have a faith.

you can never be a fickle minded person if you are true to your action

ever feel like giving up?

There are moments in life where everything you do will always go wrong and you are left to face all the difficulties thrown at you. At that moment quitting seems like the best option but the problem with quitting is you are just running away and hiding from your problems. People say that when when you have a problem you just come forward to a friend and ask for help. This has not always been the case. You can have many friends in life but not many stays and help you when you are in difficulty. The people that stays are real friends. They will always try and help you no matter what. They will be supportive of you and not afraid to tell you the honest truth. These are the kind of people that you want in life. I am fortunate that I've met my own real friends and quite honestly it is much more easier to face problems when you know that these people will always have your back and not letting you fall. 

Last but not least, if you ever have to face a problem that is so hard break it down, even with the strongest arm of a fighter, never to forget that you weren't born alone in this world. Your parents have always been with you since day one and they always knew whats going on with you whether you tell them or not. They are much more experience and will always make the right decision for you. They would do everything to protect us from hurting. Be it by other people or by ourselves. Don't believe me? here's an example.

still feels like giving up?
seek help from Allah s.w.t. He is always there with us all.

I feel good about it

 Its not always been the case whenever I do my design project. Before the start of the course, I had no idea what to expect from this. The least I expected from this course was another free thinking designing that we always end up doing which doesn't do me good at all. In this so-called 'free thinking designing', we are not actually learn anything because it is in line with the school regulations to let the students learn by themselves. so at the end what we all did were 'research'. This process of this research is like this. first you google anything that are related to your project. then when you think that it is interesting to you, you try to apply it to your design to see whether it is adaptable or not. if it looks good and fit the bill then you show it to your tutors and get approval. after that you do all your drawings and prepare for the final presentation. as for the drawings and producing the artwork, we were also have to learn by ourselves on how to do it. so again we had to go through this research and exploration phase. anyway I will talk about this in another post. now lets get back to business.

If you're wondering why I crap a lot on above paragraph, it has something to do with this one. The first reason that I decided to take this subject at the 11th hour was that I want to design a small scale project. a residential house to be precise. I wanted to do this kind of stuff because for the last 2 semester I didn't really enjoy doing big scale project which maybe because I am not yet equipped with sufficient knowledge to design them. so by doing this I am slowly walking back through the learning process phase. learn all the small things that really matters.

During the first class, I expect the course to be full house with local students in it but surprisingly there are also some of my friends from asia and even Malaysia and Singapore. As glad as I was to be in the same class with them, I began to wonder why did they also chose to take this subject. So I asked Douglas. He said the same things to what I had in mind. He wants to learn something rather than free thinking. From then on I started to get along with him and we've been working hand in hand through this assignment. 

When you see all the good facade design and all the technical stuff, I give much credit to him because he helped and teach me on all this stuff as he also knows how I always admire his design quality. He taught me how to learn and not be stressed by the assignment requirements. I am a much better man fill with knowledge know than I was 3 months ago. 

so this is my proposal that I submitted today and it is ZERO CARBON too! I am not really sure about the star rating but it is definitely at least 7.5 star energy rating.

view of west entrance

view from reserve park on north

Assignment 2 submission

ground floor windows calculation

upper floor windows calculation

 

to give you a bit of understanding of the messy calculation above, this shows how my building is a zero carbon house. first we take a look at the glazing calculation. we were given the excel file and were asked to enter all our windows in it. as long as the green marker didn't turn red at the bottom of the page, we are good to go.

the rest are pretty self explanatory. for a brief conclusion on the to show its efficiency, in the Make Up sheet it suggested that I need at least 3.84 tonnes of electricity. as you can see just above this paragraph on the PV calculation sheet by installing 26 panels I am reducing about 9.2 tonnes of energy. so I have exceed the minimum target by 4.1 tonnes.

CHALLENGE COMPLETED!

life is not always in rainbows so here are some of the critics that I get at the end of the presentation:

1 - kitchen too compact.

2 - hebel wall is not supported if built on timber floors.

3 - balcony needs to be supported by columns if exceed 1 meter.

