Penang Beyond Fact: Jetty
Homegrown is a motivation to address Penang’s everyday problems created by the everyday person in everyday ordinary life. This thesis seeks to legitimize the abundant local features - the beauty, the mess, and even the mundane, which the everyday person walks past daily, but does not consider as serious design. Penang has always been programmed based on local needs - often offering solutions that are direct and authentic. Despite the various waves of immigration and colonization, local housing typologies were able to successfully adapt and form local hybrids. However, with globalized forms and trends becoming more widespread, Penang has fallen into replicating forms that don’t fit in. How can we placemake without the accompanying feeling of déjà vu from other cities?
Penang Beyond Fact embodies and focuses on the collective memories, knowledge and narratives that exist beyond the as-built condition. Through collaging, it first begins to reveal the life beyond the housing typologies to document everyday living patterns. This documentation process seeks to reveal patterns which are connected as a whole, as a language, that could speculate finite possibilities (Chirstopher Alexander, 1977). The everyday Penang collages will explore the four most common housing community typologies - Clan Jetties, Kampung, Shophouses, and Flats - not neglecting the surrounding urban context that characterizes the home and community. All in which, begins to find patterns for a new language of home.
