RECONFIGURE THE GAP

Typology: City Lobby

Location: Johor Bahru, Johor, Malaysia

Status: Proposal

Year: 2019

The History of the Gap

Life in Johor Bahru like many other early settlements was built around the river with vast fields of plantations. Through the passage of time, development ensued and caused an uptick in urban blocks that shifted according to cultural and social needs. With each decade, the voids in the city constricted along the invasive urban blocks that increased exponentially. Yet, the built environment that was meant to cater to the people was forsaken for the leftover gaps between them because they were the truly democratic space of the city; space that does not segregate through barriers of privatization and commercialization.

JB: The Make-Shift City

Every corner of Johor Bahru is filled with public life. Pockets of temporary ephemera pop up through the gaps between buildings and facilitate a culture of lingering. However, these pop-up programmes take place in afterthoughts of spaces in often rundown, unsanitary and overall poor conditions; yet the presence of community uplifts and reinforces the gaps to be filled with life. How then can we reconfigure and empower these afterthoughts of space into civic spaces shaped by the communities dependent on them?

Reconfiguring and Empowering the Gap

The City Lobby aims to create a space for all regardless of background, empowering them through programmes that sustain and enrich their livelihoods through the use of landscaping and the familiarity of gaps. The intent is to draw in people to inhibit an empty canvas of space and begin the process of adding value to the space itself as well as its surroundings. Thus, the gaps will have qualities of place-making, sustainability of community and ecology and upholds values of equity through space.