missing architecture

I watched this youtube video on an architect's house in Edinburgh and it evoked a feeling I haven't felt for a very long time that is missing designing architecture. I rewatched it repeatedly and every time I have this feeling like I want to design an architectural space. It brought back nostalgia and the desire to create. The feeling came because his house is very playful, very personal, full of personality with a lot of interesting details. I always imagine if I were an architect I would want to create something strange, something whimsical, something asymmetrical, something playful.

I think this particular video speaks to me because most of architectural projects I see these days in Indonesia are just so boring, especially the houses. Most of them are those boring minimalist types with no interesting details. Almost all of them with very boring neutral colours. Especially in interior I think there is this notion that came from western influence how neutral and soft colours are seen as "quiet luxury" while bold colours are often on the opposite side of the spectrum. Either that or people worship Japanese minimalist design while not understanding the spirit, not having the sensitivity to details, not having the suitable materials, while also not having capable hands to achieve the proper workmanship.

I don't know. Maybe one day if the universe allows and fate decides to finally be nice to me I could have the opportunity to design and build my own space instead of just critisizing.

award-winning whatever

Every time I see someone put "award-winning (insert profession)" on their profile, it gives me an ick. In the field I work on now, lighting design, there's this annual award for lighting designers all over the world in lots of different categories. I first noticed it when my then-boss would always put the award and its logo as his email signature. Awards like this are always by submission, and it was judged only by photos. The thing with lighting design is you really can't judge the quality of the work by photos. Same thing applied to any architecture and interior design works. But especially lighting design because the light on what you see on the photos could be very different than the reality. Also photos are very easily manipulated.

In architecture we can't really judge a building by looking at the photos, sure it could look nice, but what mattered most is the space, how the experience is within the space. And I also always judge by the details and workmanship, something we can't always see from photos. I went to several building built by the most famous architects in the world, and I was always surprised at how different they are from what I perceived from knowing them before from photos. Some of the freakier shape of buildings could turned out to have a very nice flow of space. Some of the prettier building could have the nastiest workmanship and made me feel easily disoriented inside. Some of the nice looking building with good space could be standing out of nowhere having no respect to the its context and surrounding at all.

The thing about awards is that they mostly never are about awarding the bests in the industry, but about marketing. It's not always a bad thing. Awards create buzz and make people talk. But it bothers me when people see awards as a measure of quality. Take the Oscar for example, the most known award out there. It is more a popularity contest than a judgement of quality. If it's for quality, why do the nominees even need to campaign? The works are already there to be judged for their quality. When you see the list of winners and watched the films, it's crystal clear the winners aren't always and most likely aren't the most deserving. Rather than a celebration of talents, it's a marketing tool at best. Awards are there to support the industry.

I once watched a crime documentary and it was so good I looked up the profile of the person who did some kind of psycho-analysis on criminals. On her instagram page she wrote on her profile: award-winning criminal behavioral analyst. Like what do you even mean? You analyse criminal behavior, what would an award have to do with anything? It gives me an ick but it is what it is. In capitalism everything is about marketing and driving engagement. People often notice the loudest but more often than not we have to look at the quieter for better quality.

Update: Here's Damon Albarn talking about how all awards are fucking bullshit that are never fair and therefore shouldn't exist: around minute 18.

artificial intelligence

Equator used to be my favorite page on the whole instagram. It showcases old photos from pre-digital era. Initially it showed mostly photos from the equatorial regions, as the handle would suggests, ocassionally some from East Asia and other regions. I liked it because it showed the beauty of places on the equator in the olden days. Because we are so used to perceived old traditional European culture as beautiful, or those of East Asia, but very rarely are we exposed to the beauty of old traditional culture of South East Asia, before it became the cities they are today with the ugliness of modernity.

I also liked it because it reminds me of intentional photography. Most photos we see today are from social media and most of them either are for engagement or to seek attention to oneself. Photos on equator reminds me of the photography I used to know, the one taken with intention, the one that is taken to tell a story, the one that celebrates life.

But then, one day around the end of last year, the page posted a very weird archeology photo of a giant leaf with a bunch of white men around it. It was a very strange photo and it has a long strange caption explaining the whole archeology thing. Soon after it was posted people flooded the post with comments suggesting that the page was sold and was run by someone else who now post AI generated images. Not long after the post was taken down with no further explanation. And it keeps posting old photos although nowadays it clearly no longer focus on the equatorial region.

