Talk Architecture

Send us Fan Mail “Be impeccable with your word”, is one of the Four Agreements that Don Miguel Ruiz wrote in his book. Communication is key and using the right words is necessary to achieve your dreams and goals in architectural practice and education. Part 1 of the Series “Loving Yourself Unconditionally” for the Architect & Designers. ©️Talk Architecture 2024, Author: Naziaty Mohd Yaacob. Ph...

Send us Fan Mail This opinion piece is a reply to someone in a facebook who commented that architecture is a “dead/ dying industry in many parts… nobody wants to pay for design when it can just be replicated digitally from something done before”. This is in conjunction with the Rediscover Architect posted earlier. FB ad on “3 Reasons Architects Suffer Stress and Burnout and How to Fix it!” ©️Talk...

Send us Fan Mail This is an introduction to a series of discussion on “unconditionally loving yourself” which will at first, refer to Don Miguel Ruiz’s “The Four Agreements”: 1. Be impeccable to your word 2. Don’t take anything personal 3. Don’t make assumptions  4. Always do your best How do these agreements help the architect to achieve a work-life balance and rid of stress and burnout?  ©️Talk...

Send us Fan Mail A design curriculum is designed and run for a reason. The architectural graduate characteristics were influenced by their experience when gaining knowledge and skills at architecture school. A Facebook post discussion referred to the architect Frank Duffy's 5S diagram of "site, structure, skin, space, stuff".  After exchanging comments, I discussed here how the desi...

Send us Fan Mail The idiom 'push the envelope' means "to surpass normal limits or attempt something viewed as radical or risky" (Merriam-Webster) and that is true about the design thesis topic choice and justification. The discussion focuses on the need for architecture students who come up with design thesis topics to be more challenging and 'push the envelope' when...

Send us Fan Mail Further explanation on why a museum is not a recommended topic for students of architecture, by deep diving into 2 hypothetical projects of a museum compared to a library design, describing the design development and processes and what it entails.  © 2023 Talk Architecture, Author: Naziaty Mohd Yaacob The image is downloaded from the internet - museum icon. Support the show Do sub...

Send us Fan Mail An opinion piece based on a comment on the Facebook group “Architectural Insurgency: Kuala Lumpur” that I said, “A student doing a museum project will ignore context”. Definition of context: “understanding people and relationships, when the designer is empathizing with the user who is using the space”.  Making a new context from an existing context, hence for a museum project for...

Send us Fan Mail "Educating the client" does not mean you will be 'schooling' them as notably they are 'above you' (as the paymaster). Education here means the ability to sell your service by using the psychology learned in sales and the ability to create a conversation with the client to maintain a healthy professional relationship. What happens in a meeting is the f...

Send us Fan Mail If the Berita Harian news article is anything to go by, the use of the Malaysian identity debate is a poor strategy if it’s relegated to the patterns, embellishment, motifs, and decorations on skyscrapers. Scraping at the bottom of the barrel in terms of ideas to debate about, it is disappointing in the least, that the debate on the Malaysian identity is actually to advocate for m...

Send us Fan Mail Here we go again after we had that Search for Malaysian Architecture Identity debate in the 1980s, we are flogging the same issue... again. I am all for Malaysian architects being advocates fighting for their rights to get mega-big projects and not having the Government give them to foreign architects, but I don't understand when we talk about 'identity'. It invaria...

Send us Fan Mail After almost 4 years since we first published the 1st episode called "Design Process in Architecture Studio Curriculum" which is the most listened-to episode in the Talk Architecture podcast, a reflection on the topic in terms of 'design methodology' and the studio curriculum is deliberated in this episode. A methodology is a system of methods and principles fo...

Send us Fan Mail This is an introduction to stress and burnout, the similarities and differences in the context of architects and building professionals. The article that is being referred to is in this LINK . It is a complex situation if a person is experiencing either of these things, but the article with the reading and some interpretation helps to define the words and understand better, to be...

