AN
ARCHITECTURE by YEESIN SIOW 2011 - 2015
PORTFOLIO
Group Sketch A Study of the Street Scape of ChinaTown, Singapore
The project is located in Chow Kit, Kuala Lumpur. The area that was once vibrant in the 80s is now partially abandoned by the higher class as other places has a better development and Chow Kit was classifed as the infamous Red Light District of Kuala Lumpur. Nowadays, a lot of female victims are human trafficked to these infamous areas and are forced to live as sex workers. Apart from that, a lot of homeless are now lurking a in the area. Therefore, a women shelter is much needed in this area as the target users are the sex workers that wishes to get out of the industry, the homeless women, the women with kids that needs as much help and also women who are harmed by their husbands.
CHOW KIT WOMEN HALFWAY HOME ‘To identify, stabalize, and reconnect the victims back to society’
SITE
Detailed site plan
LRT Station Location Plan of Proposed Site in Chow Kit
South view of the site. The site has an efficient amount of huge trees hence providing the site a generous amount of shade.
West view of the site. The site has a few existing shophouse. I decided to keep them as they still provide architecture merits. The significant parts of the shophouses are the roof, the windows and the five foot way arch.
East view and also the busiest part of the site. It is still clustered with big old trees and it is faced towards a row of busy shophouses.
The Women’s Halfway Home program is targetted to provide the harmed women the step closer to healing and to the working industry while giving them protection and shelter from the harms they are facing. It functions as a halfway home for the women for a 4 - 6 weeks stay. A LRT station overlooking the site directly, as our program is a private program, there would be trees giving the private healing gardens a partial shield.
Ground floor is the public space of the building having a bank which attracts people, food stores maintained by the women, a culinary training center, a post office for the women to post their art sold online and the locksmith and barber from the existing shophouses. They would all be maned abd give training to the women.
Ground Floor Plan
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Second floor consist of the women’s private dormitory. There is also a completely private garden with a service of cat theraphy. This is for the women who are still uncomfortable to face the public.
Second Floor Plan
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First floor consist of a semi public theraphy garden with activities. It also has a job center, consultation room and clinics for the women.
First Floor Plan
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Environmental Strategies
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Section A - A
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Section B - B
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As to bring back the tradition of Jalan Tun HS Lee, the aim is to guarantee the return of the spirit of the haggling, bustling street and passionate stall holders. To revitalize the space, a spice and flo flower market is served in the site. The spice market not only sell powdered spices targeting the sales to the Jalan Tun HS Lee restaurants and around the area, it also provide sales of �owers, the raw materials of the spices (garlic, chilli, tumeric etc.), marinated prepacked food targetting the sales for o�ce workers and parents. It also sells potted herbs encouraging the community to bring a plant and bring it home.
SPICE & FLOWER URBAN INFILL MARKET ‘Urban acupuncture is intended to produce small-scale but socially catalytic interventions in the urban fabric’
SITE
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GROUND FLOOR PLAN
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FIRST FLOOR PLAN
SECOND FLOOR PLAN
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Side entrance to the flower market from the front facade. On the side are wall racks where the flowers hang.
FRONT ELEVATION
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Interior view of the main spice market on the ground floor. Vendors each surround the courtyard to ensure all activity places are cased by the natural sunlight.
Food court sellign mainly spice inspired and indian cuisine as it corresponds to the indian street adjacent to the site. BACK ELEVATION
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Entrance from the back facade. Mainly used by the office workers, school children and the waiting parents. Entrance has visual connection to a three tier garden going up to the second floor. SECTION A - A
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It is our goal and target to create a communal facility center for the proposed site. The orang asli has numerous proud customs and traditions to be preserved and the wild medicine tradition is one of the most beneficial and near extincting traits. t The medicament treatment and research center is facilitated with a preservation farm, a research center and a treatment center for pregnency women and children. The center is targetted to presere this practice, provide jobs for the tenage delinquency and also an attraction and skill learning for the up coming tourists.
ORANG ASLI MEDICAMENT TREATMENT & RESEARCH COMMUNITY CENTER ‘As culture tend to fade away with technology, it become so rare, so precious, one should preserve it.’
Location of site. It is now an open carpark with abandoned single story buildings surrounding it, adjacently facing the Orang Asli Museum.
Detailed Site Plan & Roof Plan
Design Process
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Lower Ground Floor Plan NTS Preservation and visiting medicine garden.
First Floor Plan NTS Private research lab, classrooms and treatment rooms.
Ground Floor Plan NTS Public research lab, Gombak showroom and lounge, with a cafe in between of the path from the center and the museum
Second Floor Plan NTS Roof Garden for preserving plants.
