S. S. Zubir

Measuring Physical Changes In An Urban Regeneration Scheme

Urban regeneration refers to the process of improving the condition of urban quarters, mostly the dilapidated historic areas. The heritage-led urban regeneration induces life into decaying assets and developing the future potential of a neighbourhood. It is a comprehensive and integrated vision and action which leads to the resolution of urban problems and which seeks to bring a lasting improvement into the economic, physical, social and environment condition of an area that has been subject to change. The changes in physical aspect of urban areas represent the impact of the regeneration scheme on the place. Improve condition of historic areas resulting from the conservation work carried out is believed to support the regeneration of the area as a whole. A detailed analysis of the historical context of the built form could provide valuable information of the urban morphology of the place. Townscape evaluation is a quantitative data collection methodology used to assess the physical condition of the urban heritage areas. This method involves a scoring system and has been used to assess the effectiveness of Townscape Heritage Initiatives schemes in the UK. Improvements in socio-cultural indicators in the score sheet have been made and used in the assessment of historic urban characteristics of heritage areas in Malaysia. The result from the assessment serves as a baseline indicators for the condition of the townscape of the heritage areas. The results highlighted the areas that require further improvement, hence to support future regeneration initiatives.

Zero Food Miles Super-circuit

The manifestation of this project starts with the idea of reclaiming undefined spaces around the Berlin S-bahn network. The potentials for intervention of urban spaces along the ring are enormous as they are well connected to the rest of the city. Demand for sustainable food is on a rapid rise in Germany, and organic food producers are unable to keep up with the increasing demand. In Berlin, food travels an approximate half of the city’s length before it reaches the consumers, contributing greatly to thousands of food miles. This fact sparks a number of design notions of the possibility to plant food within the confinements of the city to supply the need of the urban populace and beyond. The chosen site for this proposal is between two stations, Westhafen and Beusselstrasse, strategically located along the river and Tegal airport further enables it to be an important transit and epicentre for future expansion that link the whole of the SBahn ring. The preference towards this type of food production is new and could be accepted as more Berliners opt for organic and locally-produced food. The mechanism of plot ownership leads back to the traditional allotment gardens owned by the city dwellers.

Disaster risk reduction through community participation

Disaster risk reduction is a totalizing framework that was established from the conception of protecting communities from hazards and minimizing their vulnerability to the risks of disaster. One of the many aspects of disaster risk reduction is through the participatory involvement of the local community. The paper will discuss the application of systematic disaster management in managing emergency and post emergency situations by adopting the role of civil society in the context of community based approaches. These approaches are proven to be adaptive and comprehensive enough in progressing through the hard times during and after the event of disaster. The paper will outline comprehensive and integrated methods from previous experiences in assisting the process of internalizing the concept of disaster risk reduction and strategic planning for disaster management. It is hoped that from the shared experience discussed in this paper will contribute to a more resilient community that are well informed and prepared on the culture of disaster risk reduction and disaster management practices.

Architecture for humanity: sharing the experience of MERCY Malaysia Core House Project in Banda Aceh, Indonesia

The 26 December 2004 tsunami that devastated many coastal regions of the Indian Ocean has prompted many Government and Non-Government Agencies to look into alternative ways in responding to emergency relief efforts. One way is to adopt traditional methods of construction in order to generate an affordable and sustainable built-environment. The intent of this paper is to delineate the learning experiences from MERCY Malaysia Core Project in providing shelter for the Internally Displaced Persons (IDP) affected by the disaster. This paper focuses on three issues that MERCY took into consideration in formulating a workable praxis to the problems of mass housing in the disaster area. The first was by critically examining the social, cultural and economic factors that were directly connected before the intervention. The second was to establish the most appropriate anti-seismic technology in the construction systems and the third was to generate a design concept that incorporates the above-mentioned issues into a workable solution. Conducting this brief evaluation on the completed batch of the core housing project of MERCY enabled us to rectify future shortcomings

Generating A New Typology Of An Urban Village

The urgent need to rethink the current living conditions in the urban villages of Bandung was established by a desire to regain self-empowerment through creative urban design intervention. Contextual analysis was thoroughly conducted to understand the urban grain of these places. Since the beginning of its establishment, the villages have undergone significant transformations from the basic dwelling spaces to the complex interlocking units of the existing typologies. The proposed pixilated modules are the key in improving the quality of life here as the demand for spaces become a major commodity to population implosion within the city’s boundary. This new urban pattern will slowly expand within the existing urban fabric, replacing dilapidated buildings with standard modules, enabling each dwelling to be more affordable. As the community spaces are being shared, this will eliminate unwarranted wastage. Villagers are given essential equipment to construct their own homes, using bamboo as its prime resource material. Since bamboo is endemic to this particular urban environment, if used creatively will prevents flood, erosion, and grows ten times faster than an average timber with the same structural capacity. Growing bamboo itself contributes tremendously to the environment as it recycles CO2 into O2 at an astonishing rate. Many sustainable practices will be integrated in this self-help pixel village community to attain self-sufficiency in their daily lifestyles such as in food production, farming, biogas energy production and a simple rainwater harvesting system. As Bandung is set to be a major tourist destination in Asia, the Pixel Village will be a new brand of indigenous living symbolizing an era of uniqueness and rarity through reformation of the public realm and private domains of the city. As the Pixel Village matures, the dwellers will attain selfsufficiency through shared community spirit and aspirations.

