A couple of weeks ago, I found myself in possession of a ticket to attend the annual Malaysian Architecture and Interior Design exhibition. The only downside to this was having to attend at 9am on a Saturday morning. My discomfort for the time was easily set aside once the honoured guests began the first presentation. There was to be 5 speakers that day, and I managed to stay through 3 of them before finding myself roaming the labyrinths of the exhibition hall. Firstly let me introduce the three speakers I did manage to hear.
- Budiman Hendropurnomo from Denton Corker Marshall, Indonesia
- Hiroshi Sambuichi of Sambuichi Architects, Japan
- Andrew Maynard of Andrew Maynard Architects, Australia.
All three of the speakers were interesting and gave detailed analysis of their current works, however I was particularly impressed with the presentation of Andrew Maynard. While the later half of his talk was a more standard run through of his projects, the initial conversation he started was that of the role of Architecture within a political sphere. This got me into an interesting mindset when I began to think about how as an Architect anything we do becomes a social statement. This, granted, is not a new concept and I recall being taught a similar vein of this at University. However, it may have been the experience gained since the lecture halls that truly gave me appreciation of this fact. Even something as simple as a house is a massive statement when you consider you are actively changing the social interactions that a family will have in the space. The act doesn’t need to be a grand statement like the 1970’s notions of utopia or the planned Cityscapes going on in the emerging economies. Andrew Maynard did concede that this notion could be applied to many other fields of industry, and I totally agree.
Another interesting side point that he raised, which has stayed with me since the talk, is the notion that Capitalism also includes within it the idea of Anti-Capitalism. While this may sound strange, his example was simple. The image of Che Guevara is synonymous with Marxism and the Anti-Capitalist movement however many of us, myself included, probably best know this man through his iconic portrait that adorns everything from mouse-mats to fridge magnets. This is a great example of how Capitalism can take any concept, image or idea and turn it into a commodity. While this fact is not strictly Architecturally related, it did make me think and chuckle at the Che Guevara poster that used to hang in my room.
After sitting through the first three talks, I had had enough and decided to spend the afternoon walking through the exhibition hall enquiring about new products and making friends with suppliers. By the end of the day, my bag was over-encumbered with material samples, that it was a great relief to finally get home.