Front Elevation (view with cafe)
Back Elevation
Section A - A
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Section B - B
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NTS Roof Garden Details
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Based on truss and connection knowledge, We, a group of five were to produced a popsicle stick tower without the aid of glue, using only strings or toothpicks for connection. The aim is to create a tower with a limit usage of popsicle sticks and to produce the one that can sustain the most weight.
POPSICLE TOWER
A flat platform top
Maximized the
Vertical posts are to
Holes punched
Sewing strings
so load can be
area of the base
keep the chords apart
linearly along
tied individual
evenly distributed
which was given
and brace them.The
each sticks so
sticks together to
throughout the
as an A5 size for
diagonals resist the
sheer force can be
prevent the sticks
whole structure
larger support.
shearing force be-
directed down al-
from sliding out
thus area to sup-
tween chords when
lowing longer
from the toothpick
port is evenly
load cause the center
time frame for
screw.
used and not
span to sink. Depth of
load to reach
wasted.
truss increase with the
ground level.
span which makes the mumbers longer and avoid buckling.
Conceptual Design The green wall was built from scratch in a group of 8 people, and it successfully made its way to be presented as an interacting art piece in the Shalini Ganendra Fine Arts Gallery for sustainable and charitable purposes. The concept was based on a floating garden idea for the kids to interact with and also to encourage interaction and movements of the child with the structure of the green wall.
GREEN WALL BUILT ‘A garden must combine the poetic, the mysterious, the feeling of serenity and joy’
The conceptual design of the green wall was initially perspex as the support system of the bamboo to create the feeling of floating. But it was switched to a rebar frame after the budget count as it is the closest to transparency and the strongest.
Rumah Asal is a living art of wood carving that will tell people about the story behing each motif. it is the creation of the traditional Melayu with it’s own motif guidelines which differentiate from carvings elsewhere. There are two categories of carvings we explored on Rumah Asal, fine carving and rough carving. Fine carvings apears on the traditional Malay swords used for thefense but it is also now commonly used as ornaments. Rough carvings appear on the motifs that laid on larger objects. For example, furniture, pillars, windows and other parts of the house.
RECOLLECTION OF RUMAH ASAL, PAPAN ‘History is undoubtedly one of the most important topics of discussion among the people, for the simple fact that wihout history, we would have no identity, as a person, as a community or as a nation.
ROOF TRUSS DETAIL OF RUMAH ASAL
The purpose of the measured reproductions are to study about architecture in various contexts of traditional customs, culture
and symbolism. To observe the architecture bond and interaction between the locals and the built. It is also a practical understanding of the traditional construc-
tion system as we get to view the construction not by book but by hand. Drawing out the construction process details of Rumah Asal and including the custom rules when constructing the home, the joinery and structural systems, choice of materials, and specific ornamentations educated me of the practocality and the constuction of Malaysian Vernacular Architecture.
MEASURED DETAIL DRAWINGS OF RUMAH ASAL
SECTION X - X
Isometric details of the traditional wooden truss of Rumah Asal. All were measured and drawn based on site measure, studies and references.
NOT TO SCALE
DETAILED MODEL OF RUMAH ASAL
Lebih Kurang exhibition is an Architecture Graduation Exhibition of the Taylor’s Bachelor of Science 2014 Graduates. And I was fortunate enough to be able to co-organize the exhibition located at APW Bangsar itself. As illustrated in the next few pages, all props, racks, decorations and arrangements are done by us all from scratch by hand. I was also assigned to be the editor of our yearbook. Lebih Kurang is a celebration of imperfections and strengths. It is a play of the phrase ‘More or less, less is more’. A uniquely Malaysian name which offers fresh perspective.
Photowall of our four years down the road hanged with transparent nylon strings using the advantage of the perforated metal wall.
LEBIH KURANG EXHIBITION ‘This four years of architecture journey has opened us up to boundless new thoughts and elements. These aspects all adds up to so much more than the sum of its acquired parts molding us to the unique minds we have today.’
Boards of every students’ finest works hanged on transparent nylon strings back to back with a weight of recycled wooden block on the end of each strings. Old woonden palletes from the printing factory on site are also recollected and cured to be stacked as our makeshift model presentation table.
The back drop of the wall is made by recycled corrugated board, paper, polystyrene and brown board left over from our studio studies. The cocktail tables were nailed up together by unused and spoilt drawers we picked up in the printing factory. The little spaces in the drawers were then lined with little mass models of students.
Cover of our self made yearbook aiming for a minimalistic branding design.
The self standing 3D cube is made by metal strips welded together standing as an icon stamped with the Lebih Kurang logo at the entrance.
One of our individual student pages in the yearbook.