Design for All: A Malaysian architect's community-focused approach

Oyster Scaffolding Pavilion, a Bangkok Bastards project in Chonburi, combines architectural expertise with local wisdom.//Photo courtesy of CHAT Architects

“Better Design, Better Community,” at least from an Asean perspective, is being creatively exemplified by Seksan Ng, a Malaysian landscape architect, who spoke at Design Talk 2024, part of the Sustainability Expo (SX) at Queen Sirikit National Convention Center, on October 4.

Intended to generate innovative urban planning ideas and design solutions, the event’s theme was to promote “rethinking inside the box,” as well as “good balance, better world,” emphasizing that all stakeholders, including the poor and under-privileged, deserve better care.

For veteran architect Seksan Ng, 64, whose project portfolio includes countless commercial and other rich people’s projects, the have-nots like ethnic orphans in the northern Thai province of Mae Hong Son, and their community, also deserve the benefits of a good design solution.

Photo: Seksan Ng

Hence in 2012, he was persuaded by a Malaysian monk based in northern Thailand to help implement the Dhammakiri Children Home project for 80 orphans.

A 20-rai plot of land was acquired in remote Mae Hong Son for the project to provide housing to these under-privileged kids complete with facilities to help develop their spiritual and physical well-being under the patronage of the Dhammakiri Children Home Foundation.

The project included not just housing for kids but also a Buddhist monastery, a building for those who stay and practice Buddhism, a rice field and a vegetable garden.

The curved Dhammakiri Children Home offers a safe, peaceful space for underprivileged kids in Mae Hong Son to grow and connect with nature.//Photo courtesy of Seksan Ng Facebook.

A bird’s eye view of the 20-rai Dhammakiri Children Home, designed to nurture both the spiritual and physical well-being of the children.//Photo courtesy of Seksan Ng Facebook

The main building is 165 meters long and 7 metres wide and is designed to be part of the surrounding nature.

It can accommodate up to 100 persons, has a vegetable garden on the roof, with sleeping, eating, studying and multi-purpose spaces, mostly constructed from indigenous building materials by local labour, underneath,

This is one of what Seksan calls his “no-money” projects, with the veteran landscape architect and volunteers also helping to raise funds to contribute to the Dhammakiri project.

Seksan has also been involved in many other similar projects in Malaysia such as the so-called Kongsi KL, developing under-used land plots in cities or abandoned warehouses into facilities that communities can use to feed and arrange activities for the homeless and refugees.

For example, an old empty warehouse in Kuala Lumpur was turned into a venue for running community programmes and won its owner praise for allowing its use free of charge for many years to give space to the young to experiment with arts, dance, music and other creative activities.

According to Seksan, social media platforms are mainly used to generate funding and interest, doing away with the need for traditional clients and means.

However, some projects face objections and eviction notices from government agencies or property developers.

In such cases, the communities fight back and many eventually win with the help of today’s ubiquitous and powerful social media platforms which also help bring people together to overcome regulatory and other roadblocks or help ease ethnic tensions in multi-racial Malaysia.

As an activist student who joined anti-apartheid protests in New Zealand in 1980, Seksan thinks of himself as a kind of Robin Hood, who robs the rich and gives to the poor, though he believes good activism also empowers and encourages good people in government as well as in business to help move mountains.

In short, the designer’s purpose is to solve problems in society for all stakeholders such as governments and communities as well as help in environmental protection or overcome food shortages, rather than just work for the rich and powerful in business and industry.

In his opinion, sustainability is the rich people’s narrative as it is better to inspire young people to “act local while thinking global,” and to be more sustainable, smaller houses are the answer, not a 30,000-square-foot residence.

For Chatpong Chuenrudeemol, founder of Chat Architects, who also spoke at Design Talk 2024, many buildings tend to look similar or the same around the world, especially in big cities such as Kuala Lumpur, Bangkok, New York or London, so local cultures disappear as developers control the future of city skylines.

Photo: Chatpong Chuenrudeemol

In his opinion, local structures such as shophouses, street food carts, and construction worker houses, should be preserved for good. That led him to launch Bangkok Bastards 10 years ago to record, formalize, and disseminate the wisdom from many indigenous lessons that can be applied by future generations.

Photo: Chatpong's project

According to the Bangkok Bastards website, Bangkok Bastards are defined as homegrown architectural concoctions created by everyday people to solve everyday problems in everyday life.

The so-called Bastards may include a rundown shack in a slum, a local street vendor cart, a make-shift sidewalk bench or a bastardized shophouse.

Bangkok people walk past these ‘bastards’ every day and never consider them as serious architecture, but they are flexible and represent artful adaptations to solve everyday problems.

Overall, Bangkok Bastards is a comprehensive collection of DNA records of authentic Thai culture in which local people survived amid the shortages of land, money and other resources by turning to creative solutions to their everyday issues.

Samsen Street Hotel, a project by Bangkok Bastards, redefines urban architecture by using construction scaffolding as a key design element.//Photo courtesy of CHAT Architects