Foster & Partners – Petronas University of Technology

image source: Foster & Partners

image source: Foster & Partners

image source: Foster & Partners

Note: Article by Guest Blogger

Foster & Partners and Petronas has won one of nine Aga Khan awards for architecture in the Islamic world with its University of Technology Petronas in Malaysia.

The awards, which have been instigated and sponsored by the Aga Khan, the spiritual leader of the Ismaili Muslims, are presented every three years and have grown in prestige and profile since their inception 30 years ago. The aim of these rich awards is to identify and encourage building concepts that meet the needs and aspirations of Muslim communities.

I visited the university more than five years ago when it was not yet finished. But it was obvious even then that this was a powerful architectural statement. The canopy is as majestic as you can get: taller than the surrounding trees, they were elegantly supported by slender steel columns. Looking at the photos now, you can easily agree with Foster’s senior architect, David Nelson that it “fits discreetly on the site fitting into the contours of the site”. This is cool, crisp modern architecture, but infused with local cultural references and climatic context. Lord Foster himself said: “If you visit this building, you’ll see that it couldn’t be anywhere else. It is highly evocative of the culture.”

But the Aga Khan award goes also to the client. And this is the second one for Petronas: last time was for its Petronas Towers in Kuala Lumpur, briefly the tallest building in the world. On the guided tour of the University during construction we were told that the building cost RM500 million; “a small investment to make this into a world class university”. I have my doubts.

For a start, it is largely an undergraduate facility. At a time when such a large percentage the young population goes on to university, the centres of excellence have been shifting to graduate schools and research institutes within universities. Universities of global standard are judged by the quality of their academic staff; these people make their reputation from the research and the publishing of ground breaking work. The best universities seek out the best students, and these students in turn look for the best teachers. But the fact is that this is a university that accepts students not on the sole basis of merit, but also on the precept of racial quotas.

Malaysia has been suffering from a bad case of the “edifice complex”. In the days of Tun Mahathir, there was a scramble to create “signature buildings” and “landmarks” to show off to the world Malaysia’s coming of age. The Petronas Towers and Putrajaya – the new administrative capital for the country are the two mega-projects bankrolled by Petronas, the state owned oil mining monopoly. But at the same time as the gleaming new edifices were going up, the political, cultural and social climate has been going down. Political dissent has been gradually clamped down, religious intolerance has been on the increase, the credibility of institutions like the police and judiciary has plummeted, and racial tension have been exacerbated, with children of different races largely going to different schools.

Architects should not be blind to the political and social realities of their milieu.

RM500 million is a lot for a small university for just over 6000 students. Petronas could have used their old building at Dayabumi in Kuala Lumpur, and then used that same amount of money to attract world class faculty and post graduate students.

image source: Foster & Partners

image source: Foster & Partners

Calvin says:

Petronas is ranked among Fortune Global 500’s largest corporations in the world and the least transparent among all the oil company. Sources to Petronas’ earnings can be found at Petronas Corporate Website. There is no information on how the Government has spent its revenue, dividends and taxes derived from Petronas over the last 33 years. It’s a milking cow for all the corrupt politicians.

I love my country, but does my country love me?

More on Petronas:
- Oil Watch, Malaysia net importer by 2010 – Jeffooi
- Make Petronas accountable to Parliament

More on Petronas University:
- Aga Khan win for Foster’s Petronas tech university
- Foster and Partners

Fremantle Identity Code

Last semester we had our studio session in the heart of the city, and knowing that traveling to and from the campus took us about 1 hour, we told ourselves ‘never again’, we vow not to take part in any off campus classes, but I guess all vowels are meant to be broken.

Yes, we joined the Fremantle identity code project, also known as local identity code. This time around the off campus class is held not in Perth city, but somewhere far far away, and the entire journey took us about 2 hours plus. We are required to measure the dimension of buildings, buildings that have significant impact on Fremantle City. I would love to elaborate more on the project but on second thought it is not wise to do so.

I’ll elaborate more on the idea and the people behind it, it all begins with a contemporary research in face recognition by Susan Brennan, her research on how human beings recognize certain objects by conceptualizing an object perception and recognize the deformation of an object rather than the actual shape of an object. Confused?

Line drawing and photographic quality caricatures and anti caricatures of Rowan Atkinson. Source: Face Recognition: Cognitive and Computational Processes By Sam S. Rakover, Baruch Cahlon

From the image above, caricatures of Rowan Atkinson were recognized quicker and more accurately than anti-caricatures, and in some cases, caricature were judged to be more similar to the target face than were the veridical facial drawings. However, recognition of caricature was not better than photographs of faces; in fact, photographs were remembered better than caricatures.

Same goes for architecture, our brain simply store a caricature version of a city, places or architecture, just like how we remember a person’s face based on the unique feature for example a huge push button nose.

This project reminds me of lawyers, liars are pretty good at twisting and… wait, I mean most lawyers are very good at twisting and turning facts, I know they have this little evil book that teaches them what to say and what not to say, here is an example of how our brain works:

You’re the witness for a snatch thief case, the first thing the liar would do is to ask you about the whole incident, he then proceed by asking you if you really saw with your own eyes that Mr.A grabbed Ms.B’s handbag and ran away, like all stupid donkey, your answer is yes, you’ve fallen for the liar’s trick and he proceed to the next trick by asking you: “What is the colour of Ms.B’s handbag.” or it could be what is the colour of the shirt Mr.A wore, and you’re pretty much lost by now, and the next question is: “It is so obvious that Mr.B’s handbag is bright red in colour, are you sure Mr.A is the snatch thief?”. Case close, you’re the biggest loser.

Just like architecture, the mind choose to remember an object or an event in the simplest form, a good example is the image below, with a few simple stroke of lines and shapes we are able to identify the architecture.

Back to the Fremantle Identity Code project, the best or could be the worst time of the project is the measuring part. They gave us this laser measuring devices and we have to go around town and measure the length, height and width of selected buildings, people would be staring at us as if we’re some terrorist planting bombs, or some Chinese conscripts with a laser guided bomb device.

Jacek Dominiczak and Monika Zawadzka runs the Fremantle Identity Code program, they’re both polish, friendly people and very helpful.