Community Service Initiative | this-is-how-i-design

Community Service Initiative - UCM 60102U4

“Service learning is a form of experiential education in which students engage in activities that address human and community needs together with structured opportunities intentionally designed to promote student learning and development.” (Jacoby, 1996)

The community-based services in the CSI module for SABD are to expose students to community living in real-life situations. The students are to work together as a team for architectural, cultural, and environmental enhancing activities in the communities of different socio-economic status and social groups. The series of community services are offered under 4 categories/themes and as student empowerment projects they are given the freedom to choose and to execute the project in the best possible manner.

We were able to visit a series of senior centers for our studio project last semester and were made aware of the lack of strong communal presence among the residents in some of the centers. For me, the presence of family, loved ones and community around you, can make an enormous impact on an individual’s outlook on life. Therefore, Saurabha, Mubarak, Alisha, Nabeel, Vanan and I teamed up and decided on the theme: “Self-sustaining Community” through which we focused on helping the elderly community at Noble Care Centre in Bukit Pisang, KL.

To strengthen the bond among the residents at the Senior Centre was our main objective for this project. A visit to Noble Care was made in order to figure out how this objective could be achieved. Upon our visit, our observations revealed a lot of well-maintained greenery in the spacious front garden and property.

Sketches of my observations

Our conversations with the old folks and caregivers confirmed that most of the residents enjoyed spending time outdoors and gardening Therefore, we focused on gardening as the activity that could aid in encouraging communal participation amongst the old folks. Upon further research into the advantages of gardening for the elderly, we found out that studies show gardening can help them enjoy independence later in life while also providing several mental health benefits. Therefore, we decided to design a self-sustaining planting system made of recycled plastic water bottles; one that was easy to build and easy to maintain. We conducted a few precedent studies into how such a system was built and came up with a few ideas ourselves.

Sketches of my ideas

As we continued to work on our design, another problem arose: how do we fit in a planting system in the garden? For there seemed to be plenty of existing potted plants as shown from my sketches of my observations above. The best way to solve this issue was to choose a better location at the site that would best suit our self-sustaining planting system. Upon further observation, we realized that there were some old folks that preferred to spend most their time during the day on the first floor. However, there was very little activity for them on this floor. We also observed that the first-floor balcony was hardly used. Therefore, we decided to install our planting system on the balcony to encourage the old folks on the first floor to have their own plant system and grow their favourite herbs/plants. An unused canopy on the balcony provided an ideal solution for the structure for the system.

Final sketch of the proposed planting system

Final presentation panel

Final video

Reflecting back...

My dream as an architect in the future is focus more on designing residential spaces for people of the community. In doing so, I feel as though I will be able to have a closer relationship with such people. Because for me, architecture is all about the people. We as architects design for the people and community, I believe we have an incredible opportunity, through our profession, to bring people together and help solve problems.

This community service project allowed me to do just that. I was not only able to help the old folks community but though our visit there, I was able to spend some quality time with them. By talking to them I was made aware of the kind of difficulties they face and how lonely they felt without the presence of their own families on a daily basis. Their excitement when we spoke of our project was very encouraging to me because gardening was an activity they really enjoyed and I am happy that we were able to address some of the problems they faced and create an opportunity for them to do something that they were passionate about. I am also glad that I was able to apply the kind of problem solving skills I have learnt through my degree as an architecture student into the design of our project.