Friday, July 31, 2009

The Pangkor Island
















It was my first time to Pangkor. Going with friends, we started our journey a week ago and it was such an amazing trip. On the first day, we were accompanied by Sir Meor, but it was only for a quick moment. He assist some of my friends to Lumut by his car, and the other going by bus. Till our boarding to Pangkor, he left after lunch. He said that his not in a good wheather. So, he need to go home and have some rest.

Then, we on our way to jetty. Straight to ferry, we went to the last row and have our seats. I looked around me and I missed the environment. The same atmosphere had through me before this in Langkawi, but I was 8 on that time. We took our photos together just to keep the enjoyable moment that we have in ferry ( does it look gay?? ). We were transported to Pangkor for 30 minutes and frankly, it was quite boring. Everyone were sleep. Its like having fun for the first step in ferry and thats that. Silence control the room then...

After we reached to Pangkor, we went straight to our chalet by van. The name is Ombak Inn. It was the first chalet was built in Teluk Nipah and own by a lecturer from UiTM Perak. Each room cost rm50 after the price given a discount. Oh, I forgot to mention that we had only 12 people on our trip, alllllll boys. Me, Fimpat, Chombo, Senyun, Deedy, Blurngal, Raja kapoor, Eddy, Lampi, Hanchock, Kobe and Hebat, and we were the team members of G12 (we create our team ourselves, hehe). Some take a rest for the first day, and some having fun at the sea. We look through everything, the coral, the tree, the sand, the sea, the crab, the shell, the chalet....all have their own pattern. That's the reasons why we had our trip to Pangkor. To explore the things that we ignore before this and now, to search back what the hidden meanings of all this stuff. Shell for example, many of them have different patterns, line, point, and texture, and from there they form their own volume and shape itself. Well, I dont have the pictures right now, but we do have brought some of the 'sea creatures' back. The culture from Pangkor is quite different from us here. They were on island, and they were develop as the tourism area. Having connection with the sea, animals, tourist, wind, local people in Pangkor, we were changed. For instance, we had our leisure time around the island by wearing short pants. We sometimes HAVE to speak English, cause we were surrounded by the 'white people' and they were always kept asking us something. Every evening, we went to sea for swimming, or catching crabs. For our breakfast and dinner, foods with all kinds of seafoods were on the tables. Sometimes, we prefer to eat at other restaurant if we were not full, but it cost you high price. Instead of car, bicycle and motorcycle were the transport used by the people in Pangkor, and we used them.

On the second day, the arrival of our lecturer, Sir Raja Azman Shah bin Raja Umardin, gave us such relieved. At last, we had someone to guide us in Pangkor. He came at 5 and half' o'clock if im not mistaken. He stay at the same chalet ( ombak inn ). Sitting on the bench, we had our evening conversation with him. He told us about the objectives for the trip, which is to explore the pattern and texture on an island. But, there was something weird between our conversation. Maybe that's the way he teaching, where every time we asked him, he asked us back. He's not the person who gives us a direct answer, but we had to find it ourself. I dunno, maybe we know the answer, and he help and guide us to get the answer; i guess. He taught us not to think out of the box, but think without the box. The box actually, keep blocking our mind to think beyond everything. Without the box he said, we could think freely and that's the source of creativeness and with it many problems also could be solve, just with our thinking. Well, that the art of thinking. He also taught us about fantasy, imagination, and reality. This three terms he always carry with him every time he's on designing. He encouraged us to use that method because none of our design are actually wrong. For example, constrast a building on the air. Does is look nonsense to you? Well, it is possible could happen, with condition that the column need to reach the ground. Or, use the power of magnetism. The problem is that technology still not come to that level. Why exactly we need to study the pattern and texture at different kind of place. We know already the pattern, the point, and the line. We know where it starts and where it ends. So what actually he want us to 'see'?? He want us to find our own identity. Many of us like to follow others decision. You choose A, and 3 of your friends choose B. The A are suitable for you, but seems that many of your friends choose B, you follow them. So how you want to be mature in making decision and giving own ides? Be yourself. Have confident with your choice and make it done. Find your identity and style. Once you accomplish that, for sure people not only respect you, but have trust in you. Apply that in architecture, in your design. People trust in your ideas, they know that's your style of making design, they think that your invention is creative. What Sir Raja Azman want was, every of his student should target on that level. He also want us to be more competitve with orthers, and being the top, more than Norman Foster and Zaha Heidid. On that night, he kept giving the same lecture. Same topic, but distinguish in terms of presentation and ideas. He always brought along his architecture books, where one of the books he kept reading over 25 years. He said that although he complete reading that book, but sometimes something new he will gain from it and sometimes could make it as his reference in making design. Its a knowledge. Las word before he went to bed, "I'm not working at all rightnow. What I'm doing is my hobby. I'm enjoying in designing. If I working in designing, means I had to do it. I need to struggle for it. It will be boring and hard for me then. If its my hobby, i enjoy and happy to do it. Hence, architectural part is my hobby."

The last day in Pangkor. Wake up early in the morning, we started packing. But before leaving, we went for a snorkeling. While Sir Raja Azman and Hebat went for a walk around the island by motorcycle. As I was involve in snorkeling, i will tell more about it. There was a place where it has a boundaries around it. So, we are advise not to swim beyond the boundaries. While snorkeling, plenty of fish and others sea creatures could be seen. Fish with different types of colour and pattern really attracted our eyes. They looked wonderful. Some of the fish hide themselves below the rocks and coral, and some of them seems to welcome us. Once we had a bunch of bun at our hand, a schools of fish swam directly to us. I felt enjoy to see the fish eating the bun; they looked so friendly and tame to me. Then, we swam to the shallow area. There, a lot of sea cucumber stay on the bedrock. I tried to touch one of it, and it feels soft and smooth. I need to touch it gently, just to make sure that it doesnt hurt ..(",)..After about 2 hours in the sea, we went back to the island. We were fatigue. Resting on the beach nearby with wind gently blowing to us, it gave us such relieved. At 2 o'clock, we went back to our chalet, and start to dress up. We headed from jetty to Lumut by ferry. Then straight to iskandar by bus.

