Urban Village

We always in the dilemma how to create a successful Urban Village in new township planning process. Place making and city comforts always the key factors that make urban life pleasant; places where people can meet, methods to tame cars and to make buildings good neighbours, art that infuses personality into locations and makes them into places.

An urban village demand an unique characteristics that can promote, not only a sense of community, but also diversity and environmental sustainability.

KLAF2018 - Catalouge _ Urban Symphony

 

Kuala Lumpur Architecture Festival KLAF2018 was an amazing event, We are honoured to be part of the event. Being one of the speakers line up, we glad to see how success of the event, and to managed to bring the event to be more relevant to the architecture and building industry. Highly appreciate the effort of the organizer has managed to elevate the standard of the event to another high for this annual event.

Also, we are glad to share our place-making project in Official KLAF2018 catalogue, with the article that managed to record our approach in promoting awareness of quality public space, in conjunction with WUF9.

MBAM Centre - Competition Scheme

MBAM (Master Builder Association Malaysia) Centre is a manifestation of the Master Builder's identity and demonstration of possibility translating imagination into reality.

The design vision empowered through the proposal aims to provide resources of info, public acknowledgement, interaction with other building consultants, and education trainings for new builders. Building programs has been designed to encourage trainings and involvement between different stakeholders in order to improve learning and working experience.

Proposed MBAM Centre is energized by multiple semi outdoor or in-between spaces, to be the core of the interaction spaces. The strategy of overlapping spaces and programme allow interaction and connection between different users. Besides, the massing is a clear representation of the programmatic configuration of the centre; expressing clear and distinct architectural language of timelessness as a new typology for utilitarian building.

Grand plaza at ground level is designated for multipurpose function, public events and gantry workshop for the heavy machinery, also function as workshop which eventually function as exhibition equipment for event usage.

 

With the proposed IBS steel post and beams framing system with truss system, the structure intended to express the effective cantilevered spaces, with central life core and services stacks function as the primary structure support for the building.

We believe being sustainable is an attitude that can turn into a habit and that leas to a norm and becomes a cultural practice. Thus our principle of sustainable design has clearly applied in this building.

Translucent concrete has been chosen as the main façade of the cantilevered spaces. Translucent concrete allow light transmissive properties due to embedded light optical elements. Light is conducted through the stone from one end to the other. This result in light pattern on the other surface casting unique shadow on one side which appear as silhouettes through the material. At night, the entire cantilevered box would appear as lantern.

 

Design Team: Garis Architects Sdn Bhd

(Ar Steven Ngu Ngie Woon, Daniel Tiong, Albert Chua, Kwan Seng)

Urban Symphony

Who doesn’t remember makeshift telephones made of wire and cans? Urban Symphony interactive sculpture is inspired by this childhood toys, but a bit more complex and a lot cooler looking!

In conjunction with WUF9 Kuala Lumpur, we had been invited to collaborate with UNHabitat to set up a pop-up art installation intended to promote awareness of quality public spaces in Kuala Lumpur city. 2 days on-site installation works conducted by the team, as we remarked that erecting the arts work on the street allowed passers-by to engage with their artistic process, ask question about the work, the process and goals.

UPVC pipes given the designer great flexibility in forming the angle and shape with its off-the-shelves angle joint. This interactive art formed by the combination of 36 vertical modules of various heights. As people speak into these modules, their voices are amplified and carried out into the air. The breeze carries these words and ideas into the atmosphere to create a collective voice. Trumpet-shaped listening devices are installed at the end of the each module, where painted Symphony Horns standing high – some angles toward the sky, some is pointed to the human level. Children can explore the playful qualities of sound by talking into one end of the sculpture to produce sound for the listener on the other end.

The installation work intended to bring the community together; it is the place that people meet with friends, stop for lunch, enjoy the time with family; The material used for seats and benches are 100% recyclable, these seating has been landscaped with 55 recycled pallets placed in between the Symphony Horn intended to break down the conventions of standardized seating patterns, utilizing height and space, as well as offering a large amount of external seating in this familiar urban space.

Tape arts be part of this installation work to entice, delight and direct the pedestrian flow and experience this public space. The colourful lines arts borrows from the language of KL-city metro map vector as it is a vibrant and memorable wayfinding indication of this growing urban legible city. 

Urban Symphony, a fundamentally demonstrated versatile space that hold any kind of public activity. The installation allowed all kinds of interactions, and allowed visitors to participate in the exhibition and programs organized by UNHabitat for WUF9. It has also successfully offered pedestrians a new experience with its symphony and optical sensation, inverting and magnifying the urban landscape.

