Three voices

I had a beautiful image of this. Somehow it got deleted. Picture this...three men arguing persistently on Malaysian affairs while sipping their teh tarik(s) and puffing away with lights.

The smell of cigarettes,
the butts to punctuate...
the three voices speaking for the world.

The anecdotes of life are unveiled in the most unlikely places. And somehow the most poignant stories and inflections of life are exchanged by the most insignificant men. As usual, though common sense is thought to prevail in the highest of places for the betterment of the 'weak', it is 'common' people who are most receptive to it.

Malaysia is oft-known for its tolerance and naivety in the face of rumours. It is not an exaggeration to conclude that many political forces have won and lost battles not through the highly esteemed ballot, but through the approval of coffee shop parliamentarians.

And the site of this daily meeting place is somehow not as sacred as this argument 'hallows' it. The sacred character of common discussion is veiled in the most egalitarian aesthetics. Some call it the kopitiam, for others it is the local mamak joint or merely the shed down the road.

For all its worth these speeches and conspiracy theories are celebrated with the most minimal trappings of high fashion. It is a powerful lesson to designers - in that the most sublime architecture can often miss the point of 'real' life. While designers shouldn't triumph on the laurels of mediocrity, sophistication does not always reside in memory.

It is something to pause and think about. What brings people back to their local kopitiam? Is it sheer necessity or familiarity? Are our old decrepit and sometimes purely 'practical' sheds a jumble of commodities united for the commerce of food and beverage? Are these places memorable?

Sometimes, what's important is not so much how one feels for places (that the relation between activity and emotion can simply be examined in a cause and effect manner), as much as what one actually feels.

Thus, perhaps what is useful to discover is how places feel - when there is a roof over one's head... or how the table looks and feels like when it hasn't been cleaned... or how the thin films of moisture glaze the tables albeit for a few seconds... or how the slight weight of elbows resting shift the legs of the table every few seconds.

And how trees might give too little, too much shade to places...and when torrential rains come to pass, how the iron roofs applaud in thunderous approval...and the new found breeze of fresh moist air is savoured in spaces in between the melancholy and provoking discussions across tables,on these small 'altars' of the world.

Yes, a coffee shop can always be a haunting recognition of the often forgotten world, beyond self, beyond just the unique image of 'architectural' presence.

Bringing immensity to the image

Here is a comment left by one of my readers:

Zhin,

Very interesting comment! Could you elaborate on what you mean by "architectural mood"?

When you say, "the eyes are already in the view," are you saying your photographs are as you would see it if you were physically present at the location?

If not, you'll have to explain that one too. If it's not too much trouble.

It should also be mentioned that if I am allowed to say shit like "brings immensity to the image" too often, I be strung-up for crimes against common sense.

On a lighter note, "bringing immensity to the image" does sound reminiscent of architectural scholarship, I mean 'wank-ship' ( if we could crave for that word). Oddly enough, it does bring to fore an indispensable element of architectural 'production'. When we build, we build according to a vision- an image(s) that maps the intents of our minds and hearts. Thus, it follows that the fidelity to which the act of building adheres to a drawing, a mind map or an image is similarly transferred to the relationship between the image and the atmospheric content that is desired.

Simply put, even the most abstract ideas seem to crave a form of representation that can be experienced, whether in part of fully in the flesh. It sometimes avails to a severe knock in the head when we are anxious to put thought on to paper and yet struggle with the difficulties of translating abstraction to concrete things and vice versa. Nothing new, but it reminds us of the profound reciprocity between the body and the mind, to the extent that denying the realm of the other is negating existence in itself.

Thus, while it is often thought that it is the 'flesh' that matters in the end, many designers are obsessed with image-making, with visions that sometimes seem to bear little resemblance to a finished product. Perhaps I will limit myself henceforth (in this argument) to the theme of veracity (although quite loosely), as this seems to be what bothers or touches most people when they see what I'd loosely call architectural photography.

It isn't really like that!