In a nutshell, Pangkor was a trip, differently as what we thought. Here I couldn't explain everything how the good feelings and tasteful of being there. Study and enjoy are two different things, but we enjoy studying at Pangkor. X caya, tanya dak2 yg pegi,hehe. You need to feel it yourselves, then you'll get the same feeling as I have. That's all for 'PANGKOR', tata!






The Ancient

Every country has its own identity. Architectural building is one part of it. Once you see the pattern of the building, we know where it comes from. Hence, design in building plays an important role in the process of maintaining the original value of one country.

Long, long ago, a pyramid that comes from Egypt influenced many others building and has been an inspiration for the earliest architect to create a design.It was build for the burial of the royal family. Pyramid has its own point, line, plane, volume, space, order, texture and colour. It looks pure and the natural in terms of design and construction. The interesting part is that it uses the natural material which is the stone. The stones is cut firmly and straight without any damages on it. Each stones has the same volume and cut into large scale. How they do that without using machines? Or maybe they are certain professional craftsman that do such stuff? It was told that the stones were taken from far, far away from the Egypt and it was carried using the transportation of boat. But how the bot can bare the weight of those stones? Some also said that the people use the power of magic or jin in the process of the pyramid construction. How far the truth was? Pyramid keeps a lot of mysteries, beyond from the human thought. Hopefully, our next trip will be to Egypt so that we can explore the hidden meaning and the power of construction of pyramid...





*this is the cross section of pyramid













*this is the photo that was taken from the sky.
The biggest pyramid was for the king, the medium was for the queen, and the little one was for their child..










*thus transformers really involved in the existence of pyramid?










*although this stone has been use for thousands years backward, it still remains the same.








Temple. Where is the temple originated? If we realize, back to the school time, in history subject, many articles tells about the Asian kingdom. Indonesia, Thailand, Myanmar, and Malaysia. These countries were influenced by the Buddha religious in the earliest centuries and as we can see, a lot of temples were 'decorated' in many area till now. I have my own research on Myanmar and here i am going to share some of the facts with you all. Long time ago, Myanmar was known as Burma. There was an area that lived by the monk and the Buddha religious was strong held on that place. Seems the environment of the place is peace and harmony without any disturbing from others, it was taken by a royal family to be as their kingdom. The king then officially stated that his kingdom will be known as the ' Mandalay '. Temples were constructed and many people from the kingdom took the opportunity to pray and meditate. Each temples has their own identity and symbolized many things based on their faith. Till now, it remains the same and have some renovation by the government to maintain the original texture. Besides the temple, the housing of Burma also is interesting due to the different shape of house from different type of tribes. From the roof to the foundation, although it looks the same as the other house, but it has its own story. Here some of the photos that I've grab from books and internet.












Saturday, July 11, 2009

'Architectural Design'

It covers many scopes that go beyond of human thoughts...how a building can stand steadily on the ground, withstand the disaster of mother nature itself, and create a shelter for human to live safely from the danger outside. Buildings means a lot to the community. It functions according to the human activities, and has it own style of design. People can go in and out of the building systematically by the concept of form, space and order. It's like the building communicate with the people inside for instance. And now, i would like to share one of research about the building that contains aesthetic value and contribute a lot to the architectural art of design throughout the global....which is :


MASJID DIAN AL MAHRI, DEPOK, JAKARTA, INDONESIA



The latest mosque with gold doom is the Masjid Dian Al Mahri, which is situated at Depok, Jawa Barat. This mosque was started built on the year of 1999 and complete on April, 2006. This mosque is own by Hj Dian Djuriah Al Rasyid, merchant from Banten. This mosque started build on 2001 and completed around the year of 2006. The mosque is open to the public on the 31st December 2006. The land area is 50 hectar which occupied the area of the mosque of 60m x 120m(8000 metre square). The space inside the mosque could fit around 20 000 muslims for praying. This mosque was told to be one of the tremendous mosque was built in the east country.

Dian Al Mahri Mosque has 5 dooms; 1 is the main doom, and 4 is the small dooms. What makes it unique is the material use for the doom, gold, with the thickness of 2 to 3 mm together with the mozaic crystal. The shape of the doom resemble the doom of Taj Mahal.

There is a chandelier import from italy with 8 tone weight install in the hall of the mosque. Besides, the craftmanship of the imam place is made from 18K gold.Different design and texture also has been made to the other component of the mosque such as the floors, ceiling, wall and many more. Basically, the art of this mosque architecture is duplicated from the mosque architecture at the middle east by the characteristic of dooms, minarets, interior and exterior, detailation, geomatric elements, and obelisk. Those factors strengthen the art of islamic in terms of mosque architecture. 6 minarets is in hexagonal shape, which symbolized the 'Faith', are constructed to 40 height. Those minarets covered with granite stone which also imported from Italy. The top of the doom(minarets) is covered with mozaic and 24K gold



*this is picture of
the chandelier


*the minarets

Here is the example of the video that I download from youtube which tell about the stories lately about the Dian Al Mahri mosque...