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
Lalita, a 24-year-old woman, lies next to her newborn baby inside her ‘hut’, a structure made out of thin branches supporting a blue tarpaulin sheet. “The baby was born here yesterday,” she told me as I scanned the face of the baby and the mother, both looking dangerously underweight. Lalita is a migrant construction worker […]
Read More… from The Uneasy Relationship Between Architecture Practices and Labour
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
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?
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
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
It is already common for the single-house residential prototype to be sensitive to local climate and site in their designs, deploying suitably eco-friendly strategies that make sense to do so. For instance, the Tropical Chalet in Da Nang, Vietnam, is defined by its porous design—in form, massing and use of local bricks—that brings in the […]
Read More… from Status Quo: Tropical Chalet & The Terrace Mansion
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
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
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
Indonesia, as one of the world’s largest populations, has drawn much attention and critique when it officiated the plan of moving its national capital, especially from many sectors of society expressing concerns about the impact—whether social or environmental. RELATED: Commentary | Form Follows Political Paradigm While the government of Indonesia has directly appointed a designer […]
Read More… from Huma Betang Umai: What should a future governmental palace look like?
The tropical teardrop-shaped island in Mindanao, Philippines, is often known as the country’s surfing capital with white-sand beaches, beautiful sunsets, as well as natural rock and cave pools. At the heart of Hue Hotel Wave Front’s architecture lies the intention by the owner group to connect the local residents with guests/tourists, developed around a common […]
Read More… from Hue Hotel Wave Front: Activating the beachfront with public access