__
Posted on 14 Jul 2009 by mAAN
Informal Report about the mAAN Design Workshop: The Great Padang Cement Factory Revitalization
By Pina Wu (Taiwan)
“How many of you are willing to put in ten days to discover something new?”
-opening question at the workshop
The 2nd mAAN Great Factory workshop (the 1st one was in Shanghai 2004) brought 80+ students, architects, educators, historians, documenters, journalists from Indonesia, Japan, Korea, Malaysia, India, Taiwan, and Sweden together. Most of them have never thought someday they would come to spend 10 days in a cement factory in Padang, West Sumatra, Indonesia from June 27th to July 6th, 2009.
It started out quite random actually. When Mr. Andre heard the Cement Padang Factory was going to take down part of its old facilities built in 1910, the Dutch colonial era. He blurted out “No, you are wrong if you build a museum on top of the old Dutch swimming pool and take down the old factory!”
Mr. Andre told the President his story of growing up as a little boy 200 meters away from the factory, what this place has meant to him and people in this area. He felt this could be a place for people to come together. The President accepted. The Factory started to look for alternatives.
But what to do with these old factory heritage?
Mr. Andre started to search online and found mAAN. He wrote a short email. The email got passed around. And mAAN-Indonesia came in to organize. The Cement Padang Factory supported the endeavor of a workshop.
Three months later, the old factory ruin became an unlikely place for people across world to meet. Locals and internationals, guards, students, architects, historians, professors, UNESCO heritage award recipients, film documenters, journalists, kids, servers, former and current workers, drivers.. all walked up and down this ruin, like some kind of special ceremony. They took photos it, they sketched it, they examined it, they played in it, they developed their own sense of appreciation about this giant rusty forest. And they worked day and night in a studio just 10 meters away from the site.
This was the first time an architecture workshop like this taking place in Indonesia. Unlimited numbers of creative hours were put in. 11 unit masters- leading architects and professors from universities in Asia, led 80+ architecture students through the workshop. It was also a rare opportunity for Asian architecture professionals, scholars and educators to learn from each other in a hands-on setting.
Molly and Manoj, professors from India, had led the students through a magical design process.
On the 1st day, Manoj opened up his intro in a trembling voice: “The factory is in itself made up with very exciting forms. We want to find out exciting new possibilities. Like a cylinder, how would it feel to go through that! If you think like a child, you can go up and down.”
Molly asked each of the students to describe a child, they will adapt him or her, make a picture of this child, “When you walk around the factory, it’s what that child finds exciting, not you!”
On the 2nd day, they crammed their 8 students into a small van, brought them to meet the kids’ in the factory workers’ housing. And the next day they sent a bus to invite the kids to come to the factory to play.
The pieces came together on the 4th day. They helped the students to make sense of what they did: “First we become a child, then we become friends with them. What a child would like an adult would like too. So now this child is called a user..”
Students put down all the children’s names, taking records of their characteristics, deduced key points from their experiences. From there they generated guidelines, dos and don’ts for their design, coming up programs.
They used their findings to challenge the design of other units. In the group review session, one of the students stood up and asked ”my child is on a wheelchair, and I wonder how she can go up and down the tubes that you just said..”
This was just one unit, and there were 8 other different units, all using different approaches and design traditions.
Mr. Adi brought their students to discover underground water sources and hidden mystery about the factory. Mr. Eko brought them to observe local Padang housing.
Mr. Lee Sang Yun helped students to develop their thoughts in a systematic way.
Mr. Tsuto asked the students to “continue express your feelings” through drawing and sketches.
Some kept challenging the students “I can’t see what is it that is stopping you from doing this and that!” and worried that students, in facing the pressure of the deadline, will throw their instincts away..
All together, the 9 units exhibited a blend of different training roots and traditions. It came together as:
While the international unit masters encouraged the students to think freely, the Indonesian unit masters were able to discern the darker, softer side about the factory.
An Indonesian unit masters brought up “Local people don’t want to come to the factory. The Dutch made the local people work very hard. ” This colonial context was often not seen or treated by other international unit masters.
All together, the 9 units turned out a revitalization design addressing different parts of the puzzle, which no other architects could do it alone.
Toward the end of the workshop, student spent longer and longer time with the computer. The youngest unit master from India, Amritha said “You know what’s breaking my heart is they looked so weighed down, no fun.” A student said “The project is too big. We are children, and children are about small things..” The child that Molly and Manoj have developed so carefully seemed to shy away from this very formal review process developed in architecture schools.
Tsuto, unit master now teaching in Singapore National University, talked about in his training in Colombia University, the unit masters and students should have more comfort room to “fight” each other, to contrast out differences, to form a public drama!
Pina (myself), a militant urban planner trained in Taiwan and US, really felt these architects have not done enough to engage the locals, and to poke the underlying political tension.. had nowhere to express her frustration..
