Rethinking Housing Architecture

Salleh, Elias@Ilias and Ismail, Mohd Khairi (2009) Rethinking Housing Architecture. Sustainable Tropical Environmental Design Exhibition (STEDex’09), 1. pp. 96-97. ISSN 2180-0685

Abstract

This project is an exploration into Malaysian residential architecture to establish how architecture can be directed to promote sustainable communities and further help changing the way people live sustainably. The proposed concept challenges the current approach to residential building design with emphasis on the living environment that promotes community living, in addition to providing individual privacy. The concept also changes radically the idea of residential developments in which residents live in isolation with no sense of belonging to the larger community. Instead, communication and interaction between residents and minor community members are encouraged whereby, the proposed scheme will become a place for different kinds of people to meet where visitors are welcomed to interact with residents or just enjoying the surroundings. Thus, the scheme is an urban social connector as well as a destination point. Since the site is in a recreational environment, the building typology for the proposed scheme is friendly to the community and environment. It integrates the infrastructure, the park and the buildings, creating a new formal architectural language and providing new experiences as one moves through the landscape and building. Spatial organisation and movement coordination between inside and outside of building and between the building and landscape creates relationships between programs and the public. These public spaces and their pedestrian movements will become the identity of the scheme over the built form. To create sustainable linkages, it is necessary to reach beyond physical linkages. Attractive settings are proposed to generate strong and sustainable programs and spatial links. The ground landscape is the main media or between public and private space and between neighborhoods. Buildings in the park are raised to create a new ground connected to existing ground level via slopes and ramps. A system of pathways and green landscape forms a series of spaces of different sizes and degrees of enclosure. Each pocket of spaces interlocks with each other to generate a possibility of accidental or planned meeting. Therefore, the ground landscape becomes a free-flowing social place, both conducting, and generating life activities in the proposed development. The ground is a linkage between places a confluence of activities, a sequence of spaces and interference to encourage socialisation.

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