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.

For more information, please visit

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Feng_shui

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chinese_guardian_lions

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pixiu

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Qilin

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.

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!

MPW2133 Malaysian Studies

Masuri Proposal

We should start our preparation of the coming presentation of this subject. So I prepared a proposal for this assignment. Everything I mention here are just suggestions, so if there are any suggestions we will bring it to the discussion after we came back to school.

Temporary Post

1. Director – Charlotte

2. Script Writer – Ammar

· Short script for the 5-10 mins presentation (another 5 mins for set up).

· Including simple dialogue and narration.

3. Stage Director – Jen

· Including props. (Weapons…)

· Background – we might not need it but here is a suggestion that we can put photos of the background on the screen using OHP. Well is a cheap, easy, and efficient way.

4. Sound & Music - Swee Ying

. Sound effects.

· Music.

· Ambient.

5. Costume & Make up - ??

· We need some Malay clothes for the important character. (baju kebaya, scarf, and so on)

Characters – Please volunteer of recommend the others.

1. Masuri

2. Masuri’ husband

3. Father in law

4. Mother in law (optional)

5. The musician

6. Executer

7. Soldiers (optional)

8. Servants (optional)

Everybody should help if we are going to make the props by ourselves. Those who are not acting are going to help for the setting of the stage. We MUST have a full run through and everyone must clear about the whole run through to avoid chaos or confusion during the performance.

Final Design

Here is our final design:

This poster is compressed version. The original file size is A3 size. Perhaps all of you will like the poster.

Different designs

Before we finalised with our final outcome, we try to arrange the objects in different way to get different composition.

Design 1:

Design 2:

Design 3: