Year-End Issue: Policy vs Practicality, Practice vs Principles, Progress vs Planet

blank

Dear FuturArc readers, “Words mean more than what is written on paper. They need the human voice to give them deeper meaning.” Maya Angelou This was what we attempted to do for this year-ender: to bring forth, through pictures and words, deep-seated (internal and external) relations between different players and variables: between architectural practice and […]

Read More… from Year-End Issue: Policy vs Practicality, Practice vs Principles, Progress vs Planet

Swati Janu

blank

Swati Janu is Founder of Social Design Collaborative, a practice that combines architectural activism, community engagement, policy advocacy and design pedagogy. She is an architect, writer and community artist based in Delhi with an MSc in Sustainable Urban Development from University of Oxford, UK. Swati was recently awarded the Moira Gemmill Prize in Emerging Architecture […]

Read More… from Swati Janu

Private Houses, Public Good?

blank

How does the architect balance their larger ecological/social responsibilities as stewards of the built environment with the client’s personal goals? This question is especially interesting in the context of private residential houses, because architects and owners have a more direct working relationship for such projects—no layers of bureaucracy or multiple stakeholders to deal with—and hence […]

Read More… from Private Houses, Public Good?

Inidi Twin Villas

blank

RELATED: Private Houses, Public Good? An Architect’s Perspective Placed on a site wedged between a residential neighbourhood of an informal building fabric and a public beach used by fishermen from the same community, this building design attempts to morph socio-physical pressures from both sides: i.e., the fragmented spatial sprawl and the culture of everyday constructions […]

Read More… from Inidi Twin Villas

Veil House

blank

The architecture of Veil House seeks to have a larger social impact or, at least, the ambition to provide an alternative to closed-off gated developments. Ayutt and Associates design, the architects behind Veil House, revealed that the house was “designed not as a unicentric project that adds little value to the community, [but rather] a […]

Read More… from Veil House

A Tale of Two Platinum Firsts

blank

In Malaysia, the two most popular local certification bodies for private sector projects seem to be Green Building Index (GBI) and Green Real Estate (GreenRE). It has become increasingly common for developers or owners to undertake Green certification for their properties, and there has been an increased top-down push to all sectors to achieve nationally […]

Read More… from A Tale of Two Platinum Firsts

WAO’s Child Care Centre

blank

What started out as a corporate social responsibility (CSR) initiative to rebuild a burnt-down bungalow has led to a collaboration that birthed Malaysia’s first GreenRE Platinum-certified Women and Child Shelter. REHDA Youth (RY) signed an MOU with the Women’s Aid Organisation (WAO) back in 2016 to rebuild an old bungalow, which was their Child Refuge […]

Read More… from WAO’s Child Care Centre

1 Lasam

blank

More than eight years ago, when Malaysia’s Green Building Index (GBI) rating tool was new and the idea of Green buildings was still considered novel in Perak, the owner wanted to create the first-ever GBI Platinum-rated building in the state as its headquarters to align with the company’s position as a pioneer in its many […]

Read More… from 1 Lasam