NATURAL AND CONSTRUCTED II
Did you ever get the feeling about a building that it somehow ‘just belonged’, or that its placement on the site – its form, materials, or even colors were somehow ‘just right’? Or perhaps once inside, have you ever experienced that a building’s interior spaces were connected to its surrounding landscape in such a way that the inside and outside just seemed to ‘flow’ between one another?
I would like to explain it by using my current design project – an artist village located in state of Balik Pulau, Penang. It is a site within an urban area, but away from the center of urban area. From the view of phenomenology, contrasts rationalism by analyzing quality based on its affect on the sensitivity of human perception, rather than developing a mechanical sense of reason and tectonics.
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In this project, I mainly focus on adaptive reuse, which means reinventing existing buildings for new uses. I seek the way to respect a building’s original design when making alteration and addition. Architecture is designed to serve the needs of human activity; therefore, I remain the existing building (which is the facade with brick and timber material) and extend the design (by using concrete and water feature) to create a relationship between human senses and the building to transfer emotion and perception.
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Phenomenology demonstrated in architecture is the manipulation of space, material, light and shadow to create a memorable encounter through an impact on the human senses. This creates an experience that is beyond tangible, but rather abstract, observed and perceived. The material that I use mostly maintain on raw material, didn’t adding other plastering on it, this would make it blur the natural and building itself. As the brick has the unique potential to create a dynamic façade while using merely a single material. The architecture is constantly alive, from both inside and outside. I create the façade by playing with the shadow, the light creates fascinating patterns on the wall. The different qualities of light and shadow create the experience for the visitors within different space.
This design project, intended to explore the connection between the natural and man-made realms, between a building and its site, between architecture and ‘place’ – and that is true whether that place is physical, cultural, historical, or all of the above. This is the essence “place-based” design – and it drives almost every commission we undertake. I often start by immersing ourselves in the project’s setting – its culture, history, surrounding land forms, existing vegetation, and even the colors of the land and sky itself – in order to “tell the story” of the place for which we are designing.
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The observations and resulting finish selections will help make the completed nature center an authentic inhabitant of its landscape – blurring the lines between interior and exterior, between the natural and man-made, as a way of playing homage to its native environment – the source and reason for its existence.