The review lost half of the audience from the Cement Padang Factory. Part of mAAN’s mission here was to involve the public. But with so many local people from Padang at site, our English powerpoint presentation did not work for them.
What will be a review process that fits the local Asian context better?
What will happen after the workshop? The participants of the 1st mAAN workshop didn’t know what happened after the workshop. Molly, for example, mentioned “It will be great to go back to see if the design got implemented, which part had and which part not, to learned from it.”
Mr. Eko wanted to bring the students to go to the traditional housing sites. But there were not enough time. Where the Goddesses descended, there were beautiful buildings full of ecological and social wisdom continued to be replaced by cement.
The workshop opened up a lot of realizations, confusions, curiosity, wonder.. at the heart of the hybrid modern Asia, continued to be discovered!
—-
What: Workshop supported by Padang Cement Factory, built in 1910 by the Dutch, now run by the Indonesians, the largest cement factory in Indonesia. It is organized by mAAN-Indonesia.
Who: 80+ architecture students+ professors + historians + documenters from Indonesia, Japan, Korea, Malaysia, India, Taiwan, and Sweden.
When: June 27th-July 6th, 2009
Where: Padang, West Sumatra, Indonesia
What next: Cement Padang Factory’s revitalization project and event for its centennial anniversary in March, 2010
Projects > Competitions
mAAN - AAHM Outstanding Student Work Awards
mAAN-AAHM
Winners announced on 24 Feb 2009.
(JavaScript must be enabled to view this email address)
Files
Right click and 'Save link as':__
Posted on 18 Nov 2008 by admin
BACKGROUND
Recognizing the importance of diverse perspectives and approaches to built heritage conservation, the modern Asian Architecture Network (mAAN) and the Asian Academy for Heritage Management (AAHM) invite undergraduate and postgraduate students from all over the world to submit a poster that conveys the objectives, methods, and outcomes of a conservation project or research work.
This poster competition will be held concurrent to the 7th mAAN conference, entitled Asian Cities — Legacies of Modernity, which will be held from 23 to 25 February 2009 in New Delhi, India and within the overall framework of the AAHM in the sustainable management of heritage resources. The organizers shall attempt to display all the submitted posters during the 7th mAAN conference. Selected entries shall also be published in the conference proceedings.
THEME
The main theme of the project should be focused on the built heritage and the ways of its sustainable use, which cover the current trends on conservation, architecture, urban development and heritage management. The project can be of any scale, from a single building to a cityscape. It may include conservation or adaptive re-use of existing buildings, as well as the introduction of new buildings, if appropriate to the demands of site and programme. It may also include conservation of streetscapes or urban quarters.
Projects should address the following issues:
- Sustaining the use of existing buildings;
- Integrated approach to supporting the local community’s use of space and the extension of their cultural continuum;
- Contributing to urban revitalisation; and
- Understanding existing cultural landscapes and townscapes.
ELIGIBILITY
– Graduate and post-graduate students from all countries are eligible to participate.
– Submitted projects should be original works which have not been previously published.
– Each participant (student or group) is eligible to submit only one entry.
FORMAT
Projects should be submitted in the form of a poster. The poster is expected to be the reflection of the entire design project and should contain: graphics, architecture drawings and plans, and texts in order to ensure clarity of project goals, methods and results. There is no prescribed template and participants are advised to demonstrate their creativity in designing the poster.
- The project poster should be designed to fit on a single A1-size sheet, horizontal or vertical layout.
- Only digital copies of the final poster need to be submitted. Prints of each poster shall be produced by the conference organizers in New Delhi.
- The participants should submit the poster design as a single digital file recorded on CD/DVD in high resolution (minimum 300 dpi). The digital file should be recorded in PDF format and CMYK colour mode.
For best results, it is advised that Photoshop should be avoided due to pixelation of PDF output from Photoshop. The designs should be created in Corel or Illustrator programmes, and the final output saved as high resolution PDF. - The name of the project should be clearly indicated on the poster. However, the name(s) of the submitter(s) should NOT be included on the poster.
- Language of all text should be English.
PROJECT DESCRIPTION
All posters should be accompanied by a description of the design project. It should be a simple text document (preferably MS Word), following the attached project description form and should not exceed 500 words. Download Description Form.
REGISTRATION
Registration form should be duly filled and sent to the organization committee together with the project description form and the poster on CD/DVD in soft copy. Download Registration Form.
JUDGING CRITERIA
Posters will be judged on the basis of:
– Relevance to the competition themes;
– Design innovation and research methodologies;
– Implementation feasibility;
– Proposal impact and originality; and
– Presentation design and clarity in conveying ideas.
The 5-member international jury for the competition will comprise of eminent professionals from architecture and cultural heritage fields and representatives from mAAN and AAHM.
