Tallinn Town Hall - A BIG architecture  

Posted by Daniel^_^Chin



I'm not sure if I'm overusing puns or what. But this design is really nice. It was one of those designs that turns me on :P. 

The competition for a new Tallinn Town Hall in Estonia was won by Bjark Ingels Group aka BIG.

I'm not gonna write a review since +MOOD has done such an amazing job on featuring the design. Please click the link to find out more.

What I find interesting about the design is it's brilliant ideas and execution. I admit that the form was what attracted me at first. It's somewhat intriguing and has those edgy elements that I like. And trust me, you don't want to land (arse first) on a building like that. It is also one of those designs that people either like or hate. 

But after taking a closer look at the presentation boards I was interested enough to spend half of the afternoon staring at the drawings. 

Personally I think there's a level of sophistication in the thinking, considering the limited time for improvements. The particular idea of transforming the ceiling of the Democratic Tower into a giant periscope is so fantabulous. It's supposed to bring the idea of transparency in politics into the design, as citizens from outside can have a view of what's going on in the building and vice-versa. Who says literalness is a crime? Certainly not if you can handle it.

The spatial arrangement is also interesting to note. The way the squares of different sizes hinged to one another helps retain compactness and organisation while at the same time allowing the designers to play with light and angles.  

You know what to do to enlarge this


Stay tuned for more great stuff. See ya!

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What I've Done...  

Posted by Daniel^_^Chin

Hola I'm back again!

Wonder what's with the long M.I.A? Well, as usual, I was busy and lazy to blog when I had the time to take my mind away from my assignments.

But as I sat in front of my laptop trying to compile my portfolio, I thought hey, why not do a recap on what I've been up to in my blog. It's always fun without having to think about COMPOSITION, CLARITY and CONTINUITY.

So here I am :D.

This semester has been hectic but fun. Well not really hectic for me since I took less subjects. Next semester will not be as fun anymore :P.

Let's start with the fun and funny one. A less serious assignment I think.

FLYING EGG! Not a flying egg, but rather flying an egg.

Basically we had to design and build a simple device that could fly an egg using only a few specified materials.  

final model with egg (inspired by flying saucer)


work in progress


lineup for inspection


me trying out before the real testing

Our model basically failed the test (together with some other groups, if that's supposed to make me feel better :P). 

It flipped midair, smashed into the ground and the poor egg broke. (Yea you can laugh now)

Fortunately this assignment doesn't play a major role in failing us. All I need to do is to make it look good in my portfolio. It's all about faking it, even in Architecture.


Let's move on to the last subject that I would think of as being fun - Building Technology (I'm doing this chronologically)

But it did turn out to be quite fun as well!

We did WONDER WALL for the first assignment. And it was somehow wonderful :D


laying out according to the plan


in process...


I was in charged of the huge opening


and voila!!!


I looked like crap after 7 hours of doing that...


Miss Ummi and Mr Dennis ruining our wall to check if we cheated by gluing the opening...no!!!!



No we didn't cheat :P...So yay for that :D

If you scowled at my group's uninspiring model (as compared to other groups). Let me tell you that we did exactly what the brief wanted - overall height exceeds 300mm, 25% openings with one large enough for a tennis ball to pass through, no blue-tac or gluing for openings, must be breathtaking, exaggeratingly beautiful and over the top in the overall design.

Hence the safe and boring masterpiece. Oh, and we passed ;D (No grades were told though).


The next assignment for design was THE (EXTRA) ORDINARY SPACE or simply The Container. Basically we were required to design a container for a chosen object. It was supposed to train us to be more aware of objects around us and to see things differently. We also learned the basics of dealing with an important element in Architecture - space.

The container has to reflect the essence, namely the distinguished characteristics and qualities of the object. It also has to be exclusively for that particular object ONLY, therefore we couldn't simply design a box that would fit tons of things under the sky.


My object, a pencil holder


My container looks really cool from the top



My object kept and hidden



My object being rotated out

The next project for B.tech was the TOWER OF TERROR, the name alone was enough to strike fear even in the boldest of all.  To simply put it, with balsa wood as the only material, we had to build a tower that would support a person minimum 300mm off the ground for 30 seconds, before collapsing after that within 1 minute.

Yes, it MUST collapse after that 30 seconds, after an extra 5 kg load being added (doesn't make any difference to be frank). So spending RM100 on building the toughest structure isn't gonna pass you. 

