Yesterday, I dropped by to Damansara City Mall to visit the Kuala Lumpur Architecture Festival 2018 (KLAF2018) final exhibition which was named MY.HSE: The Malaysian Future Housing Case Studies which focused on promoting the exploration of housing solution for Malaysian.
The housing issue is a worldwide issue that has a complex mix of different aspects of the society like social, economy, culture, and technology. There is a breakdown of demand and supply in different categories of houses ranging from luxurious condominiums and landed properties to affordable housing that have an issue with its price and the quality of work. The MY.HSE project is to showcase the effort of study from the local architecture firms to develop new ideas for prototypical housing design which aims to address the imbalances and inadequacies of current housing solutions. In contrary of this statement, we saw a lot of housing development happening around us which had been described in sheer numbers and units. Yet, the qualities of such housing development are often neglected which are actually the vital components of constructing a homely home for the people.
The exhibition was a good attempt to start the ball rolling, led by local fellow architects. The intention of such an event is to question, invigorate, provoke and reconfigure the housing space and practice in the Malaysia context. I find it very intriguing as I am also involved in such research and design make for affordable housing. That is part of the reason that attracted me to this exhibition.
When I reached the exhibition, it was in the central open atrium of the new mall which I would say strategically placed. However, due to the mall was relatively new, there were not much of human flow, such a waste for not getting more publicity. Plus, the DC Mall was the sponsor for the venue of the event, so it could have help to do some promotion about such constructive event. Anyway, it was my first time there and I proceeded to meet my ex-boss who happened to be one of the exhibitors as well.
It was quite a while since we had a talk and I found out that his firm was doing quite well in Penang, my hometown. His firm started as a partnership and now had already expanded to about 6 partners with over 40 plus staffs. This could be considered a large firm in Penang and Selangor with such capacity and only run architectural consultancy practice. We caught up on our recent works and future direction whereby I shared how was my company does. I brought along a proposition for him which is to form a collaborative relationship between companies to work on projects that will take place in the northern part of Malaysia. Surprisingly, he was very open with the idea and we proceeded to discuss some possibilities and method of collaboration.
As for the affordable housing research, I also proposed to him that we could collaborate together to come out with feasible housing solution and get it to publicize to more audience rather than a single shot exhibition. He agreed and we proceeded to see how we could collaborate in terms of affordable housing research as well. The observation we had in the current market was that most of the stakeholders were well aware that the supply and demand chain was broke due to an oversupply of luxury houses and a limited supply of quality, affordable housing. However, it is hard for the developer to build such houses due to unfavorable policies that drive the profit of the developer down to near null. Plus, there were several affordable housing schemes were built, but according to him, the second hand value of the property will not be as good due to the poor design consideration. Hence, it is a challenge for the architect to challenge such issue that emerges in the housing market.
We also talked about idea marketplace whereby we were well aware that young graduates and even professionals had a lot of idea in their mind. However, there was no proper platform for them to express their idea and possibly find collaborators or backers to make their idea into reality. That was where I interrupted him and introduce my 
In the meantime, I also caught up with some of my seniors and juniors from my architectural school. It was great to learn what are they currently working on and the feeling of them being part of the consultancy side of the industry. We also found out that there were 30% of the graduates not working in architectural practice anymore whereby some went for sales and some to management. Nonetheless, to me, it is their personal choice and as long as they are satisfied with their life, there is no right or wrong about it. From the conversation, I also found that I am not really keen to stay as a practicing architect for long but aiming to build a business. Being an architect would mean that I will be selling my time and earn from what I could offer. If I am to build a business, I would be thinking of how should I package my architectural service into a competitive and unique product in the market. This is the challenge I gave to myself and in the near future, I will definitely want to start my own company.
Well, that was about the trip yesterday and I also walked around to take some photos on some interesting projects and models. In overall, I did learn something and gain something from this trip which is valuable to me and my company in the near future.
This is an #archisteem post.
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