Project info:

Architect: Garis Architects Sdn Bhd & GAde Design Workshop

Collaborator: UNHabitat (represented by David A. Sagita & Mitiku Woldesenbet)

Lead Designer: Ar Steven Ngu Ngie Woon

Design Team: Albert Chua, Daniel Tiong, Loh Kwan Seng, Ng Zhia Zhing, Jonathan Lim, Tan Chew Yee

Photographs: Steven Ngu, Ng Zhia Zhing

Breeze of Nature

Taman Tugu Greenovation Design Competition is to design innovative benches serve as iconic features of the park. With the objectives of the competition to foster creative thinking and promote the design idea that speaks to the nature.


It was a quickie task conducted in GAde Design Workshop. The task assigned to the design team intended to have fun with the design exploration besides the daily architecture work. We didn't set any design boundary for ourselves, but let the design idea flow naturally.

Our idea came from the wonderful feeling one gets from lying in a field of wild flower in Taman Tugu, feel the breeze of nature. By lowering the level of your body to the Earth, you are able to share space with the flowers and enter a new atmosphere that we are not often able to experience.

Design team: GAde Design Workshop / Garis Architects

(Ar Ngu Ngie Woon, Albert Chua, Daniel Tiong)

Research Campus & Retirement Home Village

Located within the lush tropical landscape at Malaysia, the site is characterized by lakes and water channels. The design of this research based campus is responds to the physical landscape of the site and to the weather patterns particular to this tropical environment.

To allow students to move around the campus freely, while shaded from the sun or protected from downpours, spaceship-shaped canopies shelter the pedestrian paths that wind around the eastern of the site. These canopies intersect to encircle a landscaped park. Arranged around the edge of the canopies are buildings of teaching and research, contained in institution blocks that tuck beneath the edges of the canopies.

Besides, retirement home village has been designated at the western side of the development. Community and the existing landscape natural world became the inspiration for this elderly village, which provides residents with easy access to the outdoors and plenty of the space to gather. The aims of the design is to provide "a sense of belonging in an era of uncertainty" for this group of residents.

Design Architects: Garis Architects S/B (Ar Ngu Ngie Woon)

The Arc - Winner of Place Making & Public Space Award (MIPPEA)

The winners of the Malaysia Institute Planners (MIP) Planning Excellence Awards were revealed at a ceremony at Kuala Lumpur on 25th November 2016. Fifteen projects from across the state were acknowledged from a total entry pool of 68.

Congratulation to Garis Architects Sdn Bhd and the whole design team. We are honoured to be awarded as Winner in Place Making & Public Space Award - MIP Planning Excellence Awards (MIPPEA 2016).  

 
project info:
project name: the arc at bandar rimbayu
location: bandar rimbayu, selangor, malaysia
architect: garis architects sdn bhd
design team: ar tang hsiao seak, ar steven ngu ngie woon
client: bandar rimbayu sdb bhd, IJM land berhad

#KLAF2016_GARIS_THE ARC_COMMUNITY CENTER AS CATALYST DEVELOPMENT FOR NEW TOWNSHIP

 

In the context of modern, tropical, diverse, developing Asian cities - representing Garis Architects’ evolving works in the underlying agenda to push for change from the working level and from the lowest unit intervention - The Arc _ Rimbayu sets the precedent for a community-based township in the following ways:

 

•    A flexible and adaptable multi-program structure that functions as a catalyst for a new township - stage 1: gallery & office; and stage 2: community centre.

•    A demarcation on the landscape in the act of place-making by establishing an identity for the community and township - an antithesis to a visual icon or landmark for the sake of a symbol.

•    Functionally provides shelter and serves as the collective public domain for various community amenities - bazaar, street, square, park, sports centre, shops, prayer rooms, meeting spaces, learning places, community farm, recycling centre, etc.

•    An urban connector between residential enclaves and commercial hub - vehicle-free pedestrian/ cyclist promenade and canal to reduce reliance on motor vehicle

•    A typology and business model for privately initiated community hub and centre for community-based projects

 

 As a typology and community-centric solution intending for residents to take up ownership and identity, the project aims to achieve through the following aspects in its design:

•    improve connectivity - designed as a major linkage - at pedestrian level to reduce reliance on motor vehicle

•    replace, increase and improve existing landscape and hydrology for a balanced ecosystem and to promote biodiversity

•    make parkland and the public or semi-public realm more inclusive for the community

•    incorporate in design greenery - vertical and horizontal - to improve insulation, cooling and air quality

•    turn stormwater drainage and collection system into positive, compelling and interactive design in place-making by incorporating it into the architecture and landscaping at conception

•    use sustainable design and ecosystem as keys to engage the community and to serve as showcase for social/community living, informal and interactive educational programs, urban farming, etc