Our portfolio (click here for bigger image)

Too bad I don't have the pictures of us testing, because we were too busy supporting our group member. In case you are wondering why I'm not the one doing the testing, well, because the tower ain't gonna budge even the slightest with me on it, not in 10 days.


Moving on the the final project of B.tech. A simple but not that sweet one. The PLANE OF PAIN!!! Yea it hurt a little :'(. 

Why the cheesy names?(I can imagine someone saying The Wonder Wall!!!! The Tower of Terror!!! The Plane of Paiiiiiiiinnnnnnn!!! in a dramatic way) They're supposed to make 'construction hip and cool!' I guess.

(bigger image)

We had to support a brick and elevate it 50mm with an A4 paper (70gsm). We can manipulate the paper anyhow (folding, cutting). No other materials were allowed, no gluing, no stapling, no sticking.


Lastly, the Queen of Pain!!! (I'm not a dotA fan so fans out there I didn't mean the hero) 

This is where the surviving skills of AS 101 were put to the test. 

HABITAT

Brief: *Beep* Hi designers. For this task, throw yourselves into the harsh Cyberjaya lake area and survive for a day. As architecture students, you are each advised to use your skills to design and build a simple Habitat as shelter. You are forbidden to build a tent, yes we do not do that! We survive in style! Each of you are expected to build something that relates to yourself and to the environment, besides being cool, exceeding expectations aesthetically and functionally, light in structure, and able to dismantle. Be prepared for the unexpected such as heavy rain and lighting storm, strong winds, heat wave, and possible attacks by the lake creatures. You shall be warned that this is the first time we have attempted this. Good luck and return safely. *Beep*

Actually that was not the exact brief but that's how I interpreted it :). Let's see how I did on the mission :P.


I returned broken, used up and busted. Imagine have not enough water and having to assemble something right below the scorching hot sun. That was probably the first time I sweat that lot in a few years o.O. That site was terrible. Not really a place for relaxation or point of repose like what the lecturers wanted. Anyway, it turned out well and no harm!

That's all for now! See ya later!









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Can you fix a rotten apple?  

Posted by Daniel^_^Chin

Aloha!!!

A quick (but possibly lengthy) update :D.

Went to Machines in The Gardens yesterday to collect my laptop (at least that's my priority or rather, my excuse ;D)


Well, I've always felt embarrassed when people asked me what happened to my laptop...

Yes, I spilled water on the keyboard when I was PAINTING, yes, WATERCOLOUR!!! (my favourite medium :S)

At least it's not as shameful as screwing up your laptop because you were doing some other...stuff :P

Looking at the bright-side, I got a brand new keyboard! And it's free of dust, fingerprints, and watercolour (ahem, thanks for the spell check Mr. Blogger, but I'm sticking to the 'u' in 'colour').

And because of the staff's slow service (on the 1st of May, how ironic =.="), I had the opportunity to browse through the entire store, and painfully included some things into my list of must-haves. 

iPhone has finally arrived on our shore (like last month?). If you're thinking 'hey I got my iPhone years ago!' you are having an illegal one, not pirated, but illegal :P, not a crime though. But at the moment I'm not desperate to own one (I'm not a phone fetish).

Apple is like David Beckham in England (I guess). You either hate it, or you love it; some people hate to love it, some people love to hate it; some just don't get it; others, like me, just own it (it's products).



Let's ditch the Apple part...

The malls were packed with people, and they got in my way all the time =.=". After the usual things I do in malls, I headed to Pasar Seni to take the bus back Putrajaya.

Oh my Mother Earth, it was the first time I noticed how polluted Malaysia is (or rather KL). All I inhaled was fumes, smokes, smog, and all kinds of bad gases you can name. Some couldn't get enough of what the busses were emitting and started smoking on cigarettes. How I wish I could teleport all the way to Greenland.

So this guy was busy smoking in front of me (or my back since I turned around). 

Hello, why don't you just put your nose inside the exhaust pipe? That way your lungs get blackened faster, and you can die earlier.

At least that's what I wanted to say to him.

You should've seen me making weird faces, with my T-shirt over my nose and the pages of my tiny book flipping in front my face. Not that I wasn't used to that already, it's just that I didn't want to get old yet, and my skin was already in bad condition. Nevertheless, I felt sorry for the bus drivers, it's like they're living there all the time. 

And that's my day dealing with apples - my laptop and the city(we have the Big Apple, so...). 

I wanna bite on the real thing now, red and juicy.   





Ahuihou!!!

*PS: My posts always come out sounding cynical, and I can't help it. So pardon me :P

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Oh my precious buuks!  

