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.

Comic & Architecture

 

Sometimes we encourage the designers / architects in our design studio to express a complex message in a readily understandable diagrams  or images to supplement their conventional architectural visual representations. Although traditional architectural drawings are well suited for identifying problems, or great visualizing for design idea. Somehow, they are often difficult for laypeople to understand.

Recently, we get an intern to use the comic strip mediums , a very first try in our design studio to express our design idea. The combination of comic strip and diagrammatic drawing makes it possible to express our idea in a very distinctive and succinct manner, in a unique visual style that is accessible to wider audience.

Design team: Garis Architects

Comic Artist: Jonathan Lim

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

Nature to Nurture

 

The proposal of this masterplan calls for an unprecedented sub-urban neigbourhood reflecting the persona of the place - the historical connotation of Penang, Malaysia & the nostalgia of the paddy field. The proposal includes a simple yet strategic integration of green parks, wetlands and connectivity to emphasize for a healthy & holistic lifestyle. Sound residential parameters, critical infrastructure design elements through a connected and dynamic landscape to create a strong sense of place.  

Realising the adverse implication of modern development, the proposal goes beyond than just a place of accommodation. The masterplan schemed as a reactive place in constant dialogue with its surroundings, changing the conditions and the experiences for the user within.

Design team: Garis Architects

(Ar Ngu Ngie Woon, Albert Chua, Alia Aida) 

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 LIGHT COLLECTION II

 

A sustainable and happy community is about a group of people pursuing common practices and principles in living with a high degree of respect for the environment, people and the place they live in.  The collective community lifestyle can be set in motion by design - by promoting interaction and mutual support and learning - a common way of life, awareness and care for the community and place can be established.  The Light Waterfront _ Residential Enclave sets a compelling precedent in a stratified residential development with facilities.  The network of connectors and nodes that are used as design strategy to integrate dwelling units in a regular landed community can take on the 3rd dimension where levels come into play, producing greater permutations between the community and their relationship with the public domain.

 

Social interaction is promoted by design, in the strategy of multi-level, multi-user-group common area or community level public domain - much like the structure of a small village, whereby a network of paths and small congregation spaces link together clusters of dwellings/neighbourhoods or sub-communities.  Each sub-community is earmarked to be ranging from 30 to 50 units.  In this project, the list of spaces include: the Fishbone entrance and passageway, marina, colonnades, recreational decks, pooldecks, gymnasium, multipurpose hall, shops, foyers/lobbies/corridors and pocket terraces/decks, perimeter parkway, etc.  Analogous to the traditional on-stilts clan villages - also an expression of a rather Eastern cultural and urban typology - the social meeting spaces are not the Western town square but streets, passageways, piers, corner stores, temples, halls, etc.  Like the traditional equivalents, the contemporary interpretation of each of these spaces serve the community in different ways: large congregation or event at the Fishbone; formal meeting at the Foyer and Multipurpose Hall; family and friends party at the recreational deck and pooldeck; incidental chats at the corridors and lift lobbies of each floor; and so on.  As a result the project has greater than norm ratio of amenities.

 

All above Description by: Ar Tang Hsiao Seak

Design Architects: Garis Architects S/B

(Ar Tang Hsiao Seak / Ar Ngu Ngie Woon)

 

#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

 

 

#KLAF2016 _ GARIS _ RESIDENTIAL TYPOLOGY

 

•    This presentation outlines the evolution of landed residential typology developed in our practice over time reflective of the myriad changing conditions and growth of the society and nation. 

•    The evolution sees the transformation of rudimentary linked house typology - built based on speed and quantitative approach to solving housing problems of the nation - to building community based on qualitative appraisal of the environment and its sustainability. 

•    The visuals are mapped through the basic principles that their manifestations themselves have seen evolution over time, namely: community _ identity _ safety & security _ amenity _ sustainability

•    With growing wealth brings choice and qualitative appraisal from the people

•    With changing family and tenancy makeup brings sophisticated and new hybrid, evolutionary typologies

•    With greater awareness in health and well-being brings active lifestyle and connectedness to the outdoor considerations

•    With rising crime rate defensible space principles become relevant again in addressing safety and security issues

•    With traffic congestions we integrate building design with public transport and explore personal mobility solutions, whilst accessibility to local amenities and services become more important and integrated

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.