On Designing Houses

House design, noted by Kuma and Tsukamoto as a design project that will help architects build their reputation. Designing houses is a moment when young architects standing on a paddock, waiting for their breakthrough into building bigger projects. At least that is how it goes in Japan, and since that has been going on for several decades now; it has become a culture called the paddock culture (Contemporary Japanese Houses 1985-2005, Ma Gallery).

An example of this cultural phenomenon is Tadao Ando. Ando start off his career with small houses spread around Osaka and its surrounding area. One of his early project was Azuma House, which is simple and humble in a way, and hardly noticed as a house designed by a world famous architect, though Ando’s concrete already become a signature in the design of this house.

Azuma House with its surrounding, the house is barely noticed, right?

Minimal composition of boxes creates the house's front facade.
Don't you feel tempted to put your own sketch next to your client's front door?

Ando's infamous signature detail, light and form already appears in this house design.

In Indonesia, before all the hype of competitions of building bigger public facilities as we see recently (Tsunami Museum of Nanggroe Aceh Darussalam competition, for instance), house design competitions started the wave of tradition of competitions in Indonesia, at least, that is the way I see it. Recent publications show that houses are remaining the main design objects that bring people’s attention into the world of contemporary architecture in Indonesia.

Why all the hype? One, because houses look good in magazines and publications, and it is so common that public knows how to judge which house is good, which house is “so and so”. Name few popular publications in Indonesia, and see what’s inside their pages.

Two, in building houses there are spaces for the architect’s creativity and improvisation. Sometimes, houses design is a way for an architect to try out a global concept, an ideal idea that zaps through his/her brain or a hypothesis he/she developed through researches. Here are few examples, Eisenman with his House VI, Ando with his small houses design or Adi Purnomo with his ideal of “arsitektur empatis”.

Three, because houses still the number one reason why people use architect’s service. And for this reason also, the paddock culture exists.

With all that mentioned, I guess it is time to show several of houses design I have done during my days learning about architecture. After this commercial break.

Pupamorph, A Bicycle Public Parking Design

Walking next to pupamorph.

Now, after you have seen the bike, it is time to see where you will park your bike when you’re having a travel across town. This entry is about a public bicycle parking design for a Japanese competition I entered when I was spending my time back in Osaka.

The idea was to create a portable public parking, one that easily attached and detached, placed in public places suits to public needs. In addition, the form of this sheltered parking inspired from a cocoon, explicitly shown as the form of its roof. And when the roof folded, the public parking will expose what it hidden under its roof, people’s bikes, just like when a cocoon reveals the beautiful butterflies under. So, better clean up your bikes before parking or people will see how dirty your bike is, right. Here are the images, enjoy!

Initial sketch, front view.

Initial sketch, side view.

Scheme of pupamorph's transformation.

As seen from the street.

As seen from the pedestrian path.

Close-up view on pupamorph.

P.S. This bicycle public parking design called pupamorph.

A Blazing Bike, The Blaze

Today’s entry will be about a bike design I did for a competition a few months ago. The theme of the competition is to develop a bike design that is innovative and suits well for its user as well as helpful on creating unison of human and nature. Well, my individual purpose of creating this bike is well off the theme actually. I personally think that a bike has to be wickedly cool. All functions aside, a bike has to be something that its user proud to have in his or her garage. So, here I present to you, a cool bike for you to feast upon, the blaze. (Well, I have to admit, having watched the Ghost Rider, the main character’s name kind of stuck in my head, Johnny Blaze, the Ghost Rider, with his cool skeletal motor bike.)

Initial sketch of the bike's form.

Small details of the blaze.

Size and measurements of the bike.

Detailed ideas within the frame.

Speedometer and odometer?

And here are the bike in actions!

Action One!

Action Two!

Action Three!

My man in red!

Jogjakarta Mediatheque

Jogjakarta Mediatheque Project is my final project, and shows a display of multiple influences I receive during several years of learning architecture. Here you can see my latest “advancement”, I may say.

From this project, I found an initial idea how everyone has their own potentials; their own pace, their own “style”, and any effort imitating others are futile. Everyone working, learning, enjoying, or even criticizing in this field of architecture has their own opinions, ideas, and principals. Everyone is different. Those differences are the points that shows how design will never satisfies each and every one of us, and that makes us architects and architects wannabe working in long hours, thinking, sketching, drawing, squeezing every last bit of our thoughts and efforts to achieve perfection, a state that will always be myth.

In this project, I also learned how in every work, everything is about team work, is about supporting each other, and how the result is never be a personal belonging, since many people have helped each other during the process. From a close friend who always there to give her support, a family who always pray the best for you, friends working hand in hand, until people who bump into your life everyday and smiles at you. This project is a witness on how architecture is not a one-man show. Behind every great architect, there are numbers of great people supporting. And I am lucky to have that supports all the way. Minna-san, hontou ni arigatou gozaimasu!

Gehry once stated in his documentary film, Sketches of Frank Gehry, “Everything’s been done.” As a student still miles to go to have my own style, my own personality exemplified through my designs, I understood that statement as Gehry ordering me to, “Go, gather as many as examples as you can, do some mix and match here and there, and you’ll come out with something new (kind of).” The result is a combination of elements gathered from architects around the world. Guess which is what, from who, and where.

The main background of this project is to build an architecture that suits the image of the city of Jogjakarta as a City of Education and Culture. With many of its residents are students, it is ideal to set up a public facility that reflects the needs of that segment of users. One among many is the need to learn, to study, to understand about many aspects of life, which I believe those needs are fulfilled through the availability of books, of media, of information. Mediatheque, may well be a good solution.