After that one AI generated image, I found myself examining each of their posts more carefully, with suspicion about whether it really was an old photo taken by a photographer or another fake one. An then soon after I no longer care. I no longer put likes on their posts like I used to, I just see and scroll past through. A lot of people today still don't see the problem with generative AI and I am unable to convince them that art is meaningless without the intention, without the process. That it is meaningless when it's not created by human. The point of people viewing old archival photographs is to see how people live in the old days, what it was like, how it might feels. What do you actually get by viewing a fake archeological leaf photo?

I fully realized that AI is here to stay and it's going to get even more sophisticated and I don't actually know what we should do about it. Then there's AI that is not genAI. AI is not not useful. AI is sometimes useful to make things efficient when you're already smart enough to know how to use it without wholly swallowing everything it tells you. But the way people are embracing it full on makes me think that we are totally heading to be a dumber and less humane society. And it is scary.

2025

2025 was a turbulent year. First half was spent tired and angry, while at the same time struggling, hard, to figure out what I had to do with life. The next quarter was spent riddled with anxiety, half infused with optimism, half with fear. The last quarter was a little lighter, in a way felt like life is restarting.

In all this uncertainty, which probably was the main theme of the year, I picked up a lot of children's books. When real life didn't feel fun, children's books provide the much needed escapism, the adventures we don't have, the journey, the fun. They transport us to completely different world in a way that is lighthearted, not without a stake, but was much less burdensome than reading adult adventure could feel like sometimes. Le Guin's Tombs of Atuan, although technically is in the children or young adult category, I feel like it fell on its own category. It's really good in another level's good. At this point I think I'm going to continue reading one book from the Earthsea series every year.

The other category I read a lot this year was lighting books. A lot of the books I didn't even put the pictures here because I still have to finish or read more. Although I read it for my jobs, I really enjoy reading them, gaining new knowledge.

During the peak moment of confusion, I read a lot about astrology, understanding a little more deeper about it, and tarot. Many people dismiss them as some pseudo-science whatever bullshit, but despite the deeper history and the esotericism of it, they really are just a tool really. A tool to understand more about the self and the cycle of life. People really should try to understand something before bashing it with no reason just because they have a preconceived notion about it. In my opinion it's easier to understand astrology than religion because you can empirically see it yourself. But people hold religion as such sacred thing because it's the only thing they know and it's what the majority of people know.

Some favorites: Hour of The Star, Tombs of Atuan, The End of Night, Light Revealing Architecture. I love the Scarlett and Browne adventures but I love Lockwood and Co series a lot more. The Road to Tender Hearts and Bring Down The House were fun reads. Heart the Lover was good. The God of the Woods was so so overrated.

Tomorrow They Won't Dare to Murder Us was probably the most intriguing book I read this year. It's a fictionalise account of a real person and a real historical event. On one hand, the book is really interesting, made me want to know more about Algerian struggle against French colonialism. It's a good short read. But on the other hand, it's written in a very personal and detailed way it made me feel somewhat uneasy, knowing that they were real people and the author couldn't possibly know their thoughts and feelings. I know the intention was to humanise the people fighting in a revolution, that they are human with feelings and thoughts, not just numbers. But I don't know, I'm still not sure how I feel about it.  

I have to mention one book that I absolutely hate that is All My Cats. I came to it expecting stories about the many cats the authors took care of and their relationship. I definitely didn't expect to read how the author murdered kittens by bashing them to trees. I don't know if it's fiction or if it's real, it didn't matter. It's just didn't make sense to me and I hated it so much I just couldn't and didn't want to finish it.

Total count this year is 35 finished, and 34ish haven't finished. Didn't read that many literature this year, and didn't finish any political non fiction I started. Didn't have the brain capacity for them apparently. Hopefully will have one in the coming year.

tokyo 東京, kantō.

I very often see people on twitter said that once you visited Japan, the only place you would want to travel to again is Japan, the place you plan to travel to next is Japan. Now that I've been to Japan I don't think I share the sentiment although I understand it to a certain degree. I guess it's true especially for people who like convenient. Japan is convenient. It's clean, it's organized, it's safe, it's friendly, it's quirky, it's aesthetically pleasing, it's fun, it's familiar, it's culturally rich. Also maybe because my visit in Tokyo was very short and I only visited famous commercial areas that feel similar to each other, shopping places, that it didn't really seeps into me. Compared to Nepal, for example, which still is a dear place to me because I felt so involved in the local experience although logistically it's not the most convenient place. Sure I would love to explore another places in Japan, even also in Tokyo or Osaka again, but I still have many other places in the world I would like to see and experience.

