually based on looks, and how a person presents him or herself. Research shows that attractiveness correlate positively with some traits such as intelligence, income, social skills and selfconfidence. Physically attractive individuals are regarded more positively in first impressions and are more likely to be employed and have a higher wedge.

I’m all for high intelligence and inner beauty and I tend to try refraining myself from judging before I get to know a person, but honestly, it’s easier to throw in assumptions. A painful truth, like any product in the market, as great as you are in the inside, how far you get in life in the world now depends on skin deep factors, such as skin colour, gender and appearance.

Think Sheet No. 4 Reader: Why We Build Name: Chen Rou Ann Student ID: 1001G76463 Date: 24/9/2014 Instructor: Tony Liew

Try putting yourself in this situation: you spent hours, days week months years even designing a building that you are oh so proud of, putting so many thoughts into it, trying to figure out the symbolism, the meaning behind it, or to develop a shape a form out of the concept you've come up with. The wall is placed here because you wanted to make the user feel isolated, a column there might be because you wanted the user to feel safe. After a fair share of brain juice draining, your building is approved, and then constructions went underway. The building that you've poured your soul into is finally being constructed.

A few months, years, decades later, it is done. Something you've once envisioned is sitting right in front of you, something you can physically touch, smell and walk into. You feel a sense of accomplishment. It is right there for everybody to see, to admire, and to be used.

Finally, one fine beautiful day, the building is put to use. It could be a commercial block, a residential area, exhibition centre, it doesn't really matter, what matter is that the building is being used; it's filled with people, filled with life. The building is appreciated; it is admired, and in some way, deemed as a massive scale of art piece.

Suddenly, at some point, the building is abandoned. People leave, not needing the building anymore. It’s too big, some say. It’s too small. It’s too complicated, it’s shaped weird. It’s not pretty. It doesn’t fit my needs. I imagined how much it hurts for the architect that a building that he or she once put a whole lot of thought into it is abandoned and left aside, unattended.

A building is only a building when there is people in it, the crowd, the life that it gives out is the thing that holds the building together. Things changes overtime. Something that is originally mean something isn’t important anymore. That’s probably something all architects have to face.

Think Sheet No. 4 Reader: HOW ARCHITECTURE WORKS Name: Chen Rou Ann Student ID: 1001G76463 Date: 1/10/2014 Instructor: Tony Liew (I take this opportunity to apologize for the hasty camera skills and the not-so-pretty paintings but I’m trying to make a point so I’m sorry)

Take these paintings for an instance. Do you like it or you’re disgusted by it?

I’ve had friends who told me they loved it, and some were sceptical about it. When I showed it to my family, sister love it, dad remarked “I’m so proud of you! Now, why do I have such a weird daughter?”, and my mom goes “Ew, hang it in your room”

Dad: “AHHHH THIS ONE I REALLY LIKE. BUT WHY SO SMALL??”

Mom: “WAH. THIS ONE SO PEACEFUL. OKAY HANG IT IN THE LIVING ROOM.” Sister: “Too simple. Add something else.”

Best friend: “This looks like you threw paint on it and try to fix it. Paint me one. For my birthday.”

Of all the inconsistency of architecture that I’ve seen, one thing that is always consistent is the inconsistency of the reviews of each building. Try to catch my drift here. There is no one person in this planet that has the exact same taste in buildings. Take architecture as... Music, as books, as art.

Every single person (mind you even doppelgängers) has different opinion on it, each have something different to say from one medium to another, bad reviews, marvelling over another.

Some, they started out by hating it, and then slowly, after getting used to it, they enjoyed it more and more. The criticisms transformed into appraisal, scepticism altered to delight. Some, unfortunately, goes the other way.

To please every single person would be impossible. One thing that will always be there though, is the love for the whole.

Think Sheet No.6 Reader: STEVE JOBS Name: Chen Rou Ann Student ID: 1001G76463 Date: 8/10/2014 Instructor: Tony Liew One thing that struck me the most in Steve Job’s live is how he was brought up. How his parents included him in their live and their teachings.

