Undergraduate | Year 03 Sem 02 | Workbase Dr. Lim Yong Long | Final Year Project
Illusion | Drug Information Centre
01 SITE
Mersing is a coastal town located at the east coast of Johor, Malaysia. Contributed by its strategic geographical location, Mersing has been developed as an important fishing village and a well-known transit hub with main jetty connecting to the outlying islands of Sultan Iskandar Marine Park and Tioman Island. Therefore, fishing and tourism industry is said to be the main industry in Mersing, where fishing and tourism boats, as well as jetties can be easily witnessed along the Mersing River.
02 ISSUES
Since Mersing is focusing on fishing and tourism industry, it is a norm to see a lot of boats travelling back and fro the river. However, there are a few boatmen who take advantage of the conveniences in water transport to commit themselves in drug trafficking. Besides, there are also cases where boatmen consume drugs as a way to stay awake while driving the boat.
ISSUE 01
(a) Boatmen taking advantage of Mersing's water transport to involve in drug cases.
ISSUE 02
(b) Public stereotypes towards drugs addicts in Malaysia, perceiving drugs as crimes.
Stereotype
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Categorizing
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Assumption
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Unreliable
Stereotype happens in drug issues, where people often relate drugs to people with characteristic of poverty, illness, repeated crimes, low education and so on. The existence of drug stereotype is further proven by a study based in Kuala Lumpur, which shows that most respondents refuse to have person with drug addict married into their family or working closely with them. With such stereotype exist in the society, rehabilitated drug addict could hardly live a functional life.
Malaysia is one of the countries in the world that enforced strict legislation since
to cope with drug cases. However, drug statistic in (a) had shown that drug cases have been a prolonged issue in Malaysia. According to Dangerous Drug Act 1952, punishment towards drug cases ranged from fine to imprisonment and lastly capital punishment for drug trafficking.
ISSUE 03
(c) Drug cases have been a prolonged issue in Malaysia even with strict legislation.
1952
Fine Punishment
Imprisonment
Capital Punishment
Since drug issues are highly related to the society's discipline and punishment system, a book named 'Discipline and Punish' by Michel Foucault is being studied to understand the evolution of the penal system from the past until today. This book explained that punishment is a program introduced by the administration power since the past until today to control the society, where it has evolved from cruelty to discipline. There are 3 keywords in the theory, namely power, knowledge and discipline with relationship as shown below:
03 LITERATURE
produces
rationalize
POWER
KNOWLEDGE
DISCIPLINE
strengthen
consolidate
Discipline in simple words means the things that we are conscious and rational to do with. Everything that we trained to be discipline are originated from the knowledge that we learnt, yet our knowledge are actually created by power. In this context, power can be understand as the majority voice or agreement of the society. Therefore, our mind and behavior are indirectly being controlled by the majority society discipline unconsciously. However, majority does not mean it is always correct and here arise the idea of re-examination to reevaluate things that might be wrongly interpreted by power. Re-examination is important to evoke the public's self-consciousness, reflection and rethink.
04 CONCEPT
Re-identification via Illusion
question and rethink on the current situation of the drug issues to re-identify what and how it should be from a new perspective.
'Re-identification'
'Illusion'
unique side effects that showcase the characteristics of drugs to emphasize the typology of the building.
The concept aims to design a building that manifests the need to rethink and re-identify the current situation of drug issues through architecture. The architecture should be a platform for the public to get to know on the current situation of drug issues, to gain knowledge and to have discourse to make changes on how it should be in the future.
INSPIRATION
The ideation of the design concept is inspired by a drug-art experiment where an artist consumed a certain amount of psychotropic drug LSD and produced 11 pieces of her self-portraits within a duration of nine-plus hours. By producing the 11 self-portraits, the experiment showcases how the 'illusion' effect of drug is getting stronger and stronger until its peak at 8 hours 45 minutes while the portrait drawn at 9 hours 30 minutes after the drug effect had weaken down showcases the process of 're-identification'. While going through each of the portraits, analysis and synthesis is made by categorizing illusion effect into different stages, namely normal, abnormal, distortion, deformation, destruction and re-identification with description stated as below:
DESIGN PROCESS
By adapting the same idea, a drug-architecture experiment is being simulated by using an image distorter to mimic the illusion effect. The simulation started with a conventional design process, where overall building layout plan is being developed by referring to the site analysis and synthesis as shown below:
Next, the conventional layout planning of the building is being placed into the image distorter to simulate the drug-architecture experiment. Distortion intensity (%) is being manipulated throughout the simulation to achieve the illusion effects which could be categorized into the 6 stages of normal, abnormal, distortion, deformation, destruction and re-identification by referring to the table earlier.
For stage of re-identification, the 30% distortion scheme is selected to be further developed with a few considerations:
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It is the intermediate stage which is best to represent all the stages as it showcases both sides (original and extremely distorted)
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It is a more buildable scheme to be further developed.
FORM DEVELOPMENT
Form Making
Final 3D Model
05 BOARDS
06 VIDEO