Kuching City will soon break ground on a fabulous new building. Currently slated for completion in 2025, this project will revitalise Kuching’s first municipal pool, turning it into a family water fun park. It will reclaim the site of one of Kuching’s oldest restaurants, one of the only structures purpose-built by the City Architect. It will convert a disused car park into a gleaming new gastronomy centre, to celebrate Kuching’s designation as a Creative City. It will rejuvenate one of Kuching’s heritage areas, inspiring people back into the city centre. That is the idea at least.
But the reality of urban planning is not so easy. ‘If you build it, they will come’ rarely works the way it does in the movies. Community building instead is a careful balance of shared values, common interests, ease of access and emotional connection. A successful public infrastructure project must combine purpose with form, function and fashion. Calling in the crowds requires some form of community engagement. And all this relies, in some part, on great design.
Design is a word often bandied about to cover a wide range of modern ideas. It is often confused with aesthetics, concerned only with appearance. But great design goes beyond this. As Steve Jobs once said: ‘Design is not just what it looks like and feels like. Design is how it works.’ He should know. This was a man who put over 2 billion phones in the hands of people globally. But, more than that, this was a man who transformed the way we live and the society we live in, putting the ‘smart’ into phone.
Good design, in essence, is not just about the page it appears on. It is about the people that use it; it is about the environment that surrounds it; it is about the past it came from and the future it is making. It is ‘intentionally created’, whether by the principles of nature or by the ideas of people. In short, good design must work, whether it is an infographic, a piece of technology or, indeed, a big building.
Design is one of the seven fields in the UNESCO Creative Cities Network. It is separate and separated from Media Arts, one of the other creative fields. While the other fields tend to draw the second-tier cities, Design includes most of the big-hitters, the major capitals, the heavy guns. Seoul, Singapore, Nagoya, Bandung, Bangkok, Asahikawa: all these are cities of design, where the urbanised environment makes careful thinking essential for sustainable communities.
Kuching’s main focus is gastronomy. But, under the network, all the creative fields work together towards sustainable development. So, when mulling a major infrastructure project intended to promote gastronomy, where do you find an architect who can apply design thinking? More importantly, how do you give him a brief for a building which is a completely new concept, one that wasn’t even clear when the building was proposed? For this scope of work, creativity is essential.
Mike Boon is better known in Kuching as ‘the heritage architect’. Founding member and former President of the Sarawak Heritage Society, he has been responsible for the restoration of almost all Kuching’s most prominent heritage buildings, from the Old Courthouse to Fort Margherita. But this masks the real Mike. In his private practice, in fact, he is a modernist, responsible for the Toyota dealership in Sibu, segmented like a curving empurau sitting on the riverbank. He is responsible for the Taman Panorama Benak, the best place in Sri Aman to watch the famous tidal bore as it races along the Batang Lupar.
For this, Mike was faced with serious site constraints. But with good design in mind, he decided to turn problems into solutions. He took building codes, requiring specific slope gradients and dimensions for access and created a spiral walkway, perfect for both wheelchairs and for viewing opportunities. It is this kind of thinking that has come into the gastronomy centre, designing a building fit for purpose.
The first step was to determine purpose. This was also the first step in community building. An open forum, gathering all the gastronomic stakeholders in the city, was held, diagnosing challenges and suggesting solutions. Greater promotion, profile for the food chain, preservation of tradition but also a site for creative exploration came through as the main features. With over 158 sign ups, from all aspects of the gastronomic ecosystem, it was clear that the gastronomy centre would need to support a broad cross-section of people, from visitors to the city to local residents. All ages, all races, all background.
In addition, with a strong traditional food sector facing sustainability issues, it would need to form the bridge between the established food community and a creative future. In a city centre setting, it would need to form the bridge between rural food systems and urban provision and consumption, all responsibly, of course. It would need space to provide both exhibition and experimentation. In short, it would need to be a number of outcomes for a number of people.
Armed with this knowledge, an idea started to form. This foresaw a building with exhibition and event space, with open kitchens for pop-up dining and a culinary lab for collaboration. It saw seminar rooms for workshops and capacity building programmes. But this skeleton still needed some flesh on its bones.
The next phase was a series of Stakeholder engagements, six in total. MBKS heads of department came first, as the ultimate owners of the property; then their Councillors. DBKU also supplied ideas. Then it was the turn of the various Ministries and government agencies, balancing transport with tourism and every public function in between. Official feedback received, it became the turn of the creative economy, the eventual beneficiaries of the building to have their say. Two further sessions, the first with gastronomic industry players and the second with the broad range of civil society from cultural associations to those supporting marginalised communities, were held and quickly a wish list came into existence.
This was a first for any public infrastructure project in Sarawak. Polling of opinion has never been carried out in this way for any similar project. It was clear that the creative communities of Kuching relished the opportunity to contribute. The process ensured community engagement with the eventual structure but, more importantly, it generated hundreds of ideas. Sustainability, space, maintenance, landscaping, quiet rooms, multi-faith spaces, all these were raised and discussed and thrown into the mix.
Now, Mike Boon had his information, and the design began to form. Flexibility, sustainability, appropriacy, all these were key concerns, along with many more. And Mike and his team began to draw. Consultations with other Cities of Gastronomy on similar projects inspired them, analysis of a project in San Sebastian informed them, site visits to UCSI culinary school grounded them.
Phase one is complete. A design is in place. But the stakeholder consultation will continue. This is the purpose: community building for a community building. Partnerships for the goals. Creative ideas shared and then interpreted into a creative design. Watch this space.