What is mediatheque?

Mediatheque is a “new” typology based on the conventional ones, such as community center, gallery, or a library. Imagine those conventional ones put together in one space and one location, and that is mediatheque. Arata Isozaki brought the name up when he was the jury for a center of information for the city of Sendai, which later won by Toyo Ito with now already built Sendai Mediatheque, with one of the logical reason is that the name will draw people out of their curiosity to visit the place. A kind of power that could not be achieved through the name of a “library”, a kind of typology growing old with negative images surrounding its existence.

Whyte (1980) mentioned, “What attracts people most are other people.”, and in contemporary public facilities, it is necessary to improve their presences with not only one attraction, for example, libraries are no longer containing books, but more about community gathering space, with people actively engaged in discussions about books, about stories, about politics, well, just about everything. In an article Libraries that Matter, Nikitin and Jackson wrote, “Librarians have to think about our spaces differently. Before we managed book collections, and today we’re doing much more management of community spaces.”

Architectures are no longer present as buildings, as blocks of masses, but also as places, as voids where people engaged in activities interesting to them. In Japan, those sorts of spaces or voids enveloped by masses called Ma, an old vocabulary that has been applied in many of Japanese traditional spaces, one of them are the infamous tokonoma, a sacred spot, the heart of a Japanese traditional house. That also reminds me about how Philip Johnson once said, “Architecture is the art of how to waste space”, not to sculpt exuberant forms, not to create beautiful images, but to create a space worthy of living.

Tokonoma at Koto-in, Kyoto.

In this mediatheque’s design, the space, or place later transformed into a park hidden behind the presence of a flying box (the building itself), and variable spots for people to do outdoor activities. These outdoor spaces are the heart of this mediatheque, the spaces that will be a place for people, for communities to celebrate the presence of a contemporary facility dedicated to spread the seeds of knowledge.

The park behind the main entrance, filled with trees, greeneries and open lawn allowing people, and children, to play and enjoy themselves.

The plaza, with free public furniture to allow some degree of flexibility upon space usage.

Outdoor gallery extension, located behind the indoor gallery.

Another view of the gallery extension, with several sheltered seatings to allow people watching the scenery around the river bend.

A pedestrian linkage meant to connect the facility with its nearby connections and local neighborhood.
Another view of the pedestrian walkway. Behind the fence is a futsal court dedicated to the local people.

On the court, the tribune are influenced by a "green-ish" approach.

Behind the court, a spot for couples to enjoy their time together. Haha.

Angkringan spot, where people can enjoy traditional Jogja culinary in one gathering space.

The form of the building itself is a result of a simple stacking of the functions and programs as seen below.

The initial program of spaces within the mediatheque.

The building's aerial view.

The facades are representative ideas of symbols of media. The first being a media façade, a façade dominated by the elements of vertical sun shadings which can be opened and closed manually, creating solids and voids on a vertical plane. These compositions of sun shadings can also act as a medium to convey messages, promote events, or even show commercial banners in a unique way, using the facades itself.

Transformations of mediatheque's front facade.

View toward the bus stop, which also signing the main entrance of this facility.

Building's main entrance.

Playing with solids and voids on the front facade.

The rear façade formed similar to a composition of lines of disk defragmenter software, a composition of random openings with 50 cm depth on its wall creating spaces on the wall for the mediatheque’s collections.

Initial concept derived from disk defragmenter.

Rear facade with its random placement of openings.

The stairs are hidden behind sun shadings, creating an aesthetically pleasing view for visitors of mediatheque.

Detailed view of its rooftop.

In the end, this project has brought me to the end of my undergraduate study, and now, it is time to start a new adventure. Up next, several selected earlier design works. See you then.

P.S. This is one of the graphics done for this project, explaining its core concept, an intrusion. Epen, thank you very much!!!!

Free, a piece of public furniture

Images of Free

A few months ago, there was a competition to create an innovative public furniture. In response, I designed a public furniture called free, which although it failed to deliver the result I expected, still, I had a good exercise on executing the design.

Poster made of stitches of early sketches.

The theme I proposed on the design is to create a flexible piece of public furniture which also safe from the hands of some irresponsible people. It is no longer a secret that public facilities in Indonesia are not well maintained, and mostly, damaged by those people. For example, it is rare to find a functioning public phone, and, well, if it is still functioning, then there will be many “artful paintings” on it.

The flexibility of free, this is how I called this piece of furniture, is its ability to be arranged into several configurations, for different kinds of activities. It is easier so understand those configurations through pictures, so here we go.

Sit in the middle?


Just had a family discussion?


Need a large space to sit?


Too crowded to share space?


Mind your own business, people! :)

As you can see, there are several chairs attached to the ground in a square composition. These chairs can be moved into several positions, which then leads to the configurations as pictured above. The movements are based on the chairs rail system, consist of several railing paths, and a wheel attached to the bottom of each chairs. This way, it is possible for the chairs to move according to its paths, while also difficult for some people to take these chairs back to their homes, gegege. Well, the piece is already relatively heavy in the first place (It has to be made of white cement material, the sponsor of the competition.)

Free, is a piece of public furniture which then I used to form an amphitheatre and plaza on Jogjakarta Mediatheque. It may failed to deliver on the competition, but it has a significant impact on my final project (which you have to be patient to have a glimpse on it).

Yes, wait.