KUCHING: Pertubuhan Arkitek Malaysia (PAM) gold medallist Datuk Hajeedar Abdul Majid and one of the youngest PAM multi-award winners, Tan Bee Eu, are among the seven-member panel jurors for the ‘AIR’ architectural competition.
‘AIR — Building With Nature’, or ‘AIR competition’ is Hock Seng Lee’s (HSL) second national architecture competition.
PAM and HSL announced the competition’s panel of jurors today.
Notable Green Building Index specialist David Ong and two HSL directors Tony Yu and Yu Ji, are also on the panel.
Yu Ji told reporters that the participants are free to decide whatever they want to propose — they can propose a housing estate with a government office.
“They can propose a public library with low-cost housing. Whatever they propose, if it works financially, we will build it.
“We want to build one of the buildings. We want to build what one of the winners suggests,” he said.
Yu Ji said as panel members they want to find the best master plan and the best use for the land.
“Rather than we decide and then we launch it, we are asking architects to come and tell us what they think is the best project for this piece of land.
“So the architects can come to us, they can interview the public, they can look at our statistics, they can talk to our government people and ask them what they should be selling. So it’s a very open way of doing development,” he said.
The AIR competition was announced on Saturday (June 8), with registrations opening today and ending on June 28.
Yu Ji added that the national competition is to find the best master plan for the 13-acre land located between Kuching International Airport (KIA) and Saradise.
He also explained that when the architects register for the competition, they will receive the entire land topography.
Additionally, it was discovered that a small stream runs through the middle of the land, to which Yu Ji said the architects in the ‘AIR’ competition must prioritise the river’s preservation and respect the river’s natural flow and land’s topography, considering factors like slope, river depth, width, and existing vegetation.
The architects must also plan traffic access and comply with Sarawak’s building guidelines while ensuring commercial viability.
For the record, the panel will judge in two stages, the first is an anonymous round in September in Kuala Lumpur, where jurors will shortlist the participants while in October, the shortlisted architects will present to the panel at HSL Tower in Kuching.
Other jurors are PAM president and jury chair Adrianta Aziz, and Jurubina Unireka founder and well-known architect Chai Long Sen.
In the competition brief, PAM-HSL said the jury would evaluate entries based on planning concept and ideas with a score of 50 per cent, design innovation of 30 per cent and sustainability of 20 per cent.
Results are expected towards year end, with prizes totalling RM245,000.
HSL intends to turn one of the winning entries into reality, just like the Langit high-rise competition in 2021, which will be built later this year.
Additional details are obtainable from airkch.com, hsl.com.my or search #airkch on social media.
