spirit of a building

Kaki Lima in front of left shop houses in Georgetown, Pulau Pinang. 2009

I love taking photos especially photos of people in the city context. Rather emphasis on buildings, my camera lenses catch the lively street more. Sometimes I enjoy take a shot on old peaces of left building rather than new one coated with shiny glass.

As how every architecture students posses the idea of building aesthetic, I’m not. I found beauty in different way which I call ‘the spirit of the building’ and it arise from how it is function to human in present or past.

I love looking at how people interact in spaces. I love to see how a building shapes direction of pedestrian path way while the sound from their conversations mixed in the air. I love to see how people and building respond to the climate and also how the building’s history affect the current building program which then influenced the surrounding.

As the global architecture move from classical period to modern and currently it is unsettled in the postmodern age we can see the choice of material change over time.

It become an interesting exercise if one pick a random building and guess when it was built, how it was built, for what it was used for and how the building affect the environment. To do so you don’t need any architectural knowledge as it is depended on common sense. To make it more interesting one can take a city and guess which building was built first based on their physical appearance.

ps: Need to start my saving now.. I have been using d40x with kit lense for 3 years..

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