KL Design week

This past month, I have met and discussed renovation plans with my architect and friend, Lillian Tay over 2 major sessions – one in KL and the other in Penang. This is office web-site http://www.veritas.com.my/

The 1st KL meeting was held in Lillian’s house on 22nd March, where 3 other friends and my sister, Heng Leng attended as well. It was a rowdy free-for-all that propelled itself late into the night on copious amounts of food, alcohol and cigarettes.
We talked about a range of issues: what the space will be used for; sustainability of the business; the cost of the renovation; what to retain, to restore or to demolish; being ‘green’; the possible structural solutions that can be used and what it means to be located in the heritage zone.

It was indeed a fabulous brain-storming session that Lillian would mine for design ideas which we looked at and discussed a few days later.

Mark Choo, resident accountant and risk manager who had been away checking on a chicken farm in Sitiawan, came along for the follow-up meeting on 25th March, where we “crunched some numbers” and gawked at Lillian’s design. She presented a simple and very elegant scheme for an 8 – 10 room budget hotel that included a multi-functional studio, a café and maybe a small performance area.

The scheme opened up the house, allowing additional light and ventilation by reclaiming the pre-existing side air-well, and balancing small, compact rooms with lots of common access areas. While the front of the house will be restored, the back section after the air-well will be replaced with a freestanding, 3-storey concrete and steel intervention.

Excited as I was by her bold approach to the design process, I couldn’t help thinking, secretively, about some not-so-lofty things, like where I was going to keep my mop, how to get rid of the stink from the toilet bowl, where are the air-con compressors going to be stacked and stuff like that. But I wasn’t sure if I was “allowed” to, or whether the time was right to bring them up. So I kept quiet and thought I’d better wait a while and see what happens before asking these kinds of mundane questions.