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Teaser on an upcoming interview on "Architects are Artists" by a well-known artist,

NOOR MAHNUN MOHAMED who studied at the Hochschule für Bildende Künste in Braunschweig, Germany and graduated with a Masters in Fine Art (1996). In 2000 she was the Malaysian artist-in-residence at Rimbun Dahan, Kuang, Selangor. She was awarded the Italian Government Scholarship in 2003 to study printmaking at the International School of Print and Graphic Il Bisonte, Florence, Italy. In 2005 she was recipient of the Australian High Commission Kuala Lumpur Visual Arts Residency at Gunnery Studio, Sydney, Australia. She was curator at Valentine Willie Fine Art (2003-2005) and Arts Manager of the Rimbun Dahan Art Residency programme (2006-2012) in Kuang, Selangor. She has taught Art Criticism and Professional Studies at the Malaysian Institute of Art, and Visual Communication and Design courses at the Department of Architecture, Faculty of Built Environment, University of Malaya, Kuala Lumpur. She was granted the Asian Public Intellectual Fellowship (2012-2013), a programme funded by the Nippon Foundation Grant, which she spent in Japan to research printmaking. As a painter she has had several solo and group exhibitions, locally and abroad. She is now delving into botanical illustrations of indigenous plants in relating to the traditional arts and culture of her home state Kelantan, Malaysia and currently is a beneficiary of CENDANA Visual Arts Funding programme ‘Inspire’ with a project titled ‘Botanical Illustrations: Malay Poisons and Charm Cures (J.D. Gimlette)’. This project will be launched at Rumah Lukis in June 2021 with an exhibition titled ‘Racun & Penawar’.

© 2021 Talk Architecture, Author: Naziaty Mohd Yaacob
Photo (art work) by  Noor Mahnun, ’Nocturne’ 2021. Watercolour on paper, 20 x 20 cm

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The second part and conclusion of the interview, with Low Pey Sien, an art curator at Kongsi KL and freelancer, trained as an architect, graduated with a B.Sc. in Architecture from University of Malaya, Kuala Lumpur, with interests in making film documentaries and photography, shares her view in this first part of the afternoon chat on "Architects are Artists", which meanders to "Architects are Scientists" (1st part)  and end up with "Artists can be a good architect" (in the 2nd part). Interesting insights!

© 2021 Talk Architecture, Author: Naziaty Mohd Yaacob
Photo (art work) by Amirul Rahman

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An Interview with Low Pey Sien, an art curator at Kongsi KL and freelancer, trained as an architect, graduated with a B.Sc. in Architecture from University of Malaya, Kuala Lumpur, with interests in making film documentaries and photography, shares her view in this first part of the afternoon chat on "Architects are Artists", which meanders to "Architects are Scientists" and end up with "Artists can be a good architect" (in the 2nd and concluding part). 

© 2021 Talk Architecture, Author: Naziaty Mohd Yaacob
Photo (art work) by Amirul Rahman

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I was at the student's project site today and wondered: Do we build communities around the place or build the place around communities? Is 'space' a too generic a word, and 'place' the better word, providing more context specificity? What is the fundamental characteristics of a place? I would argue for 'nature' and it's essential presence, that provides a sense of place and make possible the communing of a place to occur rather than creating a 'place' for a group of people just to 'hang-out'. How do we create places that provide that sense of communing when we cannot even appreciate nature? In the light of the pandemic and climate change, our awareness of the sense of place, holed up where we are in our houses, and that sense of wanting to go to faraway places, is palpable. But if the place is near, with a lot of destruction to old trees, we are losing that sense of place. (Reading from the Introduction chapter of Alastair Bonnett's 'Off the Map' and pps.org). 

© 2021 Talk Architecture, Author: Naziaty Mohd Yaacob
Photo (art work) by Naziaty Mohd Yaacob of a raintree at Jalan Kampung Attap, Kuala Lumpur

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Kevin Mark Low speaks on: Liberal Arts education, "Problem-solving is about 'relationships'", 'Open system thinking' rather than just 'system thinking' (which is more on production related), that relates more to 'nature relationships' (natural eco-systems), "whole idea of learning", using metaphors of the viruses, 'Corona vs. Ebola' to illustrate the two different kinds of 'influences' under the 'leadership in architecture' topic. Quoting some references and reading material, and ending with the "examination of relationships in epistemology", you can listen to a lot of stuff from the architecture-based educator.

