Features | Q&A

Archi Forum 07: FFW meets Kevin Mark Low, Part I

By Debbie Loo on December 11, 2007

December 2007. Two days. Sixteen hours. Fourteen forum speakers. One whirlwind Networking Party to boot. Thus concluded the very virgin Archi Forum 07 - one of the key events of Singapore’s inaugural Archi Fest 07: Aspiration to Realization.

2007 is certainly the year of design and architecture renaissance in Singapore, if I should boldly declare. Indie, satellite and community art, architecture and design events have sprouted up around our little red dot this year, with a tenacity and hype that most befits the desire for our country’s first ever Architecture Biennale to be held in 2010.

This year, the NTUC Auditorium at One Marina Boulevard was host to fourteen illustrious architects from the UK, Japan, China, Malaysia and Singapore - the likes of which included Chris Luebkeman, Hitoshi Abe, Ma Yan Song, and Kerry Hill, to name a few. The auditorium was choked-full with architects, designers, students and members of the general public who were all hungry for a taste of what the speakers had to say about the theme [ Aspiration to Realization ]. You could almost cut the excitement with a knife. Especially with the architectural gymnastics exhibited by Ma Yan Song’s twisting Absolute Tower dubbed the Marilyn Monroe tower, whilst seductive images of buildings and hand sketches were flashed to the cadence of a very magnetic speaker, Kevin Mark Low, striding across the stage.

FFW was very fortunate to slip into the Speaker’s Lounge Room 702, to bring you our tête-à-tête with Malaysian architect, Kevin Mark Low of small projects.

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FFW: Hi Kevin. You were educated overseas in the United States, at the University of Oregon, and then at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT). You also worked in several architectural practices in the United States. How has your education and work overseas influenced you?

Kevin: Tremendously. The level of quality of teaching you get in the United States - it was short of amazing. I remember all my teachers by name still, after all these years, because they had an amazing impact on me. Now when I look back on the things which I did not understand back in school, I begin to recollect, and I begin to understand what they were trying to talk to me about.

Some of these teachers who have hardly practised - some of them may have only built one building in their entire lives - but they possessed the kind of passion and enthusiasm which is something I can never forget. And that is what drives you, to want to do good things in the things you set out to do. So yes, that education was an amazing one.

Kevin Mark Low, in conversation. (photo: Tjong Jiayu)

FFW: Yes, the influence of one or two teachers can really make an impact on your life. We understand that you have been teaching at the University of Malaya since 2002…

Kevin: I go in for in-house reviews and guest critiques. I go in once every two weeks… but students have my number, and they call sometimes, whenever they need a crit. So I will pop over when they call - some of them need a little more help than others.

FFW: How do you feel your experience as a practicing architect has influenced the way you teach or try to ‘bring’ architecture to your students?

Kevin: Well, maybe it’s more of the other way around - how they bring architecture to me! It’s a lot more difficult to be a good student than a good teacher, I think. Learning is a lot more difficult than teaching, in many ways. Maybe the skill of a teacher lies less in imparting knowledge than in encouraging passion and enthusiasm. That to me is the role of the teacher, first and foremost - because without that, the student could never learn.

So I think of myself as more of a facilitator. As a facilitator, I believe I have a talent in that. Ultimately, what I want to do is teach. Everything I am doing right now, is leading up to the point where I will be able to teach with consistency and commitment - and that will take a lot of energy!

FFW: You have worked overseas and are now practicing in Malaysia. What are your thoughts on where Malaysian architecture is heading? Asian architecture?

Kevin: I think Malaysia currently sees itself a little behind what Singapore’s doing. Prior to more recent times, meaning the last fifteen to twenty years, there was greater integrity in the way Malaysia designed both residentially and commercially and I think it’s only since 1990 that we have found ourselves catering to a population with a more disposable income and more travelled. Suddenly, cool wasn’t what we saw in books and television anymore, it was what we felt ourselves in Bali and the rest of the first world. So I think the current state of architecture in Malaysia is not heading in necessarily the best direction if copying styles is its only recourse.

Moving onto the question of Asian architecture. I think Asian architecture is a conundrum. It is at a crossroads. We are not necessarily finding answers to this big problem posed - we are still aping solutions from the West, albeit in a graphic form rather than a deep understood, internalised way.

Yet, it can’t be avoided, architects are so form-driven, you see, it is hard to pull away from the graphic seduction of form. But when you start basing your ideas on the deeper issues of context, ideas and forms change, they begin to grow and evolve specifically to their location in place, time, society and culture – it’s really the only means by which we can know how to operate creatively.

If you are a guerrilla operating in unfamiliar terrain, your whole ability of carrying out your mission, of say, taking out someone, relies on your understanding of your operational terrain. And it’s all about context – and the same responses apply to architecture. If one doesn’t have anything to respond to, what kind of responses is one going to be making?

We may think that architecture comes from within, but it really doesn’t. It isn’t the work; it is about the context that work is inspired by. I think if we come closer to that understanding, we will not only do as well as what the West is doing, but we will supersede what the West has done.

Yet, it is not a problem of our own making per se. We are a lot younger in terms of culture and heritage than any of the Western cultures are - Europe primarily. A lot of the other cultures have a lot more history than perhaps, we have had. I am Chinese Malaysian, but I feel a lot more Malaysian than Chinese. I only felt Chinese when I went to China six years ago for the first time in my life, and I understood that what I believed in were the same things that the ancient Chinese believed in. So I don’t even feel new-Chinese, I feel old-Chinese - if I do feel Chinese at all.

I think identity doesn’t come from what we want to be. Identity comes about from our context.

Lightwell House (photo: www.small-projects.com)

FFW: Yes, in fact that’s what FFW is about. We are trying to bring architectural discourse towards an Asian context. We are always talking about our architecture with reference to Western theories, and it seems the whole idea of Asian architecture seems to revolve around coffee-table books!

Kevin: Yes! And that’s not right. The coffee-table book is great for publicity; it gives you the opportunity to hand-pick a job. But it by no means validates you as a good architect.

Coffee-table books are gloss. Unfortunately, these are so pervasive that in schools, in Asian schools, that’s our source of inspiration - and that’s the last thing that we should be looking at. Especially since a lot of these books feature pictures of architecture in isolation - you don’t understand where these fit and how they fit, and in what conditions they fit within. Because it’s all about the object.

FFW: It almost becomes a symbol, an icon, doesn’t it!

Kevin: Right, we are so caught up with iconic architecture. It has its own self-importance, and that’s not what it should be. It’s all about the importance of context.

There’s this whole issue of tradition and modernism. To use tradition and modernism as a dialectic is a problem, because that dialectic or conflict does not exist. Modernism doesn’t really exist as an opposing force to tradition. We’re focusing on the wrong things.

Whenever we try to brand ourselves as a new expression of modernity, we’re missing the point. Because relevant architecture isn’t about departing from tradition with a new expression of modernity - it’s about engaging tradition through that new understanding of context. That’s the only way we can ever be able to build with meaning.

Post-tensioned Stair (source: www.small-projects.com)

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With a deep understanding of our Context, brings about meaningful design. One can’t help but be infected by the conviction with which Kevin Low speaks about his influences, his beliefs and his design sensibilities. In the second part of this Archi Forum 07 feature, we continue with Kevin’s hopes for his firm, small projects, and find out what his ‘contextual cues’ are and what he means by ‘building biographies’. We also take a look at Kevin’s very honest and illuminating presentation on what it is like to be operating as a one-man firm, taking his aspirations to realization.

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read part II of this interview with Kevin

s m a l l p r o j e c t s

Kevin Mark Low on Archifest 07 web

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debbie is currently a masters of architecture student at the national university of singapore. she often finds herself dipping her fingers in too many honey pots. she writes for ffw, and writes to music, and hopes to sing for people some day.

Debbie is a student of architecture, a lover of poetry, and a hopeful song-writer who longs for solo-travels and tends to dip her fingers in too many honey-pots.