
LECTURE 02
ARTICLE READING
Select a recent design project on which you are working. Discuss the characteristic of the project in
regards to simplicity and complexity, in light of the discussion and text introduced today. What
attitudes regarding simplicity and complexity does your work illustrate?
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Memorial E. P , a local gallery concept designed for Kampung baru Sungai Chua as a main attraction to reduce the problem of youngster outflow. E.P stands for emergency period, where the interior space of the gallery allows users to experience ardous and tortuous during emergency period.
The project begins with site visit where all the designers have to observe, feel, experience, investigate to figure out the site context of the environment of the building site. The site is located at Kampung Baru Sungai Chua, which all house arranged irregularly and the existing building around the village is mostly built in very simple design and did not have fancy decoration or patterns. Non of the existing building have complex structure form most of the houses is built with timber and only covered by a thin layer of zinc plate as roof. We were asked to design a local gallery or museum with can blend-in the given site’s environment. In order to fit the site context , i decided to goes with simple and functional design which looks simple from the outside but have maximum function inside.
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The main idea of the gallery is functional yet looks simple form the outside, inorder to fit the building environment and also save cost. While producing idea, all the decorative item and pattern were eliminated, trying to minimize and avoid fancy design. During the design process, I’ve done lots of research and analysis and i found out the design theory founded by Mies Van Der Rohe can be part of my inspiration. “Less is more”, one of the stunning quote that inspired thousand of architect around the world might be the key point of success for this project. I studied a few project of his, for example Barcelona pavilion, Farnsworth house , Villa Tugendhat and a few more. I learned that Clear and minimized design also can be very functional, so i started to focus more on the consideration of environment factors, for example sunlight,wind direction, view, feeling, function of space, circulation of space and more instead of putting all the effort on the exterior facade.
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After few times of attempting, a full set of final drawings were produced and the main concept of design is focus on interior space design, exterior facade only covered with simple timber finishes with fits the site contexts. Flat roof where used, simple constructing system to support the building just like all the houses in the village. The external facade of gallery only designed with geometry , simple rectangle and trapezium. The actual site is located at a lake side, to fully use the advantages of the environment most of the space are wide open so the lake can be well explore to visitors.
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To fit the intention of the gallery which is allows visitors to feel ardous and tortuous during emergency period, material of the interior and exterior have to be as plain as possible, raw concrete and timber were used to represent the economy failure during war. Every space have visual connection with each other to form realtionship between space also to encourage interaction between people.
The project were then proposed to lecturer. The idea of simplicity did inspire me a lot, it looks simple form the outside but it does take a lots of consideration and thinking process to reach simplicity. As said by Vittorio Gregotti, 1996, “A building is simple not because its shapes conform to elementary geometry, not because all its parts voice their necessity, both reciprocally and with respect to the meaning of the specific architectural solution”.



