Taken from The Star featuring our very own Prof Taj...

Sunday August 16, 2009

Positive policies

ARCHITECTURE INSIDE OUT
By MOHAMAD TAJUDDIN MOHAMAD RASDI

The correct design policies can help create harmony and unity.

FROM the time I began my career as an academic in the field of architecture I have had three visions.

One is to produce policies that would help produce housing and community architecture for a united Malaysia – or, as the latest catch phrase puts it, “1Malaysia”.

Another is to produce mosque and Islamic architecture that transcends racial lines and architectural gimmickry, that would reflect the values inherent in the teachings of the Prophet Muhammad by using as a framework early Western modernist moral values and environment behavioural studies.

The third is to provide what I call democratic architecture in the design of administration buildings and institutions such as universities and in the planning of cities.

Architecture and planning practitioners today rely too much on the quick formulas of typological designs and sensationalised solutions to please clients. And they forget the needs of the users of the buildings, institutions, and cities. They forget also the responsibilities of being democratic citizens as well as the guardians of religions such as Islam.

Because of these flaws, Malaysia’s architecture, housing areas, and administrative complexes, along with the cities, are difficult to use, cause massive environmental problems, and give people the wrong perceptions of Islam and democracy.

In this and other columns in the future, I will try to articulate how policy can ensure that, first of all, housing in Malaysia fulfils basic human, cultural, political, and social needs. What about the environment and green architecture? Don’t worry. Once these basic needs are fulfilled, I would venture that 70% of green architecture issues will be dealt with.

We need to move away from this type of impersonal housing estate if we are to create harmonious communities. – File photo

Avoiding privacy violations

In a multi-racial country like Malaysia, it is important to understand and respect each other’s customs, rituals, and belief systems. Unfortunately, the design of flats and high rises as well as terrace housing in Malaysia shows a total lack of consideration for avoiding privacy violations pertaining to rituals and cultural values.

The most obvious violation is the visual violation that results from back-to-back windows in the rear alley. The 6m (20 foot) distance between windows allows violations of sight as well as smell. Placing blocks of flats adjacent to each other with a mere 15m (50 feet) separating them also allows sight violations.

Muslims who must observe the “aurat rule” (covering certain areas of the body) would have much difficulty in this case. Also, the smell of cooking would spread from houses opposite or adjacent, and this has the potential to cause racial tensions.

The burning of incense by Indians or joss sticks by Chinese would also cause smell violations as the smoke would spread to neighbouring houses. Idling cars would also cause unwanted fumes – in the case, toxic ones – to spread to adjacent houses with covered porch areas.

Below are some policies that could mitigate these types of violations:

·Change terrace housing layout to cluster type housing to avoid back alleys. If back alleys are unavoidable, then fenestration (the design and placement of windows in a building) must be such that there is no visual intrusion but lighting remains adequate.

·Chimney stacks should be incorporated into ceiling designs to draw off smoke from cooking and ritual burning of incense or joss sticks.

·Proper places for the Chinese Qing Ming (All Souls Day) ritual must be designed in strategic locations according to their beliefs.

·For flats and high rises, the use of cluster apartments over a stair core should be replaced with an external corridor with access directly from the stair core. No occupant should be made to pass by another apartment in order to get to his or her own.

Designing 1Malaysia

Building racial harmony and encouraging community interaction through planning and design is important for any country but particularly so in this multi-racial, multi-religious one. By encouraging community interaction, mutual understanding and tolerance of rituals and belief systems will materialise.

The problem with Malaysian housing is that, firstly, there is limited outside spaces to linger and sit, and, secondly, community buildings are not designed to be public- and people-oriented.

In most housing estates, it is obvious that no plans were made at the design stage for public furniture like benches on which children could wait for school buses, no park furniture, pavilions, or wakaf (small huts) and shady trees to encourage people to leave their houses and come out into the open. Usually, there is hardly a side walk and very few if any places to stop and snack or rest.

Community buildings, such as the mosque and Dewan Serbaguna (Multipurpose Hall) are usually fenced up in an unfriendly manner. There are hardly any other community related facilities.

The obvious policy requirements would be as follows:

·Ensure there is enough public seating for 10% of the neighbourhood’s on side walks and in parks, playgrounds, and open air cafes.

Provide safe vehicular free environment for walking, jogging and aerobic dancing.

·Encourage the setting up of kiosks or other forms of mini architecture around which people could congregate.

·Provide various community buildings like temples, churches, and mosques, and design these buildings so that people of any faith would be encouraged to access them not put off by unfriendly facades and fenced off approaches.

·Design community halls, branch libraries, and market places in an open and friendly manner while encouraging other facilities to be set up, like club houses, Rukun Tetangga (neighbourhood watch) offices, family restaurants, etc.

·Plan houses in U-shaped configurations with no more than 30 units per cluster.

·Create terrace clusters of Muslim and non-Muslim entities in blocks of 10 units in order to avoid privacy violations and encourage interaction with common rituals and values.

·Create public spaces in shopping malls for people to linger and sit in without having to spend money. Set 20% gross area of every mall as public space.

·Schools must have proper waiting spaces where parents can wait and interact as well as a smooth system of dropping off and picking up children.

Allow for expansion

Family growth is a normal part of nurturing a community. In traditional times, the architecture of houses catered to this growth by allowing expansions and enlargements. This ensured a more stable community, as several generations of a family could live under one roof.

However, the houses in modern housing estates are designed as “finished” products – growth is never considered. The capitalistic idea is that if your family outgrows the house, you would have to vacate the premises and buy a bigger house. Although this generates income for developers, it spells disaster for creating any sort of long-lasting community. Instead, we have isolated families living in estates that are devoid of the spirit of the kampung.

State policy on housing should encourage the idea of living in a particular community for a long period of time. To do this, States should institute the following policies:

·Allow designs that can accommodate a 100% expansion (without incurring a high cost). That means if the current house is 500 sq m, then it should be allowed to :mature”, in time, into a 1,000 sq m.

·The developer should take into account that there will eventually be taller and “fatter” houses than the ones he is looking to exhibit.

·Support column calculations should include a second floor expansion.

·The roof should be designed to accommodate changes in the height of the building.

In closing, I would like to inform readers that I have experimented with most of these ideas in my university’s studio, and students have reengineered existing housing designs to obtain the desired effects. We have proved that it is possible to produce the density of housing required to make money for the developers but designed in such a was as to also engender a more harmonious connection among our races.

There are, of course, more policies that I can write about. If architects and planners put human culture first instead of turning to the quick fix typological method, however, there would be no need for these policies at all.

Universiti Teknologi Malaysia lecturer Prof Dr Mohamad Tajuddin passionately believes that architectural design that respects cultural values, religious sensitivities and the ideals of democracy is vital to nation-building and harmony.