Re-housing Malaysia

Rethinking the Malaysian Mass House Paradigm

This studio will investigate a range of existing affordable urban mass housing models before experimenting with design processes to develop new ones on an actual development site in Dengkil, a rapidly developing area just south of Kuala Lumpur. Students will learn skills in the urban, general and detailed particulars of mass housing development design, residential communities design and become dexterous in the architectural languages of affordable mass housing.

Through a series of interrelated collagebased, metaphor-based, climate-based and narrative-based design processes, this studio will also experiment with the development of a contemporary Islamic architectural language.

Students wishing to enrol in this design studio will be required to organise and fund travel to, and accommodation in, Malaysia for the period of the study tour. At time of writing, a Melbourne > KL return trip was priced at AUD$550, and accommodation in Tune Hotels at AUD$30 per night. Malaysian residents enrolling in the studio will be expected to take part in all studio activities, day and night, while in Malaysia and will be required to inform their families of this prior to departure.

This studio is run by MvS Architects and iPartnership who have a number of collaborative architectural projects in design and construction in Malaysia at present, the most recent of which has just won a PAM gold award. Please visit mvsarchitects.com.au and ipartnership.com.my for more information.

MvS is currently in negotiating to exhibit the results of this design studio as part of the Malaysian Biennial.