Thursday, March 31, 2011

Venice vs Water Seven


Here I would like introduce you a manga (Japanese Comic) called "One Piece". The story is about a boy(or a man?) name Luffy who wants to become "Pirate King". In order to do that, he must find the treasure that left by the 1st pirate king, Gold. D. Roger. In his journey, he has a wonderful adventure with his crew.

The reason I introduce this manga in this blog is because of the background setting of the story. The author Oda Eiichiro is capable to create a fantasy world by taking what is in the reality then exaggerate it and create a new world. The real life and fictional city that I will choose are Venice in Italy and Water Seven. The most distinctive similarity in both city are their characteristic. Water 7 is a fictional city that created by Oda inspired by the beauty and uniqueness of Venice.

Water 7

Venice


Both of them share a lot of similarity :

Geology : Both of the city contains large amount of river and canal flow through them. Making them appear like the city is floating on the sea.

Venice Market

Water 7 Market

Architecture : In both cities, the building is build on piling under the water. Building of concrete and bricks are actually constructed on top of the piling.

Disaster : Both Venice and Water 7 share a common proble
m, both of them are sinking by rising sea water. Furthermore, once a year there will be a high tide period call as Acqua alta in Venice, and also Aqua Laguna in Water 7.

Acqua alta

Aqua Laguna

Economy : They are maritime city, where major economy is based on sea trading and commerce.

Transport : The main transport to move inside the city is of course by boats. While Venitian travel by real life small boat. Water 7 inhabitants travel by a boat that pull by a creature call bull

Boat in Venice

Boat in Water 7

Above are the main similarities between these 2 real life and fictional cities. Both cities are unique in our real world and also in the world of one piece. It is really great to see a beautiful and romantic city like Venice can even inspire a manga artist to include it in his drawing.


Friday, March 25, 2011

The Pyramid of Giza


The Great Pyramid of Giza, is consider the oldest and also largest Pyramids in the world. And it is also the oldest of The 7 wonders of the ancient world.

It is believe that this pyramid is build as the tomb for fourth dynasty Egyptian pharaoh of Khufu. The pyramid is build by lime stone. The whole pyramid itself estimated about 2.3million limestone blocks.

To build this structure alone require tremendous workforce, time, and also engineering. Historian claim that most builder are actually peasants and also farmer. They shift their work to building the pyramid during the flooding of Niles river into their farm and crops. It is predicted that to build this structure, Egyptians use about 14-20 years of construction.

It is undeniable that the pyramid is one of the greatest building that human build because try to imagine during that time, they don't have any crane, machine and even proper transport to cut and transport the stone that some weight up to tonnes. Thus, in among the 7 wonders of ancient world. Pyramid is the last one standing on the earth until today.


Monday, March 21, 2011

Feng Shui 2


>>>Continue last post

As for me, I do think that its hilarious to believe in such crap. I do not believe that the colors, decoration, and the arrangement of the house can change your 'luck' or even 'destiny'. I do understand that a good arrangement in the house would be a comfortable place to live.

In fact, what I believe Feng Shui is actually an art, architecture that the ancient Chinese used to build those magnificent building. For example, t
he Forbidden City. Which is the palace of the royal family of dynasty Ming and Ching. Is is built in Ming dynasty, after the dynasty is fallen into the Ching, the palace fell into their hands naturally.

The front view of the palace. Well you can see this view from a lot of movies and Hong Kong dramas. Most of the filming production took their shots here, and here only. Because the rental for this part for filming is huge. And the inner part of the palace is not available for rental.

The gold utensils you can see is originally made of gold. After the army of 8 countries broke in, the soldiers tried to move it but failed, because its too heave. So they scratched the gold and leave them there. Afterwards, the repair works color them back. The purpose is to store water to put out the fire if it happens.

Looks familiar? Its the sundial. It's located near near the entrance of the Forbidden City.

This is "Zheng Da Guang Ming Dian". This is the place where the emperor and his minister hled meeting every morning. The plaque is written "Zheng Da Guang Ming" in mandarin. It means honest and bright.

