Design My Place

Group 11

School: Anglo Chinese Junior College

Site Findings:

Our group realized that Arab Street in our site appears to be a barrier for the young and old to congregate. The area surrounding the mosque seemed more religious and more elderly usually frequent the place. On the other side, however, where Haji Lane is, it is quite noticeable that night life is something you will always witness and it is a favourite hang-out for youths. Not only that, shop owners in particular brought up their concern over lack of parking space. Wholly, many people we interviewed mentioned that the place lacked greenery and a spruce up will make the place look more vibrant. This way we will attract more people to not only this site, but to the entire Kampong Glam. This certainly includes tourists as well as locals as shop owners mentioned that more tourists than locals visit this place. This reflects some locals do not like visiting places which consisting of heritage.

Intentions: Our main intentions are to draw more people to this site, allow shop owners as well as the residents to be not bothered by the lack of parking lots, to eradicate any traffic congestion and bridge the gap between the young and old.

Solutions & Strategies to Problems:

1. We have planned to block Arab Street as well as part of Haji Lane on weekends from 5-12pm to permit pedestrians to use the roads in order to patronize the stalls more easily. Also, shop owners will be allowed to extend their goods out to the roads in order to draw more customers. It will also give them an opportunity to make use of this extra space to further promote their items on sale.

2. We have decided to build an information centre at the junction of Beach Road and Ophir Road. This particular building is the only infrastructure we intend to build from scratch. This is due to the space limitations at our site with the conservation shophouses all closely packed and some roads being really narrow. Moreover, we wish to not uproot the true culture of this place. We have decided to make changes to the area with the careful thought of wanting to retain the heritage. Hence, we need temporal amendments. This building holds car park lots, and information counters for routes to be planned out for tourists within the area and a roof-top garden.

3. Next, we have used the idea of ‘cubes’ to allow dual functions. We have a mobile karaoke set, cubes which can be used as seats for our amphitheatre which holds various shows, some which can be transformed to seats to play games for both the young and elderly and to dine as well. Moreover, they can be used to showcase traditional Malay puppet shows.

4. A fountain has been put in place behind Masjid Sultan and at the start of Bussorah Mall to add a sense of serenity to the area.

5. Besides, on different festival days and public holidays, the roads will be decorated in relation to the particular occasion to emphasise the heritage and traditions of different racial and religious groups. For our mobile karaoke set, Arab-oke, we intend to have video songs of various languages to allow social cohesion within this society. In addition, the amphitheatre will hold shows pertaining to different cultures and races to ensure that youths do not neglect their traditions and elderly get reminded of their own culture and others’ as well.

6. We will also clean up the back alleys to make the environment cleaner and more hygienic. Lights will also be included to make the place look brighter. This increases safety and thus more people will walk through these pathways.

Conclusion:

Our project serves to problems which have surfaced due to the addition of modern ideologies in that area. The contradictory lifestyles of traditional and conservative Muslims and youths of today have resulted in the lack of interaction between the two groups. To bridge the differences between both groups, we have opportunities for the young and old to interact. We have eradicated the problem of traffic congestion as well as the lack of parking lots. Also, we have surely spruced up this place to allow more people to visit this place. Locals and tourists will consider this place as a major tourist attraction. Finally, economically the country will benefit from the influx of people frequenting this area.