Send us Fan Mail A proposal for the school of architecture to have a university campus design project that includes a master-planning exercise in the beginning for design thesis students to engage in. It is crucial to have a good studio tutor team where they have a commonly understood philosophical approach and the complexities and expectations of the design thesis projects will be fulfilled as th...

Send us Fan Mail A discussion on the diagram posed earlier in the first episode of Talk Architecture and discussed in this blog: Life is a design thesis . However, the 'design problem' is explained in more detail by referring to the diagram (shown in thumbnail) which is a flow chart of the design processes in 4 phases (for the design thesis) but much of the components and stages can be a...

Send us Fan Mail The use of the 'design problem' to comprehend how it works in the architecture design studio process is crucial so that the school of architecture academics can communicate better with each other, in developing the architecture design curriculum.  In this episode, Naziaty Mohd Yaacob explained "the difference between the use of the 'design problem' in engi...

Send us Fan Mail When a person identifies themself as an 'architect' even though they do not have a license or a professional qualification, it does not mean that they are confronting the status quo or wish to cause mischief to the profession. It depends on the country whether the architects are stable in terms of the 'playing field' and would not be monitoring or mindful of wo...

Send us Fan Mail The viral video of the Professor falling off the ramp is wrong.  It should not have been viral or used incorrectly as the message conveyed is not helping at all and due to ignorance, the real matter of access audit training and disability awareness training take a step back / regressed from this viral video. No one will appreciate this and it’s of no laughing matter.  ©️Talk Archi...

Send us Fan Mail This is a continuation of the Part 1 episode of the same title. Quote at the end: Tell the government that we do not want an act that is still discriminating against persons with disabilities. We want an anti-discrimination act. We want a Disability Discrimination Act, and we want the tribunal redress mechanism, the Disability Commission, and we want everybody to be protected unde...

Send us Fan Mail In the context of Malaysia, what is the root cause of the problems that disabled and older persons are facing in Malaysia? The problem lies in disabled and older persons being side-lined and unable to participate in life, be it in public life, economic life, learning, or cultural life, due to the fact that the legislation that was supposed to empower disabled and older persons is...

Send us Fan Mail I delivered a keynote speech at the SDG Summit event organized by the Northern Corridor Implementation Agency under the NCER at Universiti Teknologi Petronas, Malaysia yesterday and did a podcast on it. The title is Barriers & Challenges in Mainstreaming Disability in Sustainable Development Goals Agenda 2030. I outlined 5 important points/strategies to overcome so that disabl...

Send us Fan Mail I was at an event at Universiti Teknologi Petronas, Tronoh, Perak in Malaysia, a recipient of the Aga Khan Award in Architecture in 2007. It was designed by Sir Norman Foster and GDP Architects the local architecture company collaborated to complete the design and got it built. I am reminiscing about the time when I was a design thesis tutor at the last university I was employed i...

Send us Fan Mail Introducing a discussion on this question: if 'harmony' is the end goal, why do we need 'disharmony'? This is more of a teaser episode or at least an introduction to the topic. Referring to the debate between Eisenman Vs Alexander in 1982, what is the purpose of 'art' in architecture? Later in Part 1, I will discuss the difference between the role of...

Send us Fan Mail Gen Zs are those under 27 years old, and I was involved in their education when they were 21 years old and it was tough learning an architecture course totally online during the pandemic for a year and a half. They missed out on visiting places and learning in a more hands on way. They now need to relearn architecture. Another factor that millennials have an advantage over Gen Zs...

Send us Fan Mail When and why did architecture isolate itself as a profession? We need to focus on asking better questions when it comes to the architecture profession. Although the Eisenman versus Alexander debate in 1982, seems so long ago, the relevance of what the latter has to say and his legacy influencing computer science, says to me the necessity for us to understand his work in terms of a...

Send us Fan Mail When and why did architecture isolate itself as a profession? As a profession, we took sides so that is easy for us as architects. To serve the client because that is what we do. 95% of the Malaysian Architect's Act is about contracts and serving the client. Is the client also the society? Much of what we see now around us is shaped by developers and speculative development....