If I would sum up my performance in Design 5 for this semester with one word, the word would be ‘unsteady‘. The reason why I choose this word is because my design changed multiple times from the beginning until the end of the individual project, where I changed my last design ten days before the submission date.
During my individual design process, everything was still on track, from the design manifesto until the cross-crit session between workbases, where I had come out with a form that I am quite satisfied during that time.
Soon after the cross-crit, this building form was no longer feel good by me after looking at it for a long time. Hence, I decided to make changes on it with the basic ideation that I have and here is the outcome.
In this amended proposal, I am trying to make the building even more scattering and I tried to soften the unfriendly spikey form by adding in curve element at the corner. One additional idea was included as well, by having two contrast elements – the ‘urban’ (Kluang town/Urban farming) and ‘rural’ (Traditional farm/Agriculture), which were represented by different materials, characteristics and functions. Despite the form that I had come out with, I acknowledged another issue which is on the space planning, where I feel the spaces inside do not have any uniqueness, not related to each other and seem like not designed at all, where it could not reflect the building function and identity as a urban farming building. With the strict studio time frame, interim crit was just around the corner during that time. Bringing this issue along, I forced myself to attend the interim crit, and here is the spot where I am exhausted after receiving those ‘biting comments’ from the panel, which is so straight to the point on the issue that I faced. However, I have received a lot of constructive ideas from the panel as well. Being as a person who does not like to surrender, I tried hard to look for solution on the issue, trying to change a little bit on the building form, hoping that the issue could be solved without changing much on the form.
Anyway, I failed to solve the issue, and here I gone insane and made a decision to start over the design completely (20 December 2021), in term of form and space planning. Trying to utilize the idea of flexible architecture from the panel, I think of modular planting unit which is movable on the building itself to make the space adjustable, and allow each unit to choose either to expose to sunlight or stay under the shade based on the plant type. Abundance of planting areas were added by revising to comments from panel. In this design, I am trying to make the spaces more meaningful and interesting, at the same time also showing the identity of the building. The scattering building blocks were still trying to be remained in this design, but the small scattering roofs do cause a lot of problems technically, with large portion of floor expose to rain.
To solve that issue, another large piece of pitch roof was designed to replace the scattering roof as shown in the picture below:
During that period, technical workshop is just around the corner. But before that, we are given a chance to crit with our senior from master. From the crit, I found out 2 comments which are very sensible:
1. Planting area should be placed at south and north direction to secure all day long exposure to sunlight.
2. Planting area should be vertically in line with the fish room which supply irrigation water as that is why we need architect to design a building: to make every planning organized and reduce cost.
After receiving these 2 comments, my heart was swaying on the decision making: either to change or remain the design. But considering that technical workshop is coming, I remained it and presented it in technical workshop. However, I changed my mind after technical workshop as I think I should try my best to solve every issues that I found. Yes, I changed the design again on 14 January 2022, while the final board submission is on 24 January 2022 – 11:59pm.
These 10 days were the most intensive days that I have been gone through so far, building my models in Sketchup, rushing my drawings in AutoCAD. I feel like I am having mental illness during that time. I am isolating myself and not talking to friends or looking at my their progress at all as I worry that my emotion would be affected and become much more panic. I worry questions from my friends as well, which might shorten my working time since I am short of time. Over that 10 days, what I thought was just following my own schedule, working on my best, rushing with time, and even staying awake from the early morning of 23 January 2022 until the late night of 24 January 2022 just to make my work as complete as possible to prevent myself from regretting not giving all out during this semester. Unfortunately, I did not manage to do either exploded diagram or sectional perspective which was request by workbase master during the final board submission, but luckily other required drawings were completed.
Final presentation board
I can clearly remember that during the dawn, I am still trying to do my rendering with Lumion, but it was unsuccessful as my Lumion crashed all the time due to heavy model. Without further ado, I immediately shift into Enscape to work on my perspective renderings in the morning and I can feel the adrenaline was flowing through my body at that time. Surprisingly, the renderings came out from Enscape were not that bad as compared to Lumion.
Original interior perspective rendering from Enscape without any editing or filter
After the final assessment, I cleared my only regret in the semester before the portfolio review, which is to complete an exploded isometric diagram by adding an additional board as shown below:
Finally, here comes the end of the semester, an ‘unsteady’ semester, full of worry, anxiety, adrenaline and coffees. Nevertheless, I got the chances to attempt a lots of interesting activities that I would not be able to experience by myself without joining this workbase, the design manifesto, future workshop and so on. Wishing all the best to my final design studio in the coming final semester of my degree, and never repeat what I did this semester.
Be steady :). That’s all my journey in Design 5 -21/22-
-The End-
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