Well that's true. But then again, what is true about an image goes as far as the eye that sees it. No, I don't mean that people should use their creative licence to lie. From an architect's point of view, 'sometimes' what is in a photograph or in a sketch is what one wants to see. It is sometimes 'permissible', even laudable that one explores not just the truth of what one sees, but how one feels for it.

Architects see things others don't. There is as much creativity in composing a photograph as there is in designing a building. While I acknowledge that there is much window dressing and touching up going out there in the industry there are also many ways of perceiving things beyond the faculties of the eye.



To put this in specific example, I am going to elaborate on a picture taken here as an example.

What did I see? You are most right in challenging the allegation that if architecture is about life, where are the people? But for many architects, the eye is already in a person who sees. None of my pictures are objective viewpoints. Like maps, they are biased in several directions because the creation of the image comes through a mind and body - a subject.

I wanted to explore a feeling of being detached from the world. The sisters in the convent would've looked out that window many times in their life and wondered about their vocation. Were they missing out? And yet the pews were aligned in a completely perpendicular direction. There were two movements that both stretched to eternity and the sisters would've felt the currents each time they stepped into either 'realms'.

The window shown here is in the chapel. It overlooks a field. Kids from the school would've played around each day. Laughters of 'innocence' perhaps, or maybe a false facade, what with the looming towers of hedonism; one on Bukit Nanas and the other two at KLCC so clearly exposed in the background. The force of the world often seems to overpower anything else in its way.

So if you can exercise your imagination, you might perhaps find a sister kneeling on these pews, distressed and at peace each time she does so. Can you feel what she feels? The isolation of the world from her and vice versa. The pain and the ecstasy wrought by merely kneeling on these pews. How her hands and feet might feel and how the ocassional breeze blowing in from the field takes her breath away as she reads the Book of Psalms. And how her fingers seem to feel much older than the year before, joined in prayer, but holding much pain from a world quite indifferent to words like sacrifice and service.

And the pews, never never complain...the world of piety rests on these objects, soaking in the tears, sweat and pain of those who ignore her. For though she is humble, a mere piece of wood, a little sacrament she is too, a pedestal to heaven, where sorrow might meet its rest.

Such dreams are not merely found in cameras Han. They also occur with a mere mild stroke of a pencil. This is why I still keep my drafting desk!

Hope this might prove useful to your deliberations.

No news is good news?

Dear friends,

Zhin has been ill for the past week, so he can't write much yet. He's been drinking lots of water and trying to make sure those liquids get to the creative juice cauldron. Please be patient for the next edition. Sorry for the silence.

Meanwhile just to keep you busy - Renzo's going to build something next to darling Corb's Ronchamp Chapel... Does this make you mad?

http://www.guardian.co.uk/france/story/0,,1963339,00.html

Nice spaces, bad places

Now, I hope you can guess where this is. One of the many disappointments I have with architecture and urban design in Malaysia, is the lack of places to sit down and do 'nothing'. Yes, nothing is an activity too.

Middle class neighbourhoods such as this one generally have better designed intermediate spaces. But the same problem persists! Where am I to sit down and enjoy the shade provided by the well patronised Bangsar Village? Where are kids to play? Where can teenagers date? Where can I just soak up the sun or watch the world go by?

All nice and glossy, as the sign here suggests, but when you think of it, many so called public spaces are mere dressing or envelope design to make the building 'look' better, to the detriment of real activites. One can do nothing here. What a waste of space, pavement and trees!

Newsflash! Le Corbusier's Chapel Completed

Dear Friends,

Thanks to pushpullbar.com, I got to know about Corb's completed Chapel after 40 years of construction. See links below.

http://www.pushpullbar.com/forums/showthread.php?t=5006
http://www.spiegel.de/international/0,1518,451392,00.html

Enjoy!

Preview: Infant Jesus Convent at Bukit Nanas, KL

I sung at a concert held in Bukit Nanas Convent on Saturday night. To me, it's one of KL's treasures. A really humble agglomeration of prewar buildings, it begs more attention. Or perhaps not. I hope to review it some day. Work pending.