Happy to be modelmaking again after a long pandemic-led hiatus. Here’s our first in a long time for a ‘cafe cum plant nursery’ scheme: a model made of balsa wood to represent bamboo, blue coloured elements denote steel work and laser-cut boards for perforated brickwork.
On 19th September 2018, Director-General of UNESCO Audrey Azoulay named Kuala Lumpur, the capital city of Malaysia as the World Book Capital for the year 2020. In conjunction with this, a series of micro-libraries were built all over the city. The Bamboo library located within the grounds of Perdana Botanical Gardens was designed by us as part of the initiative.
Here are the latest pictures of our mini library at Perdana Botanical Gardens Kuala Lumpur. Nearing completion, this little structure will serve as a free book kiosk built out of bamboo and colourful translucent polycarbonates. It is located right next to the bamboo playhouse and is conceived as part of Kuala Lumpur World Book Capital 2020 program.
Our work form part of an exhibition at ARCHI-DEPOT Museum in Tokyo running from 6th of February through to 6th of May 2019. In conjunction with the exhibition, our principal is invited to speak at the ‘Commemorative Talk’ at the museum on the 23rd of February 2019. Also speaking are Indonesian architect Andra Matin and Japanese architect Fuminori Nousaku.
This week we are running one of the masterclasses for the Crafting Futures Pop-up Studio at Institut Kraftangan Negara organised by British Council Arts Malaysia and Glasgow School of Art, where we are also commissioned to design a ‘pavilion-like’ bamboo structure. The pavilion will act as a framework and a physical symbol of the “Pop-up Studio” intervention by IKN students from the weaving, ceramic, metalwork, woodwork and batik studios. Look up our twitter and Instagram accounts for updates of their progress.
Its been hectic for our team trying to complete this little structure in a week, but we are extremely pleased with the results. As part of World Urban Forum installations, the pavilion – called the urban brains – will act as an incubator of ideas where visitors are encouraged to express their urban pledges for a better city by writing them down on the coloured bamboo rings.
The process of architecture is complex and at the building site is where ideas start to take shape under the impact of a complex handcrafted process. During the making of a building, the character of the project, its material presence and construction language start to emerge. For us, building construction is a reciprocal process – we feed information to help it take shape but we also learn from it. Our Bamboo Playhouse exhibit for KLAF2017 documents the complex and lengthy process of design and construction in a series of sketches, working models, site photos, mock-ups and reports.