The Case of Razak Mansions is a collaborative project with :
Abdul Hakim Abdullah
Nazmi Anuar
Bryan Chee
Foo Hui Ping
Liyana Hasnan
Shapeshifts
Studiokarya
Kuala Lumpur research is supported by Veritas Design Group
Framing the Common: A Project on the Shared Spaces of the Apartment, is a group project working to shed light on the common idea of home that started in Autumn 2014 with a workshop first phase. Now the second phase is a ‘parallel studio’ project involving teams from Tehran (Project Mosha), Bogota (CAMPO), Mumbai (ROOM), Rotterdam and Kuala Lumpur to locate the current condition of housing in the thorough project of modernism.
The Case of Razak Mansions
In approaching the subject of the ‘common’ in the context of housing development here in Kuala Lumpur, we have decided to start by focusing on one very specific example of a collective housing project. Razak Mansions - officially launched by the second Prime Minister of Malaysia in 1962, and hence bearing his name - is the second realized of a series of three collective housing projects in Kuala Lumpur launched by the government in the late 50’s - early 60’s. It is the only one remaining, the first - Suleiman Courts - was demolished in 1986 to make way for a Japanese department store and the third - Pekeliling Flats - is in the process of being demolished to make way for luxury apartments. It is crucial to stress that these apartments played a key role in the common project for a modern Malaysia, since they were designed and built to accommodate the migration of the population - hence the ‘workforce’ - from the countryside to the city during the post independence years.
In April 2014 Prime Minister Najib Razak - who coincidentally is the son of the second Prime Minister -visited Razak Mansion, declared his attachment to it - since it was officiated by his late father - and then declared that it will be demolished to make way for a ‘modern and comfortable’ replacement apartments.While the residents will be compensated accordingly - a one to one replacement of units will be the development policy - nothing which was shown of the new scheme speaks of the quality of the new development - much less the common spaces which had played a very central role for the Razak Mansions community - but rather it will be just another ‘tower on podium’ development. A truly modern project will be scrapped for a supposedly modern project.
Urgencies
It is at this moment and in light of what is being planned that we find it timely to do document Razak Mansions before it is demolished. By ‘document’ our intention is not only to document the physicality of Razak Mansions as an architectural object but also to use Razak Mansions as a ‘frame’ with which to look at a period of the country’s history in which modernity was an urgent common project. The physicality - of the blocks as well as the common spaces- will be looked at as an enabler or background for a way of life and a community that was described as ‘living in a world of its own’.
We believe that history is not simply the past but rather something that we live with and something that should be continuously open to debate and reassessment. Documenting an architectural project then becomes not just a method to talk about common spaces in the context of built space but ultimately as an instrument to address a common history.
Abdul Hakim Abdullah
Nazmi Anuar
Bryan Chee
Foo Hui Ping
Liyana Hasnan
Shapeshifts
Studiokarya
Kuala Lumpur research is supported by Veritas Design Group
Framing the Common: A Project on the Shared Spaces of the Apartment, is a group project working to shed light on the common idea of home that started in Autumn 2014 with a workshop first phase. Now the second phase is a ‘parallel studio’ project involving teams from Tehran (Project Mosha), Bogota (CAMPO), Mumbai (ROOM), Rotterdam and Kuala Lumpur to locate the current condition of housing in the thorough project of modernism.
The Case of Razak Mansions
In approaching the subject of the ‘common’ in the context of housing development here in Kuala Lumpur, we have decided to start by focusing on one very specific example of a collective housing project. Razak Mansions - officially launched by the second Prime Minister of Malaysia in 1962, and hence bearing his name - is the second realized of a series of three collective housing projects in Kuala Lumpur launched by the government in the late 50’s - early 60’s. It is the only one remaining, the first - Suleiman Courts - was demolished in 1986 to make way for a Japanese department store and the third - Pekeliling Flats - is in the process of being demolished to make way for luxury apartments. It is crucial to stress that these apartments played a key role in the common project for a modern Malaysia, since they were designed and built to accommodate the migration of the population - hence the ‘workforce’ - from the countryside to the city during the post independence years.
