Create Alien-like Architecture Design With Tech!

Watch the full interview here :

Hear from Chan Hong as he shares his self taught journey learning how to use various tools for parametric design and eventually becoming a full-time professional freelancer in parametric design. There is definitely loads to learn from him! 

Can you share about yourself, your background, what you do now?

Hey guys, my name is Chan Hong, it's good to be able to share my stories of what I'm doing for the past 2 years after I came back from Germany. I studied in Taylor's University so during that period of 4 years, I'm studying bachelor of architecture, bachelor of science so that's when I found out there's actually parametric architecture and I developed my interest in this thing then after that I graduated and I went to Germany to further my studies and that's where I really pursue my parametric architecture and I got my whole knowledge from Germany and after that I came back to Malaysia then starting to plan out something for the young generations to introduce what's parametric architecture.

Mind to share us what is Parametric Design, what does it mean exactly?

First I would like to clarify this parametric thing because everyone got a different opinion about what is parametric architecture. I meant to myself, I think that parametric architecture is a design based on algorithmic thinking and it's defined by a set of parameters and a set of rules so that we can adapt because throughout the whole design process of architecture we constantly having changes and evaluation, all these changes are slowing down our process in building a final design, so parametric is actually a tool to help us to do these things efficiently.

So above is one of my thesis project I did in Germany for my semester. This thing is a space project, basically during the semester the whole project brief is built a colony in outer space, so we have to study "where to build it, why we go to this planet to build this colony, and what does it help?" kind of like making a storyline and we are trying to bring it architecture into this whole storyline that's what the project about. As you know that Elon Musk has invest a big sum of money into building a colony in Mars right now. A lot of architecture firms that I know is actually pitching Elon Musk about building space projects so a lot of my classmates now they are doing this project in overseas and their firms are actually pitching these things to Elon Musk so this is what we have studied and they are trying to do this in real life.

You said you started a freelance right, how do you use these skills to freelance?

That's a very good question! Okay so far I would say when a client wants a special design example a feature wall, so I would use this to use parametric to design a feature wall, it's an Alien Fluid design and that has not been seen in everywhere else so this is how I use my skills now. But me and my team are trying to push to the next boundary and like create a pavilion for the public space to let people know that actually these are considered architecture as well.

Seems like most of your education comes from Taylor University and Germany which is great, but where does the Self-Taught aspect come from?

Okay so the self-taught aspect comes from you know during Taylor's they actually don't teach us all these tools or this parametric design because I think for Malaysian's Education System is kind of more to traditional architecture side so we actually don't use like this kind of tools. So when I first approach these things it's when I do some research and I say "Hey Wow! Why this building so alien-like? How do they do that?" because this is what intrigued me and attracted me into parametric design so after I see like wow actually architecture can do this kind of thing so I start to research what tools are used to build these things, what kind of skills set that I need to actually do and form this kind of image. So one of the basic tools are 3D Rhino, it's a very flexible 3D modeling tool then inside it there's a plugin called grasshopper, so actually grasshopper is a tool that can give them design everything based on those plugs so every plug there's a parameter and rules inside it so you just plug in and plug that then boom that's a design.

Why did you decide to learn coding?

What got me interested into coding is actually I would like to study more on data science, more on human behavior like their circulation path "where do they walk from, where do they walk to, what actually caught their eyes" all these are actually helping me to further my research in parametric design in terms of optimizing a spatial design and spatial experience for the users. For example, when you go to a gallery there are some artworks that are more intriguing and some artworks are more provocative and stuff like that so they go different type of artwork and what space do I need to put in this upward tool "Do I put this in a very darker room, do I put this in a brighter room" all these will affect spatial user's spatial experience so from this like coding and parametric actually help us to determine these things efficiently.

Are there any resources or step-by-step guide for younger generation who are keen on studying architecture?

I would say to study architecture is something that you need to attend school and learn from because I think that architecture something being passed down since the very very very early era so I would say that every students need to go through the history and the con that what've been changed the history lesson like what fundamentals of architecture is but if you're interested in doing like you understand parametric architecture, I would say that first learn what actually architecture really is then only you dive into what can be optimized in based on the set of knowledge that have been passed down so parametric is actually just a tool for us to further our research and things, so there are a lot of tutorials and workshops online, everything can searched online in YouTube and actually one of the community that is quite active is called Grasshopper Community, I would say that's where everyone from all over the world sharing their parametric, scripts and their designs in the community.

What is your goal and dream, maybe some immeasurable goal let's say five years from now, anything you want to achieve?

My dream is just to let the architectural industry in Malaysia to acknowledge that parametric is something that we can use, something that we can do our work efficiently because from what I've experienced throughout these past two years architects in Malaysia are quite opposed to what parametric is, they would think that parametric is actually a cult. I meant there's a lot of debate like if we design architecture using algorithm. parameters. and codes it's not human-like anymore because to us architects every architect's architecture actually have a soul, we put in our soul, we put in our time into this so that building is life, it's a life of its own I would say so. So basically my goal is just to spread out that architecture is something that we can control, not us being controlled.

Anything else you want to share with our community before we call it a day?

I would say that we architects are our job in terms of building buildings and things like that but there are architects like me and my friends we are focusing more on spatial design and spatial experiences that we can bring by combining tech together because we actually think that this is the future.

Thanks for the awesome interview!

Hope you enjoyed this series!

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