•    derive typology or model that is easy to build, replicate and adapt for different location, usage, context and able to evolve over time

 

All above Description by: Ar Tang Hsiao Seak

Design Architects: Garis Architects S/B

(Ar Tang Hsiao Seak / Ar Ngu Ngie Woon)

 

 

#KLAF2016_GARIS_AFFORDABLE HOUSING-COMMUNITY STRATEGIES

This presentation outlines an approach to planning and design of affordable housing  scheme recognising that some aspects of the development and living community may change while some are more timeless.  It is presented as a series of principles, methodology framework and guidelines encompassing action plans and prototypes - laid out across a spectrum of the two extremes of “unchanging" and “changing" parameters related to affordable housing development and its community and life therein.

 

All above Description by: Ar Tang Hsiao Seak

Design Architects: Garis Architects S/B

(Ar Tang Hsiao Seak / Ar Ngu Ngie Woon)

 

 

#KLAF2016_GARIS_URBAN HUB COMMUNITY

Urban centres in sub-urban districts and suburban townships have evolved from their original purpose of providing local level services to the surrounding regions, connected mainly by road.  The shop-lot typology alone can not serve the increasingly complex roles and functions, and the exchange of people and information that occur on daily basis.  Emerging from this change and demand certain ideas and approach to urban planning and design, architecture and engineering are becoming prevalent:

•    Transportation and mobility integration

•    Connectedness of the community

•    Architecture-public domain-infrastructure integration

•    Design intelligence and smart technologies

 

As transport-oriented-development become the hub, design parameters need to cover integration with vehicular network and parking design strategy to avoid the loss of urban character.  Personal mobility solutions also become relevant in addressing the issues of traffic congestion and sustainability - it is a new approach that mediates between public transport and cars that is environmentally sensitive and socially sustainable.  As people transit through the hub, between homes - workplaces - shops, the journey is placed under the spotlight in its connectedness, quality of experience, amenity and facility - such as shops, services, recreation, safety, security, convenience, practicality, handling cross-section of users, environmentally friendly design, quality/character of public domain, value to community building, placemaking potential, etc.  The role of architecture is further challenged by the necessity to answer the needs to integrate and connect using new and hybrid typologies - last millennium paradigm shift in design for cars needs an up-shift to meet a new paradigm of public transport, autonomous vehicles and personal mobility devices - that would change spatial layout and visual experience of space due to different speeds of travel within and across buildings.  This compels the incorporation of intelligent and adaptive design strategies and the use of smart technologies to serve the built environment rather than to be dictated by it conversely.  Architecture will need to be seamless and all-encompassing to integrate the public domain and infrastructure to optimise land use and efficiency, and critically to propound the importance of placemaking for the people and the value of the public domain as the common denominator of the city.

A common typology has been evolving on the drawing board - a 'link' that is based on a flexible linear structure that integrates a multitude of services, predominantly used for movement of people, activated by activities at key nodes while drawing closer the relationships between inside and outside.  It functions on ground plane at the most rudimentary level, but key to its versatility is its transmutability to flex up and down vertically and twist laterally - for multilevel, multi-block connectivity - opening up new levels of accessibility and flexibility when coupled with personal mobility solutions within an architectural spatial configuration.

 

All above Description by: Ar Tang Hsiao Seak

Design Architects: Garis Architects S/B

(Ar Tang Hsiao Seak / Ar Ngu Ngie Woon)

Composed by: Albert Chua

 

 

Reviving Community Spirit

Life is about human relationships. A sense of community creates a better living environment. Township that offer a strong community benefits the individual and the greater society. Therefore, the role of township planning and architecture is to propound the importance of sense of community for a better home that provides its occupants with a better quality of life.

Always inspired with countryside living that crafted lush green space and inviting activities for entire family to enjoy the great outdoor. While every designer emphasizing "Live, Play & Work", we are here to build home in development. Beside "Live, Play & Rest", we are creating Home to raise families. This is a cozy enclave you and your family can call Home. 

With the strategic development planning is to be well integrated with existing nature, generous facilities for leisure and sports activities has been designated at the edge of existing lake. As a bridge connecting the gaps within the contextual environment, the proposed unique features becomes place-maker - a node celebrating nature's moments which then becomes an ideal place for human activity especially home-making.

the Arc through photograher's eye

Without a doubt, the Arc, this enclave still awaken all our senses, giving a relaxed-cum-stress-free environment. Likewise, providing an alluring atmosphere which will create a lasting impression on the visitors.

 

It is always interesting to know what is the captivating image of the Arc through other photographer's eye. Some fascinating angle captured by Andy Lim, a professional photographer.