The Power of Youth

Masa mudamu tak akan abadi…
Sengat panasnya, kan pasti berlalu..

My old friend sang that verse of a religious song (which was quite famous during our high school years) a couple days ago, just before he got married. It all seems like reminding me that by each day passed, I growing old. 8 years ago, that was my high school years, and now, I am already working, trying to barge my way to an endless rat race of making a living. I am now 24 years old.
The sun is almost set when I write this, another day gone by.
The song above, translated into English means, “Your youth won’t be forever, and the burning heat will eventually fade away…”
And well, though often claim that I still has it, the passion wasn’t as back then. Few weeks ago, on my way to Bandung, I happened to take the train and while I waited for the designated one, I decided to take a look around. And there it was, an edition devoted to cover several (13, to be exact) young architects under 40 who, judging by their appearance in a magazine, they ought to be the best among the rest. And so I bought the magazine, and read it on my way to Bandung.
It was a good magazine, I would say brilliant, that there is a publication willing to give a warm attention toward the youngsters, but somehow I felt like I am being left all alone. The train has left. The train where the next generation of youngsters, the future masters in has moved toward the future, the direction where we will all go. But in a blinding speed, and I am walking.
Suddenly I feel young again. I feel the passion inside of me, wanting to achieve something bigger, better, something that is larger than life. It was then, that I realize while the fire on the tip of the candle still holds, there is still time. There is still time, I kept reminding myself. Soon the time will up…
Few weeks later, after another monotonous week of work, another friend sent a short message, “I felt like I didn’t exist. Let’s work on something great. Let’s challenge the world.”
So true, what he said. We’re young, we’re restless, we’re hungry for success (I AM hungry for fame!), and so, let’s take the challenge head on. The world it is, the world it is, the one we will conquer.

“Old golfers lose. That is not absolute, but a common thing bound to happen” (Paul Arden)

wooden house with vista; an art of seeing

During my one year stay in Osaka, I developed (not that I hadn’t had admired the architecture of Japan beforehand), a sense of admiration toward Japanese architecture, and I mean by its broad definition, from the traditional ones up until its latest contemporaries. There are many aspects to further understood in the Japanese architecture, but among several I was able to counter during my stay and I thought was inspiring is the way the spaces connects, the way one place to another seems to gradually exposed, the way of exploring them felt like a journey, culminating in one extraordinary experience, like the one I had on that afternoon at Shugakuin Rikkyu… It was the feeling of entering, walking through, and experiencing a powerful sequence, masterly developed since the ancient times. At first I thought Ando was the one invented, or at the very least, confirmed the presence of such technique on manipulating spaces, but it was right then that I realized that the technique was intrinsic to the Japanese culture, in their art of building, in their art of seeing things. Beautifully, gradually evoking what lies beneath, slowly bringing the abstracts into physical realms, leaving us, the observant, at a loss of words.
For now, I’ll stop further writing on that subject, as that was “just” an introduction to this house project I did during my work stint at VHS Architect, fingers crossed I’ll be bringing that topic back alive soon.
The program demanded by the client wasn’t much of a trouble, but they specifically wanted that the house should apply wood as the main material, and that it would reflect the sense of being in tropical area, “Imagine Indonesia.”, they said, with several images of tropical resorts already in their mind.
What then makes this project special is that I decide to put my experiencing the sequences, as mentioned above, into practice. Starting from an open air guest area, a long corridor with a significant tree far off the site, applying the concept shakkei (borrowed scenery) of Japanese traditional architecture, and other small vistas dedicated to create an ideal sequence, all the more makes this project was interesting to develop.
I won’t deny that the images of Kengo Kuma’s Great Bamboo Wall and his Hiroshige Ando Museum lingered on my mind when I was developing this project. Those and Japanese traditional architecture are the core influences for the design of this wooden house.

dismantled box house

In the realm of modern architecture, or in a less-thought consuming way of expressing the term, -a minimalism trend- occurred in our currently more global than ever world, designing (seen from my personal point of view), is evolving (as ever) around Platonic forms, around geometrical manipulations.

Boxes, spheres, cones, cylinders, among others, are the main ingredients of those architecture works in line with the influence of modernism. Combined, attached, cropped, chopped, sliced, morphed, warped, deformed, (name all the methods and ways which there are many) to be done to those most elemental forms and you’ll have yourself a new breed of architecture.

Among those forms, I find a box as the one that suits perfectly with the logic of function, structure, and of persona to be developed into a buildable architecture (I believe many share the very same opinion as I do on this subject.) Boxes suit perfectly to modernism dogma presented by Adler-Sullivan (which often misquoted by many as one of Mies’), “Form follows functions.” And by mostly dwelling on this idea, the design for this house developed.

This house is built for a senior couple, so the program is not necessarily difficult despite the limited floor area, having not so many specific areas and rooms to assign in.

The first step in this house design is to cleanly separate the main area, which includes living room, dining room, master bedroom, and on the second floor are an additional guest room, and a multipurpose room, based on the client request for a music room, from its supporting area, such as kitchen, maid area, and wash/dry area.

The form searching started by dropping a huge box right on the middle of the site and the dismantling process begins afterwards. The word “dismantling” came from the very idea that architecture is about creating tension among the elements that built it into one single strong entity occupying one place for some range of time, and to my concern, what is necessary to create the tensions is a careful compositioning of elements, of forms, of solids and voids, of dismantling and rearranging process of those pieces that once was one as a box, into a new form that is visually pleasing, also pleasantly functioning , seen from many perspectives. Here I present some of the images I believe will help to understand the work better.

The project was later postponed due to several technical (or maybe budgeting) reasons from the client.

Oh, yeah, there are two alternatives, the first being so modern and all, and the second one trying to be a little bit tropical. :) Cheers.