Childhood influence.

Childhood is probably one of the most important things that shape a person. How they are raised, reflects how they will be in the future. I always wondered what would happen if I’m raised differently.

What would my choices be?

Would I still be the same person I am today?

When I was young I was set free with crayons and colour pencils, making a mess everywhere. The walls, floor, table, chairs or anything 3 year old me can reach were my usual victims. Mom used to complain that when I was young, I have the tendency to scatter my drawings everywhere and I was always distracted. I could be drawing this second and something else would amuse me the next, leaving everything out in the open.

I remember I would make cards every once in a while for my dad. It’ll always be the exact same thing. There will be a two storey house, with a red roof, and two balconies on the second floor with windows and the typical cartoon curtains. There would be a small rocky path leading to the house, and white picketed fences surrounding the home. There will be a car at the bottom left corner. That was my representation of home. Opening up the cards, there will always be ‘I LOVE YOU DADDY’. Then when my dad comes home from work, I’ll greet him and pass him the card. He’ll then pin it on the wall in his offices and I distinctly remember all the drawings remained on the wall till he had to move his office to KL. (I was 14 then)

My dad has always been supportive of my drawings, no matter how terrible they are, and that encouragement spiked my interest in art. Later when I was about 4ish 5, my parents

introduced me to all the skills and slowly eliminate the ones that I’m completely uninterested in.

I wonder if my parents restricted me or to punish me for what I did, what would I become.

Would I be pursuing this course? Would I even have the guts to fight for what I wanted?

Parents pay a huge role on their children’s future. How they portray the world to them and how they want the children to see the world and to function in them depends on how they paint the world with them.

Think Sheet No. 7 Reader: HORROR OF ARCHITECTURE Name: Chen Rou Ann Student ID: 1001G76463 Date: 15/10/2014 Instructor: Tony Liew I’m lying on my bed, head blank and it’s been 6 hours since I finished the read. I have no idea what am I going to write about. For the first hour, I thought it would be fun to write a short story about what the author expressed, but after about 6 lines into the story, it made no sense. Heck, I even researched about 1850s clothing so I could include one tiny detail to fit into the timeline.

‘Dresses swept the floor as ladies glide by, whispers of wild guesses under those pretty little silk umbrellas, hushed discussion among the gents in their waistcoats, all just to figure out what’s behind that boarded up wall. Some tried to peer through the cracks with their monocle, only to be greeted with darkness.’

After about an hour, I came up with nothing, and my mind moved to a different direction. I imagined how hard is it to come up with an entirely new design for something that is entirely new to the community, to the architects. To conjure up a new design just to feed the need of the new industrial era must be a very tough challenge.

I thought back to semester one where I have been thrown so out of my comfort zone (discouraging creativity, science and financial background that I had since young) and I was asked to design a hideout, I’ve been so excited I could pee my pants, but alas, all I could think of was… a box.

It took me hours, days, weeks just to tweak my design to make it look different. It was then that I realized that my mind had been mould to accept what is right in front of me and to just memorize it, and to not question, no matter what. It made me realise how much I’ve missed my childhood where I could just make something up whatever I wanted regardless. I use to love writing stories, I had drafts everywhere, and then it gets less and less as my age increases.

From that point on, it took me about an extra half a year or so to train myself to think outside the box once again, to do something so out of ordinary, no matter how crazy it sounds, and then to adjust from there. From that moment on, my head was clear; I was able to throw out some ideas that I thought I would never come up with.

I realised, how rusty my brain had been.

Pulling our attention back to when it was about 200 years ago, where the architects’ mind had been mould into thinking in that particular way about architecture, it must be hell to have to face a completely different market. From classical to industrial

markets, to arcades and office towers, and the technology they haven’t had. It must be agonizing.

The ones that came up with the new designs, those, must have been geniuses.

And now, I’m lying on my bed, head blank and it’s been 6 hours since I finished the read. I have no idea what am I going to write about.

