chowrasta market the way ahead ??

Kevin Mark Low 

thanks for alerting me to this salma, im afraid ive been a touch distracted of late and not been paying proper attention to important issues - and hello there everyone. i was invited to be part of a badan warisan brainstorm session about a year ago, and the primary participants in attendance were lawrence, helena hashim and myself. issues that were discussed were based on studies and surveys done between two weeks and a month with local traders and occupants of the market, as well as shoppers and general users. the survey pointed to a clear desire for the market not to be demolished, and to serve the purposes of adaptive reuse. the specifics of the discussion will take a whole lot more than a post on this thread to sort through, so let me just give you guys the summary of what my specific thoughts and recommendations were. - 

1. that multi-storey wet markets are not and have never been a part of malaysian culture, which is the reason why chowrasta failed, to begin with. recommendations were made to have all the wet market functions of chowrasta located on the ground level and in ways to better engage the activity of the street during wet market hours; the street culture of malaysia being so integral to the idea of its wet markets. - 

2. that the second hand bookshops on the upper floor were still very used and relevant (based on the surveys conducted), and pointed to the possibilities of educational- or academically-related facilities on the mid-levels of the market. - 

3. the proposed activities for the upper levels of the market were gauged to be absolutely vital in the success or failure of the revamp: that in order to fully energise the mid levels of the existing chowrasta, an anchor was required at the uppermost level, with its mostly extant and lovely concrete vaults. my suggestion was to approach Thinkcity and have them set up their corporate offices at the uppermost level, with freshly glazed-in vaults directing awesome views one side to the hills and the other to the water: the idea was to get Thinkcity to put their money where their mouths were and to get them actually engaged with the activity of Georgetown itself by inhabiting it. the whole idea of having a whitecollar corporate entity occupying the top level of a heritage building while sharing the ground floor of one of the most active wet markets in the country, felt to be an opportunity that just couldnt be missed. just as viable an alternative for the uppermost level were office space for creatives - artists, graphics people and architects, to name a few. the big idea was about putting the right sort of mix back into chowrasta market, for each activity to feed off the other. - 

4. i felt that extremely little needed to be actually done to the upper exteriors of the building, the project was one of completely reinventing the way the interiors functioned. the external faces of the ground level perhaps required a fresh look, since the interiors of the ground floor, being as closed off as they were from inside to outside, resulted in dead activity zones. whether the intervention were to be in the way of mobile awnings and stalls, or the demolition of selected walls for greater spatial flow was not discussed at that early a stage. - 

5. the entire point of the exercise was not to provide guidelines as to the form the intervention should take on, rather than to determine the problems the existing market faced and to formulate proper solutions that anyone taking on the project could follow. it was about reconfiguring content, not designing form. - 

6. lastly, the survey did not indicate that regular users of chowrasta were in any way inconvenienced by traffic, vehicular or otherwise. i felt that the proponents for removing the street business and activity around the market did not constitute regular users, and as such, did not quite understand the mind of the chowrasta 'local'. - 

in summary, it appears from a quick look that lawrence has indeed gone a little too immediately into form rather than the design of appropriate content that will ultimately deliver excellent form. green walls and vertical gardens are so imitated and passe, its amazing intelligent people in the tropics eve adopted the idea, seeing that our vertical gardens already come in the form of trees. that said and done, i would be considerably more interested to see what lawrence has programmed for the interiors of the building and its street edges and activity immediately around it. architects tend to be quick with designing form, and as such, forget the processes that configure that form. perhaps its still too early to slam judgement, but id say lets get rid of the bloody creepers first. ill drop lawrence a line to let him know what everyone thinks, have i read you guys right?