place making: an urban language used to describe a waterfront/park/square.

i'm suppose to design one which is related to the chinese culture.

the reason for this place making? (i've decided to narrow it down to a park), to attract people to come into the future library(to be design in the 3rd project). i'm not loving the site that our lecturer has chosen for us, it's actually an unused land at the back alley. the place is dirty and unattractive, and hidden. but i'm treating it as a challenge, while squeezing the juice out of my brain trying to see what i can do to improve the quality of the space.

my inspiration?

the 5 elements, which includes fire, metal, earth, water, wood.

and i'm suppose to incorporate all these elements in the design, for example, square will represent metal, and water elements like fountain will represent water.

so far i'm trying to make all the elements blend in together, without them looking as if they would clash, or the whole design looking like a cut and paste design without any connections.

le sigh.

here's some picture for the inspirations.

{the traditional moon gate commonly seen in traditional chinese parks. i'm thinking of reinventing it into a modern form where youths nowadays could relate to}

{ the fu dogs. legends say that they'll come to life once the clock strikes 12 and guard the area that they are intended too. personally i'm thinking of putting a pair of this at the entrance to the park....}

{bonsai trees, i'm using this as the main landscape for the place instead of shrubs or trees}

{water elements. i've seen some other popular parks adding small fountains. i think it's a general wastage of water but human beings (kids especially) have the universal attraction towards it, so i'm adding some of this small little fountains, since it's part of the 5 elements, and water is just part of a way to cool a tropical climate where it's summer everyday..}

{interesting street lamps. i think it's extremely important that a park is properly lit during the night. otherwise it would be just creepy and dark....}

the submission dateline is on the coming monday (!! 3 A1 boards!!!! fyi i haven't started yet). will post the presentation boards soon.

xoxo! :)

oh hai! finally we went to the town trail at petaling street, out of so many places in kl. the street is where i use to frequent during my high school days, where the tuition centre is right smack at the corner of the famous street.

to me it's just another street that sells fake designer goods and souvenirs targeting tourists. as sceptical as i was, i was exited i can finally explore the street at night! no parental guidance pfft... yeah my parents are that paranoid ones they report to me every single rape/abduction/robbery news to scare me on how eerie the streets are.

the town trail is suppose to be a trip where we do sketches at every building we see, but we end up taking tons of picture, and deciding to enjoy the town and sketch later when we're back at the hostel.

a chinese temple in the middle of a busy town. very quaint, and i love the composition of this picture.

and we discover just so many places that one does not expect at petaling street, like this staircase. don't you feel like taking that adventure and see where it'll lead you to?

as this is my first venture into urban, there's the urban language that we're suppose to use, some kind of an architecture jargon where we're suppose to use such as enclave, viscosity, and no it's in the architecture point of view, not the normal meaning you get from dictionary. argh the headache we had today choosing 10 pictures out of the 1000 plus that we have and giving them the right language.

so here's some out of the norm petaling street shots. enjoy :)

punctuation

entanglement

icon

new and old

the maw

customary petaling street shot

we went to bukit bintang and saw this guy. wasn't as professional as the ones in singapore where they have props and music!