In April 2014 Prime Minister Najib Razak - who coincidentally is the son of the second Prime Minister -visited Razak Mansion, declared his attachment to it - since it was officiated by his late father - and then declared that it will be demolished to make way for a ‘modern and comfortable’ replacement apartments.While the residents will be compensated accordingly - a one to one replacement of units will be the development policy - nothing which was shown of the new scheme speaks of the quality of the new development - much less the common spaces which had played a very central role for the Razak Mansions community - but rather it will be just another ‘tower on podium’ development. A truly modern project will be scrapped for a supposedly modern project.
Urgencies
It is at this moment and in light of what is being planned that we find it timely to do document Razak Mansions before it is demolished. By ‘document’ our intention is not only to document the physicality of Razak Mansions as an architectural object but also to use Razak Mansions as a ‘frame’ with which to look at a period of the country’s history in which modernity was an urgent common project. The physicality - of the blocks as well as the common spaces- will be looked at as an enabler or background for a way of life and a community that was described as ‘living in a world of its own’.
We believe that history is not simply the past but rather something that we live with and something that should be continuously open to debate and reassessment. Documenting an architectural project then becomes not just a method to talk about common spaces in the context of built space but ultimately as an instrument to address a common history.
In conjunction with the participation of Framing the Common at the TIME-SPACE-EXISTENCE exhibition at the 2016 Venice Biennale of Architecture,the Kuala Lumpur team with Normal Architecture and Port 25 will be organizing a ‘copy’ of the exhibition in Venice at Port Commune, Petaling Jaya, Malaysia.The exhibition will run from 28/05/2016 until 28/06/2016 with the launch event to take place on Saturday, 28/05/2016, 3pm (KL Time).
FRAMING THE COMMON
The Common as interpreted within this collective research has a multi-fold position. It refers to the commonly–owned shared spaces of the modern project of housing, globally; but also to their condition of sameness, of repetition, and standardization, while also to processes of collectivity and commoning, and to what we already have in common as human-subjects. The deliberate aim of this research is to shift the discussion of collective housing away from the private living units towards the sphere of the Commoning; perhaps the true spatial manifestations of collective living. Freed from the individual idiosyncrasies that would sooner or later embellish—and even redefine—the living units, the Common is subjected to rules, regulations and enforcement beyond the control of any individual homeowners, becoming a strange in–between zone which is clearly no longer private, but is not fully public either. If we understand Commonness as a condition of sameness for all collective housing projects, how could they somehow still generate difference? How can the Common be framed different globally?
The four projects—in Bogota, Tehran, Mumbai and Kuala Lumpur—carried out under the banner of Framing the Common, are similar in that each are investigations of the Common in the context of the political project of Modernism and Globalization, through the lens of the most basic units of the modern society: housing. Yet, the projects are also different in the way the cases of the Common are framed in each context. Each city has a specific modern—and pre-modern—history in relation to the West, colonialism, and global relations; as well as specific experiences of modernism. How these different experiences—and their respective political implications—are translated spatially are the areas of interest explored in this collective research; an inventory of sameness and difference.
The on-going project of Framing the Common is currently being displayed at the Tehran Biennale of Architecture (12 May to 11 October 2016) and will be a part of the TIME-SPACE-EXISTENCE Exhibition organized by the Global Art Affairs Foundation as an official part of the 2016 Venice Architecture Biennale (28 May to 27 November 2016).
The exhibition in Kuala Lumpur (28 May to 28 June 2016) is conceived as a mirror or reflection of the exhibition in Venice and will serve as an overview of the entire project as well as serving as a platform for exchange and discussion on issues relating specifically to the Kuala Lumpur project, which focuses on the Razak Mansions housing estate in Sungai Besi.
Framing the Common is an independent collective project focusing on the modern home and its conditions.