Sorry...interrupting in the middle...My senior went there last July. She's in Manchester now...She worked here for three years at T.R Hamzah & Yeang and she is one of the best staff and Dr. Ken Yeang really like her...

Haha~! That won't stop me from going there 

I'm from UIAM...Now in final year, my part II. Bachelor of Architecture. I got about a month to finish up my thesis..."International Watersports Complex at Pulau Duyong, Kuala Terengganu"..not really admire him, but kinda like his bioclimatic and sustainable approach...

As always, my advice would be, work overseas, get enough experience and good portfolio first before coming back. You may want to evaluate Malaysia's current architectural scene at that moment before coming back. If everything is ok, then, come back.

i havent read it, but if u notice my post about the crit earlier:
that tajuddin is the same tajuddin who wrote the book . he is a prominent writer and critique in malaysian architecture, having studied numerous approach and the evolution of architectural styles, history and philosophy. i'd recommend his writings anytime.

i doubt architect would make the most mental case in hospitals. reason:

architect is one of the smallest professional population in malaysia. there's only about 1600 chartered architects, and roughly produces  about 500-600 architects per year. how many of those would end up in hospitals, as opposed to, lets say, accountancy, which is equally stressful, yet have larger numbers and continuously churn out about 3000-4000 graduates each year?

if u calculate the probability between courses that are equally stressful with architecture, there's a small chance that architecture would dominate the number of mental cases simply bcoz of its small number in the first place.

akitek tak ramai kat malaysia babe. it's numbers is impossibly small compared to the population. 1600 architects vs 12million other professionals, and we dominate the mental cases in hospitals?

Hmmm...justin, last time when i worked with Dr. Ken Yeang, one of the staff was working with Foster, he said that, although the salary is high but the cost living in London is really make u sick...

Better u go somewhere in Manchester (haha...MU fan), my senior is there now, and her salary is almost 3k pound sterling...anyway, she'll be there only for a year, this coming June she'll be working at Melbourne, Australia. I asked her why, she said that Aussie is much more better than UK currently...maybe that just her opinion...but it depends...if u really going there (UK)...let us know in here...

well, if u graduate today, u dont really have anywhere to go. but then again, the credit crunch doesnt seem to affect malaysia as much as most people expected. the construction industry is still alive, my friends still get private projects even today. so money is still flowing from somewhere. remember, private money is the first to run away at the first sign of recession. if u know ur income will be affected in the near future, u will stop spending, right? so people will stop renovating their houses, expanding their business and so on.

but somehow, in malaysia right now, money is still flowing, and i dont quite understand why. government projects are always there regardless of recessions or not. but private money is still flowing and i'm furious that i dont understand why. dont get me wrong, it's good that the money still flows coz it means there are still jobs for architects.

but to tell u the truth, even out of recession, architects' hardwork doesnt pay off as much as u would like .

things are good, i guess.

yes, u can do a masters of architecture from urban planning degree, as long as it's not a professional masters (which carries a part2 or part3).

Well I suppose RMIT have a better grip in RAIA student biennale in the current years. Plus I've heard reviews from peers here and there- though not perfectly accurate but that gives you an idea of how that school is. In fact, I am biased to look only at the steep side of the curve bell, so as an assumption the best architecture student might be in RMIT but the rest of RMIT students are just average, anyway who knows?

there will always be stereotypes which are at least partially correct like;

1. Unimelb has the best facilities, good performance in overall and design is much more pragmatic than rmit.
2. rmit emphasizes more on architecture than unimelb, so there might be some idealistic thom mayne-like geniuses hidden inside rmit. facilities suck, but what do you expect from a metropolitan school?
3. deakin has the best studio environment and occasionally produces little renzo pianos.

heck, in fact malaysian architecture schools get stereotypes too.

1. utm similarly has the best facilities, always produces good performing students.
2. usm always come close to utm but never did.
3. um is great for master thesis stuff, heavy on research.
4. uitm is the soon rising star, building great relationships across the arch. community.
4. taylors have good lecturers so they have all-rounded students. much more pragmatic than lkw some say.
5. limkokwing is overrated, sometimes produces little delusional zaha hadids and hyped as the highest % of failure in design.
6. ucsi is new, small so the management is well executed.

but what matters is not really what school youre studying in. I believe every school has at least one impressive design lecturer that you can at least tutor with. like in my college we have the reputed mr faisal from utm, Im sure azarimy knows him very well. it really depends on your confidence on going through all these obstacles, if youre the type that gives up easily - architecture is not really for you.

btw, I keep wondering schools like uitm and taylors, who is your greatest design tutor?

I don't know whether it is just me but I find the above hard to comprehend.

Contruction management is not recognized as a profession in Malaysia. By recognition, I mean the profession is regulated by Acts of Parliament. In Malaysia, anybody can call himself a construction manager but not everybody can call himself an architect.

Town planning is OK, it is a recognized profession. Town planners in the local authorities are people with a lot of authority. A lot of town planning work in the private sector is also done by architects though the authorities have made it mandatory for projects more than 5 acres (2.5 hectares) to be submitted by a registered Town Planner.

The demand for architects is still better compared to the two other professions. The bulk of work in the building industry is in the private sector, not the public sector (govt) even though the latter pays better fees.

