ARCHITECTURE

            Community Service Initiative is a subject included in our Architecture degree course, which is to expose the students to the real life community, and to solve the problem within the community, to enhance the architectural, culture and environment in the communities. At the beginning of the module, we were briefed by Ms Ann of the details of the project, and were required to form a group for this community project. According to the brief, the series of community services are offered under four categories and as a student empowerment project, we are given the freedom to choose and to execute the project within the constraint of the project requirement. Four categories of project activities have different beneficiaries and goals, and we have chosen the Environment Enhancing (E2) project, which is a collaborative community service project run by JCI and OCBC bank, targeting the local community at Kepong. The chosen group with the most interesting proposal will be given an allowance of RM5000 as a fund to materialize the architectural related proposal, and actually being applied into the real life community.

           

            After having our group discussion, we have chosen Jinjang, Kepong as our site. Jinjang was by far the largest of the relocation communities on the outskirts of Kuala Lumpur. It was established as part of the British strategy called the Brigg’s Plan during the Malayan Emergency. The strategy aimed to forcibly relocate Malayan people, particularly ethnic Chinese, to isolate them from the Communists' influence. During our first visit to the site, we found out that the roads in the area are quite narrow due to earlier improper town planning. Most areas in Jinjang are residential area, which makes the place to have a strong sense of community within. As we walk through the streets, we saw a lot of people riding bicycles around the area, probably due to the travel distance of each place to another is quite short and the inconvenience of driving due to the narrowness of the roads. After exploring around the streets, we went to our targeted site, a huge public park in the middle of Jinjang. There are parking lots within the park boundary and around the park, where parking is not a problem there. As we went in the park, we found out that the facilities in the park are quite adequate and well maintained. There is a basketball court, food stalls just beside the basketball court, a playground, a football field, an empty field for multipurpose use, a walkway around the park, and a lot of dustbins along the walkway. There were actually a lot of people at the park, especially the basketball court. Teenagers and children play basketball on the court, older generations walk around the walkway to exercise, and younger children playing in the playground. Being a park where the local community have a lot of activities there, it is necessary to enhance the environment of the area, to maintain the image of the public park and keeping the park as a gathering space for the local community.

           

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                                                          Walkway between basketball court and multi-purpose field.

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            The public park is almost a perfect park for the local community. However, we found out that there are a lot of bicycles lying around the basketball court, and we realized that there were no bicycle stand at the site which inspired us to have the first idea. We thought of building a multi-purpose bicycle rack using wooden pallets as material, which integrates with a sitting bench allowing people to park their bicycle there and with additional features like a table allowing people to enjoy their food sitting on their bicycle which has been inserted into the bicycle rack. It act as bicycle stations located in certain areas of Jinjang and the intention of the design is to promote the usage of bicycles throughout Jinjang. We submitted our designs of the multi-functional bicycle rack in our initial proposal. However, after tutorials and comments from Ms.Ann, we claimed that the multi-purpose bicycle rack is not an architectural structure, as it is more towards product design, which does not enhance the space at the site. 

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            To identify the main issue at the site, we went back to the public park again to ask around to better understand the local communities’ needs. To blend in with the people at the site, some of us actually join the teenagers to play basketball, which is the best way to talk to them while they were playing. From our ‘interview’, we found out another minor problem which is the basketball might bounce into the food stall area. We claimed that the problem was not crucial, and if we build something to avoid the ball from bouncing into the stalls, it may avoid people from going to the stalls from the basketball court too. As time pass by, more and more people are flowing into the park, until we found out the main issue of the site, which is the limited seating area. Although there are a few benches at the site, people sit on the slides and the see-saw after the benches are fully occupied. We further acknowledge that there will be a night market starting from with a lot of stalls at the entrance of the park where the parking area is located at, on certain days. Within that time, there will be a lot more people going into the park, without places to sit, to enjoy the food they bought from store, or to enjoy the view and activities in the park.

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                        Issues around the public park.

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                                                         Locals sitting on the slides.

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            After our site visit, we concluded that the main approach of our project proposal after the site visit is to add more seating area into the park to cope with the huge amount of people in the public park. After some researches and brainstorms, we came out with an idea of building a play scape under the trees in the multi-purpose empty field, along the walkway, facing the basketball court. The intention of building a play scape is to attract people, allowing people to have fun on it, while having the function of a seating area, which will add a special feature into the park, redefining the space from a boring multi-purpose empty field into a combination of fun and chilling spot, while allowing the users to enjoy watching the basketball match, the playground, or any activities happening in the multi-purpose field. After some sketching and further researches, our final design is a play scape with a lot of poles surrounding under the trees, and connected by nets which serves as hammock, allowing people to have fun on the huge hammock, while being able to be used as a seating and chilling spot as well, and most importantly, it is sustainable for future use. Different user groups will have different kind of way of using the play scape, and most importantly it blends different user groups together to interact. Having our design ideas finalized, we continued to the production session. My task was to create a 3D model of the play scape, and create renderings to have a better vision of our product for the viewers. After the finalizing the proposal, we made a 1:20 scale physical model to present our ideas and design to the local community, allowing them to have a better understanding of our project.

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           Usage of playscape by different user groups                          Rendering showing the location and the design of the playscape

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                             Physical model of playscape.

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            At our last site visit to the public park at Jinjang, the main aim of our second visit to the site was to present our ideas to the local community, and get feedbacks from them in the method of interviewing. We interviewed the locals with different age groups and races at the public park, most of them were happy with the proposal and our design as it will bring more fun while solving the problem of shortage of seating area, and it will add aesthetic values into the public park. There were hardly any negative feedbacks from the local community, other than questions like the authority’s approval to build and the fund to build the play scape that we were proposing. They liked the design, by looking at the physical model we made. Having all of the interviews and model making processes recorded, we compiled and created a video of our project, showing the issues at the site, our solution, and the feedbacks we get from the targeted users. A presentation board was also made to include our project details, drawings, and 3D renderings to allow better understanding towards our proposal and design.

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                               Final Presentation Board

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

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                                     Final Proposal Video

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            With the teamwork of every teammate, we finished every task on time with a joyful spirit, which makes this community service project fun and exciting from the beginning to the end. What I have learnt from this community service project is to solve a real life problem with architectural solution. I have also learnt how tough it is to actually approach and convince the real life community to accept your proposal and design ideas when they hardly know who you are and your intention. Other than that, I claimed that giving back to the community is fun and we can actually acknowledge some problems which we did not see earlier from the surface of a community. I am thankful to have this opportunity to engage with the real life situation, analysing issues in a targeted community, and to solve it with what we have learnt from school, applying architectural solutions to real life problems. I am very glad that we were receiving positive feedbacks for the hard work that we have done, and were able to help the community with what we have learnt from the architecture course.