Posted by Daniel^_^Chin

I know why books are precious, and the Chinese saying of 书中自有黄金屋 couldn't be more true. Books are so expensive you would've thought there are gold pieces inside. No wonder in the olden days only rich men knew how to read. I love books, and the fact that they are so expensive in Malaysia makes the situation kinda similar to that of a shopaholic obsessed with luxury goods.

Yesterday I was in the mall to fix my laptop. After a yummy Taiwanese lunch and some browsing I decided to go back early. But as I was walking through the tunnel-like entrance still in renovation, I suddenly remembered...

"Ah I forgot, the bookstore!"

So I wheeled back and entered the mall again (how weird).

You see, bookstores are the only places I must go whenever I go shopping. There are certain things that draw me in - the smell of books, no promoters to bug you, the quiet atmosphere...everything is just so perfect. You know people go there to read and nothing else (or am I wrong?).

So I was browsing through the usual new arrivals and highlights at the front, where a few books caught my attention but I just flipped through them and returned them to the shelves.

General fiction category has some best-sellers that I've wanted to read long time ago but didn't.

Sequels in the Fantasy section awaited me but somehow I couldn't find them amidst those usual "Lord of the Rings", "Harry Potter", and the recent "Twilight". Somehow I found it annoying that the whole shelf was filled with the goth inspired cover (which means black, white, and red). What a waste of space!

I gave up and went to the classics, or what I call "books you have to read before you die". Argh!!! So many books I wanted to buy! It got so overwhelming that I had to just leave the section, and instead fixed my eyes on UPSR or SPM to just clear up my thoughts.

A glance at some books on photography reminded me that I wanted a decent camera (another sinful thought).

And at last, the mother of all lethal books on your wallets----------Architecture (gold plated and diamond encrusted) books!!!

This is like one of the wonders of the world. Do this the next time you're in a bookstore, preferably a big MPH or Borders. Go to the Architecture section, pick up the smallest and thinest book you can find and scream at the price tag. If you can't take it, don't bother about the big ones.

Of course, it was my job to search for the cheapest book there, never mind the contents. And that sums up what I did there.

Of course I was kidding, I did look at the contents. =.="

So that's my pathetic trip to the bookstore. I could have bought one or two, but choosing was hard.

The library? Tell me if you could actually find a decent library in Malaysia. And when I say decent I mean the LIBRARIANS too.

Guess that's why the average Malaysian only reads 2 books in a year. Maybe that includes reference books, feng shui almanacs , and recipe books.

And to those scums who burnt books in the past, SHEET you!!!

I might become the next Book Thief.



A few days after...... (this is weird, but true)


Hey yo!!! I might not have to steal books, because there's a MPH Distributors Warehouse Sale coming!!!


You can't believe how excited I am. I'm not gonna miss this opportunity, no matter how far the place is.

You might get a retail RM90 book for just RM15 there!!!

How crazy, it's like robbing, but dropping some coins while escaping.

You can't miss this, see you there!!!

Au revoir!!!

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Of scary things and haunted class 72  

Posted by Daniel^_^Chin

Ciao people!

Haven't been updating lately, because assignments were messing with my blogging time. And as I'm typing now I still have lots of work to do! No pictures for updating, just go facebook :P.

Design is squeezing my mind like a lemon now, I doubt I still have a drop of creative juice in me. Any idea how to get more flowing?

It's as if assignments weren't the worst obstacles I need to overcome yet(of course not, but you get what I mean). God has more tests for me (Oh Lord is this final exam?). At the midst of all these there were also some unnecessary little troubles coming up. "Peskies" as I call them, tiny but lethal in the long run. First of all I spilled some water on my keyboard, definitely not the one I'm currently typing on now. Then something scary messed up with my mind. And what made it scary was that it came out of nowhere, and nothing becomes something that's nothing at all. Of course I laughed it of and declared it amusing. But as you all know the human web of thinking is kinda complicated, until the point that you can't even figure up what you are thinking (how ironic?). So nothing becomes something (sigh). But why can't this things (or people) leave me alone? I'm tired. And I don't know how to react anymore. How sour...

Anyway, thankfully my slow and calm self kinda shut things down. But there's a bad side to it, sometimes I do procrastinate on things, and I can't bring myself to finish things up quickly when I know they're not gonna be good (let's not talk about perfect) if they were to be done quickly.

But then again, nothing is perfect because no one is perfect. Life is imperfect, assignments can't be perfect, I can't be perfect, you can't be perfect too.

