Community Service Initiative

Module Introduction

In a group of 6, we are required to select a topic and work together as a team for architectural, cultural, and environmental enhancing activities in a selected site. The module act as a platform to allow students to be exposed to the real community living in real life condition.

Module Objective

1. To inculcate a sense of Social Responsibility in students.
2. To promote the culture of caring and respect towards all members of society.
3. To make them responsible citizens of this country.
4. To understand the community around them.
5. To understand themselves in relation to their community.

Learning Outcomes

1. Develop relevant communication skills for collaborative work with community/society.and/or to work in a career that will make contributions to society
2. Develop a holistic awareness of the variety of problems (e.g. the environment, poverty, social discrimination) that call for action; critically analyze how such problems should be approached and how to solve them scientifically
3. Apply information management skills and strengthen their lifelong academic learning
4. Develop in themselves a strong sense of social responsibility and be able to portray leadership qualities and being able to work effectively as a team.

E-Journal Weekly Progress

Week 1

First day of class for this subject. My lecturer brief us on the module outline, assessments and rubrics. Also, a briefing on the project categories and has been conducted. We are required to form groups of 5 or 6. Therefore, my group members are Hern-Hymm Devinchi Ng, Jason Lim, Wee Boon Bing, Mark Eng Shang and Shalinn Tan. We have held a short discussion and chose the topic 'Self-Sustaining Community.

Week 2

After Week 1, we held a short meeting again to discuss where are we going to carry out this project. We finally decided to carry out this project in Rumah Charis, Home for the Children. The next step was to write out and identify the strength, weakness, opportunities and treats of our current site situation. Then, after identifying some of the SWOT analysis, we scheduled out the project timeline and planning to ensure that we are always on track. We split the duties among ourselves and prepare the information needed for the upcoming week.

Week 3

Jason, Devinchi, Boon Bing and I went to pay a visit to Rumah Charis and talk with the people in charge and also the children that are living there. The situation carried us away as we were touched hearing their past stories. This however, gives us a lot of motivation to help them out and create a better living environment for them. And as architecture students, our roles are not only to just design buildings but we are also creating better living conditions for the people. We found out that the children have limited space to spend their leisure time and also an education space for them to read. This gave us the idea of contributing a small reading space for them to improve and encourage them to read more books and also spend their time indoors instead of outdoors.

Week 4

After listing down the problems that the children in Rumah Charis are facing, we decided to build a multi-functional furniture for them to store books, read books, gather and also use that space for their leisure activities. Jason was assigned to find proper materials and we have all decided to use wood as the main construction material. After that, we held another meeting to identify the dimension and scale needed for the furniture to fit in Rumah Charis. After spending some time sketching the design, we came up with 4 multi-functional furniture design to be shown to our lecturer the week after.

Week 5

Showed our lecturer the 4 multi-functional furniture design proposal and managed to get some good feedbacks that we can take on and improve. After that, we decided to enhance the architectural space by adding in community programs. Therefore, another meeting was held again to decide what community program shall we include along with the multi-functional furniture. After an hour session meeting, we have decided to include an indoor vegetation planting activity like planting bean sprouts. With the aid of indoor planting, the children can learn to improve to take care of their plants and grow organic vegetable for them to eat.

Week 6

Finally we have managed to get our materials. After that, we met up again to discuss the construction process to build this multi-functional furniture. We have to use proper connection techniques to ensure that the furniture is safe even when carelessness occur among the children. We are prioritizing the safety for the children and also making sure that the furniture is user-friendly. After a long meeting session, we are able to identify and solve all the construction process for our furniture. We had to make mock up models to ensure that the design meets our standard and also proof that it can work for the children.

Mock-up board for tutorial session

Link attached for our interim board: https://drive.google.com/open?id=0B3KrkO6xvgv3NnlHbnNTb2dscDg

Week 7

We have prepared a progress A0 board for our interim. We have split the duties among ourselves and the topics that we are going to include in the board are the Introduction of the module, About Rumah Charis, SWOT Analysis on the space in Rumah Charis, Design Proposal, Approach and Intention of our furniture, Construction process, Materiality and also Feedback and Surveys from occupants. We are making sure that the board is very clear for everyone to understand our intention of creating this furniture.

Link attached for our interim board: https://drive.google.com/file/d/0B3KrkO6xvgv3QzYyd3ZlTC1SMnM/view

Week 8 and 9

After feedbacks by our lecturer, we have made enhancements to our board. Also, the video that we produced relates to the board. The process of planning the video has already been done in week 7 but the outcome of it was done this week. Another feedback was done by our lecturer during Week 9 to ensure that our work are completed and met to the project's requirement.

Week 10

Sent our work to print and ready for our submission. Next will be the preparation for the exhibition. We have already held a meeting on how to present and place our furniture during the exhibition day. We hope to share our progress throughout this semester with everyone in the exhibition.

Attached is the link to our final board: https://drive.google.com/file/d/0B3KrkO6xvgv3ZUE0NHpCUzc4ZlE/view

Video for our Project

Final Outcome of our Furniture Design

Reflection

I believe this project was intended to encourage us as architecture students to use our knowledge and point of view to improve the community. In terms of application of architectural knowledge.