The carved creatures on the roof top is not just for decoration purpose, it has the function of fire prevention and water prevention(flood). The total of the is nine but if the space it not enough, they would be place by the priority. They are dragon, phoenix, lion, Tian Ma, seahorse, Suan Ni, Jia Yu, Xie Zhi,bull, Xing Shen.

This thing looks grand but its only the ceiling of a gloriette in the Royal Garden.

Quite sentimental, right? Its inside the Royal Garden of the palace. The river like drain on the floor is man-made decoration. Just like the last post mention, water in Feng Shui resemble fortune. Just wondering how much fortune the emperor is after actually?

One of the building of the palace. I don't have the exact information about it. I upload it anyway because it is a really nice building.

'Yang Xin Dian' - This is where the emperor lived. The plaque is written in both mandarin and Man-chu language. I have to say that the fence do spoiled the view but that is serve as protection purpose. If without it, the view we can see now might be worse.

The calculation of the pillars and stairs, the position of the windows and exits, all of them is art. I have a chance to been there and the building itself is magnificent. There is a mountain behind the palace. You can view the whole palace plan from the top of it. What can I say about it? I was totally speechless!



Saturday, March 19, 2011

Feng Shui


Feng Shui is one of the must take subject for the architecture student. The word 'Feng' means wind and the word 'Shui' means water. Feng Shui is an ancient Chinese system of aesthetics believed to use the laws of both Heaven (astronomy) and Earth (geography) to help one improve life by receiving positive qi. -- Tina Marie (2007-2009). "Feng Shui Diaries". Esoteric Feng Shui. Other than China, there are other countries that practice Feng Shui too. For example, Japan, Korean, Thailand, Vietnam.

Sad to say that nowadays this technique has been descended to a lower situation, or be simple to say, superstitious. Some Chinese(most of them are businessman) believes in Feng Shui deeply but do not understand the fundamental of it. Normally they will invite(which means pay) a 'Shi Fu' for advise for the decoration of the premises. This happens when they moved to a new house or started a new business.

Here are some ornaments that those 'Shi Fu' use to change the luck.

The Lucky Cat
Cute. It is original from Japan. The businessman place it on the cashier counter and hope it will bring fortune.

The Fountain
Well it doesn't need to be that ugly like above for the purpose. Normally a fountain will a crystal ball and water coming below it will do. It also bring fortune. Because according to Feng Shui, water means fortune. They believe that if a fountain is placed near the entrance, the countless fortune will come to them as the rolling water.

The Stone Lions
They usually comes in pair, male and female. Its easy to differentiate their gender, just take note of the things under the paw of the lions. A ball will be place under the male lion and as for the female, it would be a cub. Other than that, their position also tells their gender. The male will be place at left while the female will be place at right side. Above shows a female lion. The purpose is for guarding. They are suitable to place outside the temple, government department, tomb, bridge, palace...


The Pixiu
This is a quite funny one. The material to make it can be vary, most of them are metal and jade. This is another mystical animal of China. The appearances is combination of other animals. It has dragon head, horse body, Qilin's paw, and shape of lion. The fur is light grey and they can fly. The most special things is, it doesn't has anal and its food is fortune. Which leads to the purpose of it. When a creature eat fortunes and doesn't shit, it somehow symbolize that it can gather a lot of fortune. So you can guess the purpose now, right? Yes, it gather fortune. There are some people bring the small version of it inside the pocket and visit casino and hope that they will get fortune by this.

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Friday, March 18, 2011

Environmental design


Environmental design is the process of addressing surrounding environmental parameters when devising plans, programs, policies, buildings, or products. Classical prudent design may have always considered environmental factors; however, the environmental movement beginning in the 1940s has made the concept more explicit. -- Richard Plunz (ed.), Design and the Public Good : Selected Writings by Serge Chermayeff 1930 -1980, MIT 1982

I am taking the subject 'Environmental Design' this semester. The lecturers of this subject are Zulkiffli Bin Che Haris and Deepak Kumaran Menon A/L Sangaran Kutty. We are going to learn about how do design the environment like, interior and exterio
r building in this subject. We have two projects for this subject. The 1st one we have to build a physical 3D model with tools. The second is a digital 3D model building with 3d software like Maya and 3D Max.