One more thing, last design class felt like highschool bootcamp, but we're not high school kids anymore. Classmates please be serious, because I don't wanna hear that kind of lecturing voice anymore.

Did I make myself clear? (Oh no you didn't just say that to us)

Ah, how I wish there're only me and my assignments for now.

SCARY THINGS AND SCARY PEOPLE PLEASE STAY AWAY FOR NOW

...but proceed if you're not scary...

Ciao!!!

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We were "drugged" out of class  

Posted by Daniel^_^Chin

First of all, do I look like a drug addict?

Do I look like I'm going to be one?

Do I look like I 'ma smoke 'em weed and sniff 'em bongs? Or worst pop 'em pills in ma mouth?

Oh, do they sniff bongs??? Or they inject it??? See I told you!!!

And yes, drugs kill. I know, because I just got a taste of how 'deadly' drugs can be.

Yes, they kill your time, your money, your life...

Strictly speaking, I'm actually talking about a particular talk on drugs.

How cliche is this? We had one during orientation day (and countless at elementary school, high school, TV, and home) and we were told to attend one in the Hall of Shame two days ago. I saw a guy in policeman uniform the moment I entered the hall and I said, "This is going to be a talk on drugs!"

I couldn't be more right. To tell you the truth, no one in my class would take drugs unless they have some kind of disease (I think). 

And that's why I said drugs(talks on drugs) kill your time, your money and your life. You see, We were having a Design class at that time when we were asked to attend the talk. The lecturer asked us to return at 3.30 pm for the class, which was 1 hour later.

Apparently, it lasted longer than 1 hour. It wasted our time, our parents' money, and 2 hours of our life.

Did they know we had an important class? A major class that could make or break our whole semester? Obviously not. 

And the speakers were boring. So sorry to say that. 

I know I sound ungrateful but seriously they could've found a more suitable audience and time to do that. I wouldn't mind listening to that guy telling the story of how he got out of the deathly grasp of drug addiction if I had nothing to do. 

I know drugs are dangerous and stuff but this is like telling a monk not to dye his hair.

Policeman: Limkokwing is a very famous university well known for the good things. You don't want to spoil your university's name by involving in drugs.

Me (whispering): *rolls eyes* Dude, I don't think so, Limkokwing is already well known thanks to the bad stuff! 

Half of the class was already gone halfway through the talk.

Needless to say, we returned to class late. Luckily we didn't miss much, only the lecture.

I need to stop being sarcastic and cynical.

Guess I do need to go for rehabilitation.

By the way, the drugs were cute, they have panda, playboy bunny, four-leaved clover, heart shape......  

Anyone? No?


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Ikay Okay!!!  

Posted by Daniel^_^Chin

I know it sounds so wrong to pronounce IKEA as IKAY(Eye-Kay), but that's what my lecturer taught me! And isn't it fun to pronounce the names of stores wrongly? (Carrefour anyone???)

Yesterday was the registration day for FABE students. So there I was taking the bus to school and realised that I should've gone earlier. I can't believe that after going through that painful process 3 times I didn't even drag my own self out of bed 6.00 am in the morning and be the first to enter the college. The Hall of Fame(ahem, Shame) was full of students and most importantly, the counter I was supposed to line up was hidden at the corner, with a serpentine line of students ending nowhere. I was squinting my eyes trying to figure out where should I line up as the line intertwines with another counter's.

How unsystematic! The lecturers could've done something knowing the way Malaysians lineup.

Nevertheless, the line was the least of the problem. The student registering(Chris), was at the counter for what felt like an hour before the poor fellow behind him could scream "finally!" Apparently our new year leader was new in using the crazy program for registering.

Did I mention that I was sitting on the row of seats with the label "For Parents Only" beside the line?

And it was during that time that I resorted to my last years' plan: register when the semester starts! (How smart ;D)

The problem is that there probably are a lot more 'smart' students like me too.

After checking out the timetable and waiting for Rozan to finish his stuff, we went to IKEA!!!

I needed a chair and some other stuff, so Farhan, Iwas, Saras, Rozan and Me headed to IKEA in Iwas' car.

Stuff that I bought--->

Toiletry bag that can be hung

Floor Mat

Laundry Basket

SNILLE Swivel Chair

And the total was around RM80++, less than RM100!

Still eyeing the Drafting Table though...

After the exhausting journey, I cleaned my room again and it's officially a complete room now.

Let's hope that I won't be moving again.

PS: The food in IKEA was okay I guess. But the view of a lady flashing was 'better'

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