How a young designer sees the contemporary office design.

For my commercial studio design work, the conservation is the main topic which I need to consider. The first thing I need to is to choose a site for my work, EH HE is one of the famous shop in an old building which located at Jalan Tan Hiok Nee. All the shops around the place are consider as conservation area. There still have some traditional shops operate their business for many years. Mostly the shop are café shop, the place also attract the local designer create their own business at there. Each shop have their own characteristic, not only a business but also about their dream, they want to convey their own story to other.

This is a commercial studio design project assigned topic of CONSERVATION at Jalan Tan Hiok Nee. Jalan Tan Hiok Nee has couple rows of double storey shop-houses where consider as one of the cultural heritage in Johore Bahru. Consequently, some of the shops were retreat their design and business type. Yet, some of the traditional shops still remain their “appearance” and try to survive in between social pace and traditional concept such as the Indian saloon and laundry at that street. In my analysis, most of the shops were now turn as café, dessert house and boutiques. The street also attracted lots of the local designers to complied their dream and convey their story by carried out own business. In fact, each of the shops has presenting their strong identity and characteristic.

I need to set up a interior design company in the building we choose for it. Due to the building is an old building, we can’t get any technical drawing from the owner so we need to do our survey and get the data. As we get all finished, we will start draw the technical drawing and analysis the data which we get it. The next steps we will be doing are thinking about our own concept for doing our design. The concept for me is about “Nostalgia”, the idea of choosing nostalgia is come from my childhood memory. My great grandparents were living in country side area; they lived in a timber house and the interior full with traditional furniture. The old furniture are designed in using timber rack and cushion with fabric material when I was a child, I always play with my sibling and relatives together. At that period, the technology haven’t developed rapidly so we do not have any digital product in hand but we still enjoying play what we have owned. The old houses car porch are big enough for us to do any activities, there was a timber bench at car porch area, we like to sit or stand on it and chit-chatting together and our grandparents sat on a chair in front the main door area and watched their newspaper. They like to hang some old photograph on the wall to remembrance someone. My great grandparents have their own garden planted with some coco tree and vegetable or herb for their own live hood also they enjoyed planting at the garden. The coco tree and some of the herb have their own fragrance, this is one of memory at the time.

EH HE is my target site for the commercial design which will retreat as a design firm. It is one of the well-known café in the street with its vintage design as well as the wall art painting. Moreover, EH HE is an end lot shop-house which the upper storey is a gallery and the ground floor is operated as café.

I did lots of analysis and the concept NOSTALGIA came out in my mind. The scene and the existing building materials recall my childhood. The memory of villager’s life with great grandparents was raging up. I remembered the timber house which full of rustic furniture, perhaps that was modern at that time and this design is now a favourite. Also, I was yearning the childhood games without any electronic gadgets and the relationships between families were so close to each other.

During site visit, I was so addicted with the fragrance from the café around. The aroma of coffee reminds me of the coco and herbs plantation of my great grandparents’ garden. They also planted variety of vegetables for daily cook and it was how they while away their time. All the signs tell me, I should put all the memories towards this site to adapt the environment in accordance with my memories as I called “NOSTALGIA”.

Nostalgia is a cherished from a period or place and you know how sometimes, you can only remembrance some memories only when experiencing specific things, like scents, sounds, objects, photos and etc. I used the idea to bring up my concept of nostalgia. There also many challenge in the building, like there many pillar in the area and how we allocate the area for each interior design office usage area. The building is located at corner side, I try to be good in use with this advantages. An interior design company will have set up the display gallery area for client to have look, at the corner side people will always get notice and looked what happened inside. People inside and outside can do their own activities in the same time but get different feeling around the environment. To fill in new element things into an old building bring another new scene for the place, enhance the original element with new idea, people can feel for the pass and the present at the same time. Everyone have his own cherished or unforgettable memories in their mind, memories are wonderful, I hope a place can let people to become one of their memories. The world keeps changing, nothing will be immortal, but memories will.

Nostalgia is a cherished from a period or place and you know how sometimes, you can only remembrance some memories only if when experiencing specific things, like scents, sounds, objects, photos and etc. These ideas were assisted me in bringing up the concept of nostalgia. However, it is not a trouble-free task to redesign this building. The building comprised numbers of pillars and this was obstructing my layout planning at first. Try to make this trouble as an advantage as guide line, the layout of office finally succeeds design to included office area, gallery space, proper facilities and etc. Due to the conservation, none of existing structures and walls removed. Furthermore, few new elements are designed to create new scene for the old building to let the people exploring different feels. However, this enhancement might let the public experience the different of past and present.

I believe that everyone has their unforgettable memories, some are private and some are for sharing. I wish that the NOSTALGIA design might recall yours. The world is changing but memory is immortal.

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