MJ | Architecture
Architectural Studio V
Design Studio V focuses on the essence of place-making within an urban built environment and community. Mainly, it strives to explore the urban conditions regarding to movement patterns, building typologies, spaces and activities within the urban street context. These studies leads on to the design of a community library that addresses the issues with architectural solutions.​
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Project 1: Preliminary Studies
Preliminary studies to the design of the community library prepares on understanding the basic elements of a city and learning how community libraries function in other parts of the world. Urban environments have multiple essences that make it up and studying it would allow the understanding of how the programs and architecture of the library, response towards those essences. As such, the preliminary studies comprise of three components: Site Documentation, Site Analysis and Precedent Studies. ​
The proposed site for the community library sits within the heart of Kuala Lumpur, on the street of Jalan Tuanku Abdul Rahman. It is an infill lot, nicely tucked between a cafe that is more than a 100 years old and a 12-storey office lot. Jalan Tuanku Abdul Rahman is a shopping street, famous mainly for its textile industry and tourists flock the streets as it forms as a path between the famous Petaling Street and the Merdeka Square. As such, the studio were divided into teams to carry out preliminary studies on various elements. The results are as below as for my group.
Apart from that, we carried out precedent studies on community libraries and even on a typical shop house within a Malaysian context to understand better regarding on the function and spaces of a community library as to how it conforms to a local design. Hence, my group studied the Joan Oliver Community Library in Spain and also the Armenian Street Shophouses in Penang. The findings are on the right of the images above.
Project 2: Community Library
Progressing from the preliminary studies, focus is upon the design of the community library and how it relates architecturally to its context and community as an urban infill site. The design addresses the aspects of the urban street context and user behavioral patterns as discerned and analysed within the first project. At the same time, architectural strategies have to be in response to considering a holistic application of structural, spatial, function and environmental requirements to address the user's needs for a community library.
I decided to come up with a community library that could bring different communities together. A place that communities meet, enjoy, chatter and read. The community library serves as a place that could allow people to flow seamlessly from the front to the back or vice-versa and form as a bridge right on the edge that separates two communities: the office people and the textile shoppers. The row of shops that the site sits forms a wall that separates these two communities and this community library serves to form a passage that penetrates the wall.
The community library that serves to bridge the dualistic nature of two communities features space that has a central focus as a form of connection between two blocks. The central atrium turns into an outdoor reading area and even as a place for small events to take place. This space and the corridors above it form as a connective space, visually and tactile as well.