The foremost problem is how to convince them to come back to Malaysia after they've graduated. Looking at the issue of corruption alone is enough for me to seriously consider migration. If corruption is never tackled as a real issue, Malaysia will always stuck being the manufacturing-base country rather than a knowledge or professional base. The government should address the serious issues rather than just singing songs of the rather never coming future.

there's a big difference in developed countries compared to malaysia. we havent reached critical mass on crucial sectors like engineering and architecture - meaning we're still building new infrastructure and buildings and have little time to put into maintaining and improving. in the UK for example, i worked with a firm specializing ONLY in kitchen renovation. well, at least that's all they were doing when i was there for about a year lol.

they could go into other things to maximize their profits, but they prefer not to, and specializing give them a niche area where everybody knows them for their work. it's a small office, catering for a small city (heck it didnt even have its own website), but they have no problem sustaining the 7 people in it. and they take pride with their job.

i have friends here in malaysia venturing into niche areas as well. one of them focused only on ID and houses, and have managed to excel with zero reliance on government projects. architects in his office are being paid RM6k each, and that is not including other benefits.

the thing is, a lot of us are actually capable of venturing into specializations, but at the moment there is no need as there's not enough people to do the casual works even. for example, we're still producing schools using JKR template (u know what i'm talking about!), but slowly over the past 10 years, people have been subbing schools to proper architects. why? because people see that they produce better school designs (well, JKR standard isnt hard to surpass to begin with). if we have enough good architects to compete using better and better designs, then the bad architects wont have a chance to get a job, and must work hard to improve themselves.

until critical mass is reached, all we can do is improve ourselves and wait for the world to catch up.

Just one thing I thought about lately;

What is Malaysian architecture? How should it really look like? And are there any existing/hypothetical examples around?

From what I can see, most of the buildings in Putrajaya such as the prime-minister's office and the mosque for example, are primarily Islamic with the borrowed designs/motives from the west & the middle-east as such. In addition, the entire layout & style of the city, such as the Islamic steel arch framing the Islamic courthouse design, are also borrowed from the middle-eastern Islamic architecture concept.

Do IPTAs like UTM for example research into the quest for Malaysian architecture? Are the students exposed/brought to the awareness of it?

Or is Islamic architecture just the way to go in this country?

What will be the Utopia of architecture for this country/nation?

in IPTAs, we have a saying:

architecture in malaysia is not necessarily malaysian architecture.

meaning, most of the things u see are not actually malaysian architecture, but adaptations of another architecture in malaysia. first u have those buildings excessively borrowing from middle eastern, supposedly being more islamic in nature, but does not respond climate. we are very wet, after all, hence domes on flat roofs is reduced to a water catchment area. then u have the private homes excessively borrowing from western architecture, particularly rooting in roman, greek and those in the classical to rennaisance period.

malaysian architecture ultimately is something that responds to the local needs, climate, culture and community. a lot of this are actually present and more common that most thinks. masjid negara and the parliament is the epitomy of malaysian architecture. ken yeang and his bioclimatic movement is also another approach towards malaysian architecture, only that he's now more into creating an architecture for the whole region in the tropics .

hijjas kasturi is also one of the top guy in promoting malaysian architecture. try and read his writings, there's a lot of insight on why he design each buildings like that. it's like a whole learning process, where he evolved since the 70s, exploring ideas and technology, and trying to achieve something that is malaysian - not malay, not islamic, not chinese - but malaysian.

there are literally thousands of buildings that have explored one aspect of malaysian architecture or the other. i dont understand why people, architects included, still look at visual treatment of islamic architecture. it doesnt have to. heck, even u students are keen at looking at it that way.

masjid negara is one excellent example that a mosque doesnt have to have the islamic image treatment. it has no dome, no elaborate ornaments and almost no walls. it's purely functional, and made no attempt to market itself as the most islamic building in malaysia. but somehow, it's JUST IS.

I think architecture is something that is evolved over a long period of time (more like centuries) as can be seen in the history of world civilisations. It has to do with the culture, religion, politics, climate of a place, amongst others. It is certainly not for the politicians to tell us what  a country's architecture should be (though there was such a thing in history called Nazi architecture). 

The search for a Malaysian identity in architecture has been going on since the country gained independence. There is the tendency to equate Malaysian architecture to Islamic architecture, which is obvious from the architecture in Putrajaya, which is supposed to exemplify the Malaysian identity.  In the first place, Islamic architecture is not just about domes, arches and minarets, elements which a lot of the Malaysian public buildings are so fond of using.

There is also the tendency to equate Malaysian culture with only Malay culture though we take pride in the fact that ours is a multi-racial country with diverse cultures.

Look at the Malaysian Pavilion in the 2010 Expo in Shanghai, which is supposed to portray an image that is quintessentially Malaysian. Do you think it has done justice in portraying that image?

http://blog.malaysia-asia.my/2010/05/malay...world-expo.html

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Added on January 23, 2011, 12:15 pm
The geometry of the roof in the form of a star is a distinct Islamic motif.  This is also adopted in plan form of the Dayabumi builidng and the Petronas Twin Towers. Yes, I agree that's a timeless beauty, comparable to the iconic old Parliament House.