At the end, I would like to say that I am really looking forward for what I can gain this semester, in this subject. I am so pump up since I've develop a great interest about the environmental design. I have a sister who studying architectural so I think we can surely share our opinion about this topic and learn from each other.

Below is what I bought for this semester (for this and also other subjects). Recommended by our lecturer. It cost me about RM100++. Such an expensive beginning for this semester, eh?


1. Tool box - to put all the tools inside.
2. Sets of makers - 6 light colors and 3 grey.
3. Sets of cutters - big, middle, and pen knife.
4. T square - for drawing purpose.
5. Ruler set - also for drawing purpose.
6. Black files - 2 file with different functions.
7. Mounting spray - to mount the artworks.

Friday, March 11, 2011

Navigational Design

This post will be talk about navigational design. It means the design of The place I chose to write the post is Time Square. I've taken some pictures in Times Square with my really not so high-end 0.3 megapixels handphone, so please tolerate for the low quality pictures.


Well, this is a good sign due to its size. Everyone who walks pass it will certainly see it. The simple and clean design is easy to read. It stating the directions and where they lead to. And there is some icons beside those well-known places to indicate the floor number of it. These icons have 2 different color which is yellow and white. But the point is, I don't know the function of it. Which make it useless.


Here is a big problem of this sign. Can you see the people down there, at the lower right corner of this picture? they are so small, right? It means that the sign is too high. I mean who would look at that sign high up there? If you not finding the sign on purposely like me, you couldn't find it. So I guess you can say that this sign is not functioning.


This is quite a normal sign we can find in most of the shopping. It shows what is available at our right side. Instead of putting text in it, they put symbol that everyone familiar with to replace the text. The design is rather simple but they have use light in the background of those symbol to make it more readable.

This sign looks much alike as the sign above but is a bit confusing. See, three symbols of left side is showing the direction of straight ahead while the symbol of right side(lift) is showing the direction of left side. It would be better to put the symbol of lift at the left side since it suppose to be indicating left direction.


This sign can be found in front of the lift. Sometimes for a greater cause, the lift will be design like this to save cost, time and energy. Some of the lift will only available in certain floor. For example, the left lift will only available in odd number floor while the right lift will only available in even number floor.

This is the zoom in view of the picture of above. This is the floor plan of this floor. Its stated the position of the emergency exits, lifts, stairs, and etc. This is very important when emergency like fire occurs. It indicates your current position as well. But I just don't think its friendly enough because its all written in Malay Language. What about those foreign visitors? Since this building is located in KL and its one of the main attraction of travelers, they should expect that a lot of foreign visitors will come to this place. If people don't understand the language means its not functioning!


The location of this sign is still appropriate since the public will read it once they slightly raise their head. It indicates there are still some restaurant ahead and the name of the restaurant. The ceiling of this floor isn't very tall and its still in sight of walkers.


This directional sign is using a existing space which is the pillar in the mall. I think they put it here brilliantly because it save the cost to create a new stand for the sign. All the need it just the design and some stickers. Along the street is a corner of restaurant. At the quick glance we can see what restaurant ahead so we have in our mind and it helps us to make our choices for what we want to eat later.


~~~Greetings~~~

Hi everyone! My name is Liew Swee Ying(1081108453). I am taking Environmental Design this semester. Again, this blog will for academic purpose. Well that is the main reason this blog is created.

Environmental design will be the main topic for this blog now. Does it sounds boring? I will try be best to make this blog interesting. Three fix topic will be given by our lecturer to blog. Other than that, I will share some of my assignment in the blog and also topic like ancient architectural, gaming and even manga(comic)! But it's all about the topic.

So, hope you enjoy!