4 - shutter shouldn't be used. even if its for aesthetic purposes. (stupiddddd)

5 - shouldn't give too much privacy to each room by hiding doors. they are family after all. HEH

20 minutes presentation of research doesn't seem enough

we were given a task of doing a research of everything that relates to what we are doing this semester; Zero Carbon House. Since this is a group work the class is split into groups of 3 or 4. and I got into a group with Gabi and Victoria both of whom have done a similar subject to this when we were in second year. so expectation is really high on us to score high marks for this assignment because Terry liked our mock presentation and he remembered the girls and their work well in the previous subject. so just in case we got this one low, I blame myself for bringing down the mark as I am new in this and have little idea what to do.

Victoria and Gabi were kind enough to help me with this assignment and they even point out every single step guiding me in this. I am really grateful for that. What I learned when I worked with them was that they are a perfectionist unlike me. They have high standards of work and never want a blank space on the paper. If they could, they would put EVERYTHING to get a HD. opportunity like this is rare for me but its really a precious one. it opens up and change my views of the way I should approach my design. though I know that I still lack the creativity that they have.

Anyway back to our topic. The Research. as for our group, Gabi divided all the workload for each one of us, well actually Viki did it in the first place but somehow Gabi seems to be the one who rearrange and organizing it. as for my work, I was given task to cover the history, people and water storage part out of GOD-KNOWS-HOW-MANY chapters that we need to cover. and the rest are split between the two others. after we have all completed our research, Gabi organized and composed them in an A0 poster using inDesign software which I am keen to learn when I have time. I should put that in my To-Do list. 

as far as I can recall, we basically covered everything as we can't fit anymore into our poster. but once we finished our presentation Terry pointed out that we didn't specify how long is the life span of our building will be, what age of people that will be using it and we didn't cover glass/glazing. but oh well. we slipped a few out of so many. I guess we could maybe get a Credit for that. but hey, it could be my first Credit of the semester or even the year cause I don't recall getting so many grades better than P. hmph! but good effort though with this one. I felt I can nail this subject. with some assistance. InshaAllah.

Machine in Dual Colours

all photos taken by FM otherwise mention.

what you produce when you have a grumpy lecturer

This is a project that I did for my Urban Design Studio. There was very limited options of urban design project that I could do. initially I wanted to improve its streetscape but I had very little knowledge AND interest in doing it so I decided to try and propose a residential for factory workers. The idea wasn't that bad but it got rejected by the lecturer and tutor because of my suggested location which is just opposite to Bradken Foundry. and it made me realised it was really a stupid idea to waste such a huge space for that stupid idea.

After reading few reports and articles regarding Kilburn, and also the community facebook page, I came up with an idea of providing an open public space by using the existing stormwater drainage site. I was first had that idea stuck in my mind way before I chose to do the streetscape but I don't know why I hesitate on using this idea.

Once I sort out all the research and programs for this project, I then went to consult the lecturer and tutor as well as some of my friends all of which gave a great respond to it.

So if you want to know about it in detail just click on the picture above.

Zero Carbon Challenge

just to give you a heads up. my major project for this course will be this. actually it uses this competition as our assignment but we are not going to submit it as a competition. visit the website for more info.

Beautiful Day

If you haven't heard of this you should give it a try. a nice song by U2.

ok that is me being random. yesterday was the start of my new subject called Zero Carbon House. going into the class without any idea what it was about is really not a good start. and it gets worse when I was late for an hour. as soon as I get there Terry was talking about global temperatures. I repeat, TEMPERATURES. not climate. and I became clueless as he kept on giving lecture on temperatures for another hour. 

so after a short coffee break we got back to our class and Terry introduced us to a guest architect named Max Pritchard. soon afterwards Max begin his slideshow presentation of his projects showing us range of residential houses that he has built over the years of his career. He even told us a story of how one day he was approached by one company who wanted to hire him but giving him a task of developing a series of plans and ideas of his ideal home. and he did like 30 different version of floor plans in just ONE SUNDAY AFTERNOON! that shows how experience is important for your career and the time when it matter the most.

After Max has gone home, we were given our project for this subject which is to build a Zero Carbon house with an energy rating of 7.5. I was told by some people that it is hard enough to get the rating to 5.5 let alone 7.5. A friend of mine, Chunyin, spent his whole week at uni when he was doing a similar subject to this in  previous years trying to improve his house rating from 2.8 to 5. Even Terry told us the average rating of Max's house is between 0-3. 

So what we can do now is try to improve on what these people can't do. If we can't do this I don't think Terry will give us this task. so there should be a way after all. lets just hope for the best!