Over tacos and being miserable with the realisation how lacking we were in trivial knowledge from Trivial Pursuit, my friends and I were discussing about taking aesthetic photos for dating apps. While the idea was a mere banter, the ideas that kept sprouting were evidently inspired from our constant scrolling down the square images that constantly pop up on Instagram. These photos were often captured through a process of dreamy filters, correct ‘candid’ poses and exceptional cropping that gives us the final aesthetic. However, we must also remember that it is the kind of backdrop and setup that allows us to achieve the ‘Instagram Worthy’ photo – and these backdrops that are often discovered accidentally and later becoming the popular backdrop for others can become a love letter to our surroundings.
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“Unless we’re looking at the cartesian plane, there is no such thing as Linear my dear...”
During my stay in Hong Kong, a family friend invited me to attend a debate organised by RIBA HK Chapter. The topic: “Linear Design Process = Efficient Design Process”.
Guiltily, I admit that I didn’t give the topic much of a thought initially, as my mind initially jumped to the literal thought of a straightforward process: narrow-minded, rigid and unforgiving in alternatives. Needless to say, I was rather perplexed by the argument itself considering that design processes (at least from my design experience at university) requires various hoops to jump through and elaborate conversations in order to successfully reach our destination.
Read MoreBut... Are You Happy? Chapter II
Last week, my friend and I were polishing off our pancakes on our long overdue catch up when he asked me the question. Our conversation has reached a point where our doubts and wariness for our future has us questioning about the choices we have made in our lives so far. The amount of studying and measures taken to achieve our ambitions was evidently wearing us down. "I guess it's because we know that we may not get the opportunity to design something like the way we do again - in a practice at least..."
Read MoreThe Hero Phenomena IV : When Will You Be Good Enough?
Words are an extremely powerful weapon. Whether it'd be vocal or written, whatever comments made directed to you can always have an overwhelming impact. It's a common thing to talk about among my group of friends (whether they're from Architecture school or high school) about the comments that really places us on the edge - which in turn has catalysed extremely cautious personalities within.
Read MoreAdventures on Studio Shared 2.0 Part IV (Conclusion)
We’ve reached the semi end goal.
Penultimate that is. And believe me – it was pretty fun trying to present ourselves like a commercial, albeit – it was quite cringe worthy when I was listening to my own voice on the television (after all, nobody likes to hear their recorded voice). There were a lot of discussion about our project on whether it was viable in comparison to just simply building a house in your own yard and renting it out, and it made us really consider our arguments on the reason why our project would be more successful in comparison to others, let alone be better than others.
Adventures on Studio Shared 2.0 Part III
Up until this point – everyone started to evolve their opinion towards the sharing economy however, we were unable to articulate it in our designs or at least, in our presentation.
Which brought us to the fateful night in Fitzroy, hangry and nervous for our debate.
Being someone who hasn’t debated (or even dare I say properly debated) for more than five years I didn’t know how I would react or respond as a second speaker – let alone, being on the negative team I didn’t know whether I would come up with any rebuttals against the second speaker on the affirmative team.
Read MoreAdventures on Studio Shared 2.0 Part II
Week 4 and we are diving deeper into our project. We began to focus on the issue of rising house prices. It’s so defeating to just think that our future will be bombarded with high buying prices when the job that we decided to do will not be suffice to guarantee me to accomplish owning something. On the other hand, there’s that gnawing tension between different classes, and also the loopholes of house ownership – overseas investors buying things up and the amount of investment properties accumulating overtime is terrifying.
Read MoreThe Hero Phenomena III : Conformity and Stereotype
I always pride myself in being Chinese - whether it’d be the culture or my family’s history, I’d always be happy to tell anybody about my background.
So you could probably imagine how gutted I was when I was told that I looked nothing like a person from Hong Kong - let alone have features that would pinpoint me to a specific province in China. I was simply a girl who carried the classic feature that would mark me as an Asian, and that I may look like I came from any part of Korea, Japan, China, Singapore…
Expectations vs Reality I : The Big Picture
I loved writing before I enjoyed reading.
It took me two years and a few cases of having nobody to play with during recess and lunchtime that I was able to read pictureless novels. Before a group of boys welcomed me into their group, a pile of books was readily made next to me, waiting to keep me company for the next hour on a mint concrete floor inside the toilet stalls. Back then, I heavily relied on reading books that had images to consider the book a worthwhile read (and to have a general idea of how the novel was progressing). I guess it was because the ten year old me was still coming to grips with understanding English as I was still heavily reliant on communicating in Cantonese. This constant translating back and forth between two languages as I read a novel was taxing, moreover made it difficult for me to set up the scenes the author has crafted through text.
Read MoreThe Way We Knew It Left It. Ellipsism Part I
There's a fine line between morals and doing it for your own sake. Every now and then we would be presented with some kind of catch twenty two situation that could eventually haunt us a lifetime.
It's quite a morbid situation to consider really.
Last year on a trip to Venice, we spent two days at the Venice Biennale to understand the types of issues (the exhibition was titled 'Reporting from the Front') that have been raised in the past years. Issues ranged from underpayment, exploitation to poverty and social housing.
And then there was the past.
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