NOTIFICATION
The competition jury will be held on 23 February 2009 in New Delhi. The winners will be announced the next day, on 24 February 2009, during the mAAN conference.
DEADLINE
All entries should reach the mAAN-AAHM Outstanding Student Work Awards Organizing Committee at the address given below by 10 February 2009. Submissions received after that date will NOT be accepted and will NOT be placed before the jury.
COPYRIGHT
The copyright remains that of the author. Any poster used by mAAN and AAHM in the future shall display the author’s name and country. All entrants agree that any image submitted to the contest may be used by the AAHM on behalf of UNESCO and ICCROM for publications, presentations, documents, and other promotional materials.
FEES
There is no registration fee or other fees for eligible students to participate.
WINNERS
1st, 2nd, 3rd prize winners and honourable mention will be announced. Their works will be published on mAAN, AAHM and UNESCO Bangkok web pages and in the AAHM Newsletter.
ENTRIES TO BE SENT TO
mAAN-AAHM Outstanding Student Work Awards Organizing Committee
C-33/A Nizamuddin East, New Delhi 110013, INDIA
ENQUIRIES
Please write to: (JavaScript must be enabled to view this email address).
Publications > Books
Rumah Panggung, Perahu di Kota (Platform-House, Boat in the City)
By Medan-Asia Rumah Panggung Research Unit
Published by acetate
Visit
http://www.acetate-ed.net/bookdata/001/001_en.html__
Posted on 1 Oct 2008 by admin
This book is about those platform houses, which still exist in Medan, Indonesia.
It is organized into four chapters. In “Kehidupan-Life”, we focused on the lives of the people who live in these platform houses. In “Sejarah-History” we wrote about the history of platform house in order for the readers to look at it from wider perspective. In “Struktur yang Hidup-Living Structure” we attempted to point out that many of the platform houses in Medan were created as a synthesis of the cultural tradition of Murayu and modernization of the habitat, instead of a simple evolution from the ancient times. Simultaneously, the chapter addresses the problem of building maintenance of the platform house. Finally, in “Saran-Proposition” we are making a realistic manifesto in order to summarize this study… Read more
(Shin Muramatsu ARAC)
in Indonesian language
Japanese translation included
Projects > Competitions
2008 Poster Competition Asian Approaches to Conservation
Asian Academy for Heritage Management
Winner announcement 3 October 2006 in Bangkok, Thailand
Files
Right click and 'Save link as':- poster_competition_guidelines.pdf
- poster_competition_registration_form.doc
- CALL_FOR_PAPERS_22Sept2008.doc
Visit
http://www.unescobkk.org/index.php?id=922__
Posted on 27 Sep 2008 by admin
It is our great pleasure to announce the inauguration of the Asian Academy for Heritage Management (AAHM) Awards for Outstanding Student Work programme.
Since its founding in 2001, the UNESCO-ICCROM Asian Academy for Heritage Management has made important strides towards its goal of improving professional training and enhancing management capacity in fields related to cultural heritage. These include two successful Field Schools, a rapidlyexpanding membership roster of nearly 75 institutions and individuals, an active website, and a quarterly newsletter.
We are now seeking opportunities to encourage student participation in the network and to recognize outstanding student work. The competition therefore shall provide an occasion at which graduate students from AAHM member institutions can present their conservation projects or research work in the area of heritage conservation in Asia.
The international jury for the competition will be comprised of conservation experts from AAHM member institutions. The jury will announce the winners during the AAHM Research Conference in Bangkok on 3 October 2006, where the works will also be exhibited.
Entries in the form of a poster must reach the AAHM secretariat at UNESCO Bangkok by mail by 1 September 2006.
Please disseminate the information about the competition among the students and teaching staff of your institution. We would also encourage incorporating this project into the regular course of study by assigning this to students as part of a conservation class or studio.
For further information and the registration form kindly refer to our website http://www.unescobkk.org/index.php?id=922 or contact us at (JavaScript must be enabled to view this email address).
Projects > Workshops
mAAN Shanghai Workshop 2004
Visit
http://web.archive.org/web/20050422170103/http://www.maanworkshop.org/__
Posted on 25 Nov 2004 by admin
The 4th International Conference of mAAN was held from October 28 through 30, 2004 in Shanghai, China. Simultaneously, together with the Tongji University (Shanghai) and the Shanghai-based architect office of Deng Kun-yan Associates, mAAN organized a post graduate workshop aimed to produce a master plan to revitalize and transform a factory complex, gone out of business, into a grand-scale design center. The Great Shanghai Factory Revitalization Workshop (GSFRW), was a 14-day workshop, open to graduate students from all parts of Asia, to be held on the sight of an endangered factory complex gone out of business. This program is part of the Asian Academy of Heritage Management Program of the UNESCO Bangkok Office.
Comments
Add your comment
