LOCAL MUSEUM - simplicity
"Simple building simultaneously guards and reveals its essence. Simple is based on the idea of unity and homogeneity. Something that has reaches a state in which it seems that nothing can be added or taken away" quoted by Vittorio Gregotti.
I would like to discuss the term of Simplicity based on the design project I had done last semester. The project is to design a local museum to promote culture and history awareness of Kampung Baru. Seri Kembangan commonly known as New Villages among the Chinese community in Peninsular Malaysia, are formed around the emergency period (1948-1960). Today, Seri Kembangan New Village had 2,500 original wooden houses left and more than 1,000 new houses. Generally the population is estimated to be more than 30,000, largely made up of entrepreneurs, businessmen, professionals, and government servants. However, the large population have cause the contact between villagers decrease and affect the relationships of locals.
The intention of this project is to connect all the generation of villagers to enhance the relationships of the locals. To design a building that can integrate easily into Seri Kembangan Context. I had apply different theories on the space planning, façade treatment and structural on the museum. The overall idea is to connect all the spaces via walkway and openings and create an open floor plan that allow easy access for the locals.
“To free oneself from the superfluous, that is, to identify what is superfluous without confusing it with the richness of curiosity, of a question, of questioning, requires an accurate and difficult effort toward discrimination” quoted by Vittorio Gregotti.
The priority step of designing the open floor plan is to find out the problem and superfluous that may affect the overall building planning. I had refer some of the project based on simplicity, one of them is the Barcelona Pavilion by Mies’ van der Rohe. The ideas of create a column support spaces without any load bearing wall allow the maximum accessibility for the locals. Together with the openings, it create a large connected spaces within the museum.
The combination of solid wall and glass wall allow the views from both inside and outside. And it had widen the spaces visually. Lack on aim or an internal reason for expression is not consider as simplicity. The ideas to ensure the building can fit inside the site context also based on simplicity. To avoid a fancy façade design, the museum should design with the material naturally fit with the surrounding environment. The used of brick, glass and timber structure which can be found easily at Seri Kembangan had ensure the building with a local characteristic. Architecture is not simple, it can only become simple. The use of timber material integrated with concrete and glass material is one of the problem while doing detail drawing. The simple the façade or structure, the grater the challenge to construct. However, the detail can be solved as there are a lot of reference based on the simplicity based construction.
Simplicity is one of the key design ideas in architecture. The simplicity of a building will represent an inspiration to find one’s place near the origin of architecture itself.