© 2021 Talk Architecture, Author: Naziaty Mohd Yaacob
Photo (art work) from https://architectureau.com/articles/kevin-mark-low-god-of-small-things/

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Coming from the Clubhouse discussion on: "Architecture School - was it useful? "
Summarizing the two important points of: 1. Humanities (the lack of it ), which leads to,  Liberal Arts education, and; 2. Learning relationships - the importance of mentorship, peer learning and networking, etc. We will ask these questions to Kevin Mark Low in the upcoming interview, very soon.
Quoting from a Liberal Arts college website based in the U.S. that said: "liberal arts colleges provide students with the all-important problem-solving and critical thinking skills. They focus on how to think, not what to think." We would like to know this from Kevin who has had a lot of international teaching experience of architectural design studios and who, himself had liberal arts education.  
Let's find out!
© 2021 Talk Architecture, Author: Naziaty Mohd Yaacob
Photo (art work) from https://architectureau.com/articles/kevin-mark-low-god-of-small-things/

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"Social Enterprise for Universal Design Solutions" is the topic for our upcoming Clubhouse event starting at 8 pm, Wednesday, March 3rd, 2021, to be hosted by Naziaty Yaacob. An introduction on what is a 'social entrepreneur' or social enterprise, exploring the subject of 'problems in society', becoming a social entrepreneur, particularly for academics and architecture students, system thinking, and how to build a prototype, including definitions and terms relating to disability, universal design and the Malaysian eco-system of social entrepreneurship, will be discussed for the first time. We hope to find out who are interested and create a network of people from the different sectors of university academics and students, fresh graduates, industry, government and NGOs / individuals. Input will be gained from the participants, including home modifications and accessible transportation ideas.

© 2021 Talk Architecture, Author: Naziaty Mohd Yaacob
Photo (art work) of the floor pattern found in Raub town centre, taken by Naziaty Yaacob

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We discussed this topic on 24 February 2021 at 8 to 10 pm, at a Clubhouse app event: "Architecture School - was it useful?", and as I mentioned, the intention was to find topics for further discussion, and the following summary, which I expanded in the podcast, and based on the quotes from the participants (speakers) were mainly; 
1. Humanities study in university, and, 
2. Learning Relationships. 
The former is more about Liberal Arts courses such as literature and ancient text, apart from philosophy, and the latter is on mentoring, peer-review and networking. There were other topics which we find out how to discuss them in a bigger picture or select them to be a podcast interview session.

© 2021 Talk Architecture, Author: Naziaty Mohd Yaacob
Photo (art work) the section of Naziaty Yaacob's design thesis in 1990 entitled: The Quranic Studies Institute in London 

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You are welcome to join a discussion at 8:00 PM (Malaysian Time) on 24 February 2021 via the Clubhouse app. I am moderating and hosting the discussion on: Architecture School - was it useful? The purpose is to find out: 1. Content for my future podcast; 2. The questions that we need to ask regarding architecture school. This podcast is broadcasting on the upcoming event via the Clubhouse app, if you would like to join.

It is important to hear the voices and young graduates thoughts and feelings about the architecture school, as they would provide the real outcomes (and evidence of their learning outcomes) having been the ones who had to endure and learn from the architecture school. Themes and patterns of these thoughts would be really useful for us to know, in order to provide better content and explore research in the area of architecture education.

© 2021 Talk Architecture, Author: Naziaty Mohd Yaacob
Photo (art work) taken of a site visit done at UM campus on 13 July 2020, Unit 2 design thesis.

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Since the last discussion on this topic on 24 January 2021, we had the opportunity to attend the NUS Design Pedagogy Lecture Series - "Enhancing feedback for students' learning: An evaluation of feedback methods used within the design" and a lecture by Dr Charlie Smith of Liverpool John Moores University.  Peer review needs to be moderated and done in a formal way rather than just "peer review activities" or informally done, and leave the students to their own devices, as I mentioned earlier. We discussed some important points from what we learned from the sharing, by quoting from the  Dr Smith's slides and reading from an abstract of an article shared by him. We hope to implement peer reviews in the upcoming studio and share later in the year of the learning outcome, good or bad. Let's continue this important conversation on architectural design education.

© 2021 Talk Architecture, Author: Naziaty Mohd Yaacob
Photo (art work) of a screenshot taken of an online studio session on 7 April 2020, Unit 2 design thesis.

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