Moss as Render

Rain drops from heaven,
to the delight of parched skins,
and into green fields they grow.

A simple walk to any shaded path in the city or in the small belukar behind our backyard would reveal to us the ubiquitous vegetation under the Malaysian sun, not forgetting the rain. It is often seen that all kinds of weeds and trees sprout up even after a massive land clearance. Amazing, the fury of nature is.

Many Kl-ites whine and whinge when they 'have' to walk, almost comparable to doing their chores at home. They have a point! But when you think of what's wrong in our urban landscapes, one quickly sees the forest for the trees. I mean, it is no doubt that our weather is humid, but where are all the trees that would make walking under the shade a near pleasurable experience?
And yet, the lure of the tropics according to the outside world immediately entails visions, nay, spectacles of greenery.

It's a rather disturbing 'problem' where many find the idea of planting a tree an 'extra' burden. Why do you think our councils are so apt to behead our wayside trees and still perform incompetently where rubbish collection is almost begged for? Face it, trees are a hassle in KL. The usual predicament that plagues our council workers appears in the phrase, "Susahlah...nak potong lagi, lepas tu kena pergi tengah jalan, nak buat cantik cantik lagi...alamak...potong ajelah".

Multiply the effects of this typical excuse and what you get is an ugly city where pedestrians sweat as if they're ready to be satay-ed or they've been microwaved! But all this personal 'whinging' of mine avails to nothing if you can't compare it to a better alternative. So where else is the Malaysian head to turn, if not to our small little clinical island friend of Singapore. Now, I don't think I need to elaborate anymore on this, but to those who wonder, please take a walk on a Singapore street (almost any) and you'll see why having a tree over your head suddenly makes tropical weather bearable if not a pleasure. The most ridiculous point I am trying to make here, is it just takes common sense to solve many problems that aren't worth politicising.

Oh did I mention politics? I am going to say something which Dr. M would really disapprove of. I actually concur with many ignorant Mat Salleh's (to an extent) that we should live in trees as they usually claim we do. Wait, let me rephrase that; I think we should live under trees. A walk in our average jungle would tell you that with the kind of climate in the tropics, we were meant to live under the canopy of trees. It is the how question which will stir us to make architecture rather than disaster. Of course, this will make me so politically incorrect in Malaysia, where everything needs to look 'hebat', in fact the less kampung the better. I will not be surprised if they were to ship in tonnes of sand from Saudi Arabia to make KL the Middle East of South East Asia. Maybe that's what they've been planning all this while. Stupid me, and I actually thought people were unmotivated to make our cities green.

Thus, this is where the whole moss (metaphor and object) 'title' allows me to make my point. From an aesthetic point of view, one could conclude that we live in a land and sky literally teeming with life! By contrast, the architecture of Malaysia (mostly) tries to deny this. There are numerous examples of how our buildings do not weather well, and are intended to stand like stark purist symbols or things in a landscape. Even Villa Savoye did not escape the dressing of nature, so how can our villas?

Moss, like any other vegetation is a beautiful render to our often peeling, painted walls. It is practical in the sense that one never needs to 'clean it'. It is poetic because it is weathering in action (one can never tell how it is going to be) and is also a metaphor for living with(in) the process of nature.

And to think, we spend thousands, millions of ringgit, painting, repainting and deciding to clad buildings in marble and granite tiles. We spend way too much time obliterating trees, or buying air conditioners to solve a 'hot' problem that is directly caused by our 100% paved 'front garden' to accommodate 3 sedans.

To think that residents of temperate climates beg to have our kind of weather (as it should be) -- to think that we can plant trees 1 metre apart and they will still grow, unlike other climates...all we think of as landscapes are lawns and pathetic palms which don't give shade.

The gross injustice done to the advancement of Malaysian architecture can be crystallized in no other practice but Dr. Ken Yeang's. With all these opportunities, dude....where's your moss? where are your trees?....oh...I get it, they're too cheap to plant...I see...it's better to erect and edifice of glass and sails which take thousands if not millions to clean year after year.

"Use your head lah!"

What are trees for? Shade first, ornament second.