That said, Tokyo is indeed something. For the massive amount of people I see every second in every places, somehow it didn't feel suffocating. I remember living in Paris and felt so sick of the crowd, I was so relieved when I went to Sweden and got to feel the space with so much less people. Maybe because of the cleanliness, and again the organized Japanese, like how they would leave spaces when queueing for the subway, compared to the chaos of being in Châtelet station in Paris, for example.

Another thing I noted was how all the LED signs that crowded the city didn't actually look bad. I just mentioned not so long ago how the LED signs that replaced the neon signs in Hong Kong were all so ugly and unpleasant to look at. In Tokyo, and Osaka, they all look just normal. Like it's there and didn't bothered me as much. I really don't understand why. But also I was so happy finding a lot of places that still do use neon signs they all mostly use real neon, not the fake LED "neon-flex" which looks cheap and ugly.

There are many more small things I can say about Tokyo and Japan. Like how I love the intimate setting of their very small restaurants and bars. How everything is operated by machines. But all in all I was just happy being there. I remember the last time I went to Milan I felt like being in the city made me feel like I can do things, like there were a lot of possibilities of how life could go. But in Japan I was just be. I didn't think much, I wasn't stressed or being optimistic or anything, I was just happy to be.

meeting tadao ando

I became aware that there would be a Tadao Ando exhibition in Osaka a couple of days before the trip. It was a part of Osaka Art and Design 2025. Based on what was on the event program, I thought it was going to be a single installation by the architect. I didn't expect to come to a big exhibition of his entire body of works. I certainly did not expect the man himself to suddenly showed up at the venue right at the time we were there. We were just finished going around the exhibition and was looking around the gift shop and he was suddenly there to sign his newly launched books. He also gave a short and intimate talk session.

Years ago there were protests against his work in Venice. I was at the Venice Biennale and around his exhibition people put stickers and protest leaflets. I can't remember what exactly the protest is, I would have to google it, but I know I agreed with the protest. And then there was this big model of a part of Venice that was made beautifully and very detailed by the young people who worked or interned at his office. There were photos of these young kids working day in and day out on the model. Seeing this evoked a certain disdain towards the architect. Because in my opinion to convey his ideas about the projects all the miniscule details on the models were not really necessary. This and knowing how working in architecture in Japan usually was, it felt like a form of exploitation. Although he gave plenty of credit to them it still felt rather distasteful to me.

So I wasn't particularly super excited about the exhibition, as I said I thought it was just a single installation. And also he's one of the biggest name in architecture, so I did want to see his works when I could. But then entering the exhibition, I read his note on the wall (third picture), and I was so moved by his writing I thought I lost whatever disdain I previously had. I was so used to architects and designers not giving proper credit and seeing how he put so much credit to the people around him, those who work for him and with him, collaborators, and even strangers, means so much to me. Architecture is often such an elite world full of people with ego and I really appreciate seeing someone big wrote a note full of humility and awareness. His whole tone of note I guess spoke to me to my current situation at the right time like I needed to read it. I only wished there was a translation for his talk so I could get an even better understanding of his thought and point of views.

osaka expo 2025

The Expo 2025 in Osaka was a lot different than the one in Milan ten years ago. We booked entry at 11.00 in the morning and we stayed there until closing hour at 22.00 and the total number of pavilion we got in to was five. Five pavilions and one common building (where countries who didn't have big pavilion had their own small stands). Compared to Milan where I got in to most of the pavilions. Most of the time we were there was spent queueing. To get in to one pavilion took about an hour or more in queue. In Milan I remember only queueing for some bigger and popular pavilions, such as Japan, and it didn't took like an hour just to get in.

My theory was that there were too few pavilions and too many people, because a lot of my favorite pavilions back then in Milan doesn't even have their own pavilions in Osaka, such as Chile and Vietnam. There were only a handful of big pavilions and a lot more smaller common pavilions. And in those big pavilions there were long interactive digital experience which took a long time, whereas before the designed experience was simpler.

