Project 2: Wellness Center PLUS
Furthering the thematic exploration of “engaging environment and community”, Project 2 calls for the design of a Wellness Center PLUS within the Kepong Botanical Gardens, bordering the suburban neighbourhood of Taman Ehsan. Students are required to provide full design proposals incorporating findings from precedent studies and site analysis. Students will generate narratives that respond to the environment and community as user group within the given context and explore environmental poetics of building enclosure’s design solutions that reduce environmental impact utilizing various complex typologies of spatial organisations and a variety of passive strategies for sustainable design. The design should contribute to and merge harmoniously with environment and site and provide the best of spatial experiences in fostering a sense of community. We were required to demonstrate applications of knowledge gained from Architecture and Environment module from prior semesters and integrate research from Asian Architecture module.
The COVID 19 Pandemic and the resulting lockdown and working from home situation have led to a new debate on the role of architectural spaces in the promotion of health and well-being in communities. It is crucial to differentiate health in this context from the treatment of disease or “health-care”. Health and well-being as are understood here is related to the promotion of healthy activities and healthy attitudes within communities.
We will not be investigating the technical aspects of “health-care” but rather the quality of our built environment which could influence different approaches towards the promotion of healthy communities. Working with the above premise, Architectural Design IV will be exploring the condition further through the medium of architectural design. While Project 1 dealt with the design of Disability Experience Pavilion, with focus on materiality of small structures which is related to the spatial experience of certain user groups, in Project 2 we will be looking into designing a Wellness Center PLUS, a community health and recreational facility. The class will be working within the Kepong Botanical Gardens which borders the neighbourhood of Taman Ehsan, Kepong. Located immediately opposite the entrance gate to Keong Botanical Gardens is Klinik Kesihatan Taman Ehsan, a health-care facility.
We were to investigate is the possibility of designing a Wellness Center in the Botanical Gardens as a sort of complimentary program to the health-care facility, which is more technical, and treatment based. This Wellness Center will not be a treatment center, but it will explore the idea of well-being as something which is to be promoted among the community and as a concept which is linked to the experience of the natural environments of the Kepong Botanical Gardens.
A0 PRESENTATION PANELS
RENDERINGS
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PHOTO OF ME AND MY PRESENTATION PANELS
After this project, I'm able to identify and analyse environmental qualities and contextual needs of a site and apply ideas of environmental sustainability. I could design and create architectural spaces with consideration of environmental poetics in relation to the basic natural context and existing built context (harness environmental qualities of the site to inform design) which impact on users’ experiences.Lastly, i feel proud producing drawings (both 2D and 3D), modelling and verbal presentation to communicate and visualize architectural design and ideas based on clustered spatial typology.
I would like to thank my tutor, Mr Nazmi who made it to the end of the subject with us. We had amazing lectures and discussions throughout the semester and I benefited a lot through each tutorial and lecture.