Malaysian Architecture Philosophy

1.0 INTRODUCTION

Over the past century, architecture have involved in numerous philosophy, theories and manifestoes which sparked an internal debate on which ideologies are the best in the given context. The modernism era of architecture have changed dramatically in which the movement are more towards rationalism, simplicity of form and function and elimination of extra classical ornamentation. Based on the research by Endut, he suggested that Malaysia architecture movement is based on the past colonial influences while Malaysia is still a developing country (Endut, 1993). Although Malaysia is a young country, it undergoes significant changes since the independence decade and still searching for the national architectural identity.

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However through the late modernism era, architect like Ken Yeang and Hijjas Kasturi have a strong manifesto and philosophy in their building design. There are two category of problems about Malaysia architecture identity; lacking of Architect’s publication and declination in Nation’s architecture quality.

In Malaysia, publication of architect’s works are not been emphasize through documentation, publication and evaluation of Malaysian architectural practice (Rasdi 2010). According to his theory, there are little efforts to explore new ideas, understand deeper of current theory and revise the current information (Rasdi 2010). However, there are only a few known architects who publish their theory or manifesto like Ken Yeang and Hijjas Kasturi. Based on (Rasdi 2010) he states the “Dr. Ken Yeang has more time to write and produce book regards about his manifesto than other architects.” We could argue that the architecture scene in Malaysia is in the state of oblivion and obscurity where only a handful of local architect trying to find the Malaysian architecture

Although todays architect in Malaysia are heavily influence by the western architect and been improvised and adapted towards our local context. This knowledge can be an inspiration for the emerging architects of the future with proper philosophy, theory and manifesto of today’s architect. The purpose of this paper is to develop a theoretical framework to position manifestoes of Malaysia architects in a cultural context. The architect that is chosen for this case study is Ar. Sarly Adre Sarkum. Although he is a young architect, his manifesto, work and achievement are remarkable in the field of Architecture. The literature review above can describe Sarly’s philosophy as “architecture futurist, sustainability proponent and design activist”. This article will study and analyse on Sarly’s background, design philosophy and works through the medium of interview, articles, magazines, website and