The arena itself I felt was somewhat bigger. To get to another part of the Expo took a long time. And it being in Japan, the arena was very well designed. The famous ring designed by Sou Fujimoto provided shade, sitting area, and a beautiful upper level area. The overall landscape and amenities buildings were also well thought of. Even though it was very crowded it didn't feel suffocating, it flowed very well. And the thing I admired the most was at the end of the closing day, where ten if not hundred of thousands of people were going at the same time to the one and only metro station to get back home, there were no chaos. They kept us walking round and round for a long time and by the time we arrived at the station, we got in to the train and head back home. Tiring but no chaos, no uncertainty. Just truly astonishing Japanese organization.

osaka 大阪, kansai.

So I finally went to Japan. Everyone's ultimate travel destination. And I guess it was as expected. Public transportation was excellent, they have latin words written along so it's easy to navigate. The air was so clean, coming from where I'm from I felt like I see things a lot clearer. Everything else were also clean. The locals were friendly to foreigners, or at least weren't as unfriendly as some other places. But the first thing I instantly noticed walking the streets of Osaka was how neat the building contruction is. Even for simple houses the installation was neat, clean, and precise. I'm deeply envious of how the thing we have to work hard for is just common practice here.

We went to Osaka first so we could get to the World Expo on weekday. Because our flights were delayed for couple of hours and the visit to the Expo took a whole day, we practically only had half day and another half day in Osaka. But I wasn't complaining. I didn't plan any itinerary for the trip, I only looked up basic information and several places, mostly eating places, and marked them on google maps. I was happy just to finally be in and experience Japan. We ended up only around Namba and Dotonbori area on our first half day and spent our last half day in Tadao Ando exhibition. It was short but there will alway be another time.

sài gòn, vietnam.

I haven't been to all South East Asian countries but when I'm being negative I like to wonder why my grandparents had to ride the boat all the way to Sumatra and didn't just stop earlier. Every country I went to is a lot better than the one I've been trapped in. This time I was back in Saigon, again for a short transit to go somewhere else. Only stayed a couple of hours in district 1 but I enjoyed it. The streets were walkable, I felt a lot safer than I was in my hometown. People were out sitting on public benches with their dogs. I still see kids in public playground even after dark. And I still very much enjoy seeing people sitting on small chairs by the streets enjoying their evenings with others. It's nice being in a functional and sociable city. The only thing that bothered me were probably the humidity although I didn't think it's as bad as when I was in the northern bay area. And also I was trapped for hours in the airport which unbelievably didn't provide power outlet in their international terminal!

m+, herzog & de meuron

If you've been to Herzog and de Meuron buildings, it's very easy to be an admirer. Not because if the big name since a lot of the times even buildings by famous architects weren't as good in real life as what you knew and saw from pictures. Like how I studies and admired Zaha Hadid during my years of architecture school (at least her earlier decontructive works) but I really hated being in her buildings. Same thing with Bjarke Ingles (although I never really was a fan anyway).

In HdM's buildings it was completely the opposite. I was actually surprised at how good the understanding of space and flow is inside a weird looking building. It's easy to move and to be oriented. It's comfortable. Made me want want to see and study the floor plans.

Their materials, of course, goes without saying.

And then there's the craftmanship. The workmanship. That is impeccable. Every corners, every details, terminations, finishings. The consistencies. I couldn't know if they were done with authoritativeiron fists, but when I saw the end results I knew they were done by people who care enough to have such meticulous works.

All these is to say that if I had the opportunity to visit their buildings, naturally I would take it. I miss being surrounded by people who understand this. Who could appreciate it as much as I do. Instead of being singled out and mocked because I wanted to spend my time to see this. To see something good. To appreciate people who care. To see that it could be done.

I say this because it's fucking tiring to deal with people, on daily basis, who half-arsed everything. To work on shitty projects one after another. With people who couldn't care less. Who are there just to clock in and clock out. I'm not ambitious by any means I think everyone should be able to chill and live a slow life. I also understand being cogs in the machines working hard to increase the wealth of the capitalists we work for.

But I also think if we put a little more effort, it'll be a lot more easier for everyone. It's surprising really in this industry, at least in the shit city of Jakarta, how little people actually care about having a robust finished project. It's tiring to have to be a madman just because I wanna see for once a good result of what I work for. But honestly what could we expect really from people who believe they could have a good finished construction project just by working with whatsapp groups and occassional zoom meetings. If they even want to see one.