Sustainable Space Optimization And Function Versatility Through Mass Displacement

Despite the current brouhaha over energy issues, the problem of sustainability is not just limited to matters of earth, water, air and environment but also should include the functional program of buildings. Therefore, architectural design must be approached creatively to meet future demands and challenges. The idea of creating large undefined flexible space is no longer a sustainable approach. This design escapade attempts to present an alternative to the current event space scenario with optimized performance of the space through juxtaposition in a proposed Institute for Mental Athletics. By creating a structure that embodies a number of programs, a single structure can truly be used all year round with minimal or no physical alteration at all. This creates a new paradigm in thinking of sustainable space. Instead of having four different event spaces to host different functions, a singular geometry that is capable of performing the same task will save space, materials and also operational cost. The proposed design of the hedron evolves but stays true to the notion that it is an object that can be manipulated with ease according to the user’s demand. The structure and service has to be independently integrated to ensure it functions efficiently just like an object. In order to appreciate the essence of spatial coherency in the hedron, one must understand how each plane of the hedron plays a different complimentary role. The complexity between the profile relationships goes beyond physical form. They function as independent surfaces, but also work together. This idea can be brought forward into other event space design that requires versatility to achieve a sustainable program.

Public funded heritage rejuvenation mechanism in Georgetown, Penang

On July 7, 2008, Georgetown was formally inscribed as a UNESCO World Heritage Site. It was recognized for its unique heritage of a living multicultural community. Since then there have been various conservation projects within the vicinity of Georgetown, but the initiative seems to be fighting a losing battle. There have been a few major significant conservation projects developed especially in the cultural enclave in order to maintain the status-quo of a world heritage site. Engaging Love Lane as a pilot project to experiment on a new mechanism of heritage rejuvenation involving public participation and extensive use of technological infrastructure could be an alternative approach in conservation development. Heritage value in Love Lane will be enhanced with the use of information technology via the ‘Groupon’ method which has been proven successful among online shoppers. It is about time this method of collective fund is put to the test in conservation and management of heritage sites. This theoretical urban design exercise covers a 12-acre block of old shophouses in restoring appropriate historical artifacts through smart partnership among stakeholders. If the project is a success, it could be the key to safeguarding not only Penang, but hundreds of world heritage sites facing similar problems.

Unveiling the potentialities of urban space in Putrajaya

In 1995, Malaysia embarked on a project to build the new federal government administrative city, Putrajaya. The city will be exemplary of a tropical city that will eventually become the model for new green cities in Malaysia. Initially, the focus was only on projecting a powerful image by desired physical and spatial structure through the macro scale scope of the master plan. On the ground, the completed parcels of the various precincts have not achieved the expected image of a Garden City mainly due to the extensive network of roads and the excessive projection of architectural imagery to evoke a mnemonic sense of place. This paper intends on summarizing an urban design exercise at Dataran Rakyat (The People’s Square) which is one of the four public squares embellishing the 4.2 km Boulevard of Putrajaya’s Core Island. The square is flanked by two parks, namely Taman Rakyat 1 and 2 connecting both the eastern and western portions of the waterfront, which are crucial as they will be the main transit hubs connecting the two monorail lines. The centrality of the park is vital for the urban intervention to further enliven the city. The intervention will anchor upon monumental urban spaces that act as a political device that instils a sense of patriotism for Malaysian. The legacy of our prime ministers will be resurrected through built form dedicated as a public space for all. The proposed intervention embodies the leader ideologies, thought and visions for the nation to be appreciated by future generations. The new orchard park will be a fine example of urban landscape that merges into a seamless symbiosis that enhances Putrajaya’s image as a Garden City. A huge measure of sustainable systems has been appropriated in the scheme, upholding Putrajaya as the leading green city in the world. The merger between build form and landscape bring strong

Mediating fragile ecologies through digital technologies for sustainable tourism

Natural environments such as the rainforest, mangrove and marine ecologies are part of Malaysia’s natural resources. Other than being useful for their physical contents, the contexts too are highly valuable. These ecologies are priceless in the tourism industry. However, mass tourism affects these fragile ecologies in negative ways. Unchecked tourists’ behaviors are known to destroy marine life such as the corals. Whilst totally stopping visitors into the fragile environments might not be practicable in the nearest future, there has to be an alternative mechanism whereby foreign intrusions into the sensitive ecologies could be toned down. This paper highlights an architectural experiment where digital technologies are utilised to mediate the highly sensitive natural environments. First, architectural design schemes are proposed within the context of the rainforest, mangrove and marine ecologies. Next the experiment looks at the tourists’ receptivity towards experiencing the proposed designs within the fragile ecologies via 3D digital simulation. The results from this experiment will provide the insights into using this approach as an alternative mechanism for designing towards sustainable tourism.

Tailoring the needs for a better living: an urban renewal scheme on low cost housing

Low cost housing has always been associated with a lot of problems such as insufficient number of parking, dirty, overcrowded, improper sanitation and high crime rate. This paper presents an alternative solution to redevelop one of the oldest Industrialized Building System (IBS) housing scheme in Riffle Range, Pulau Pinang, Malaysia. Situated within the peripheries of Georgetown, the plain and functional looking development consists of 9 blocks of flats with 3682 residential units accommodating more than 15,000 people. The one and twobedroom residential units were found not only insufficient in terms of habitable spaces but also have created unstable social conditions. The aim of this paper is to provide a design solution that creates better quality of life for the community. It focuses on incorporating IBS modular system in the new development by creating various possibilities and versatility of arranging units to overcome the monotonous look and also providing more residential units. It also provides a more conducive living with a more appropriate recreational and community spaces. By using recycle materials and adapting to the existing infrastructures, it is hoped that this urban renewal scheme will benefit the community and the stakeholders. Synoptic method of design was used where analysis were done, alternatives searched and comparisons were made to find the best solution to the problem. The results of the study showed that the issues can be solved by incorporating sustainable urban design approaches which will incorporates a vibrant, comfortable and sustainable environment for the residents.