Thinking is hard, especially when you haven’t had a good night’s sleep in ages. need that, I guess.

We all

Think Sheet No. 8 Reader: THE ARCHITECTURE OF HAPPINESS Name: Chen Rou Ann Student ID: 1001G76463 Date: 05/11/2014 Instructor: Tony Liew (Upon googling the book, I found out that the book was featured in the film 500 Days of Summer.)

You know that fluffy feeling, that you feel when you see a beautiful building? The lightweight floating feeling, the awe you have for the building looming over you as you take it all in.

Now, what is beauty?

Beauty is in the eye of the beholder.

Beauty is things that make someone catch their breath or admire. To different people, there are different things. One can argue their standings but in the end, it still depends on the person itself.

To me, beauty is the way a building communicates with you.

‘Buildings speak – and on topics which can readily be discerned. They speak of democracy or aristocracy, openness or arrogance, welcome or threat, sympathy for the future or a hankering for the past.’ –De botton I believe each building has each own story to tell. Apart from the shelter it provides us, the reason it is built, every nook and cranny, every wall, every detail has its own story to tell. They represent something. They symbolize intimidation, the past, wealth, or power, anything that we find important and needed to be reminded of.

The old castle by the bay, oh those years! War stories, how the fort held while cannons blasted through its doors, protecting the brave soldiers. It held the younglings of the Duke, little feet pitter patter across the marbled castle floor, with the maid servants follow closely behind. That mansion, lavishly built for the merchant’s spoilt son. Three storeys high stretched out from one end of the land to the other, trying so hard to impress everyone. The church that sits on a lake, emphasized on the nature surrounding it, made it appear heavenly.

The story it tells, that, is the beautiful part of it. The purpose behind it characterizes the building. It affects how the building moves, how the building turns out. Buildings are alive, constantly reminding passer-bys, or the users or anybody admiring it what it represents and the purpose of them sitting solidly on the ground unwavered.

Think Sheet No. 11 Reader: THE CITY HAS ALWAYS BEEN A HAPPINESS PROJECT Name: Chen Rou Ann Student ID: 1001G76463 Date: 12/11/2014 Instructor: Tony Liew Now, what is happiness? Happiness can’t be measured, happiness can’t really be explain, or compared, or quantify.

Why are people happy? How can they find happiness?

I think everybody have their different opinion in ‘happiness’ but (mostly) everybody can agree on one thing that makes them happy – comfort.

When anybody is asked, ‘where do you find happiness?’ most answer with, my family, my house, my friends! My work, my significant other, when I’m healthy, when I have money, when I have a house, when I get to help people…. Where did all these have in common? Comfort! They are happy because they are with something they’re comfortable with. They find cosiness with the people they associate with, or they find luxury when they have the wealth, they find comfort when they make other people happy by providing others relief.

I think we spent most of our architecture course trying to figure out how to create a happy space. It’s not about the concept that we work on, or the meaning of the building, or how we make the user feel when they’re in our building. One thing that we try to make sure is to make the building comfortable and comforting.

We spend time counting the amount of stairs, or how high the ceiling is supposed to be to make one feel contented enough. We brainstorm the heck out of ourselves to figure out where to put the bathroom, and how to position it so one could feel comfortable using it. We measure intensely on how wide or how big the room is supposed to be to not feel cramped or to figure out an opening, a window, a skylight or figure out an open space so that the users feel liberating. The way a person move around the building has to be just right.

All in all, one thing that all architects focus on is the tiny details. If a person feels comfortable enough in a space, one will feel happiness. It is the way a person interacts with the building that makes one relaxed enough, happy enough to be in a building.

It matters only a little how the building looks from the outside. It’s the content and atmosphere in a building that makes one feel happy enough to take part in. A place has to be welcoming and easy for you to want to be involved with the building. The activities, the purpose, the position of everything… When you feel welcomed and is contentedly enjoying whatever the building serves you, you find happiness.

In the end of the day, when you find comfort, you find happiness.