JOHOR BAHRU , 23 September 2016 – A team of five Universiti Teknologi Malaysia (UTM) students studying in the Department of Architecture, Faculty of Built Environment won the Makoto Shin Watanabe Award, which was a special jury award from the Chief Juror at the 11th International Symposium on Architectural Interchanges in Asia (ISAIA) on 20-23 September 2016.
The International Student Design Competition was themed ‘The Future of the Seashore – Designing for Reconstruction of Shichigahama ’
Under the supervision of Dr. Doris Toe Hooi Chyee, the team members consisted of two students from the Master of Architecture program, Geraldine Teoh Pei Lynn and Chow Pui Teng, and three Final Year students of the Bachelor of Science in Architecture Program, Lee Tsun Xian, Lo Wei Meng and Ng Kar King.
The team proposed their solution for the competition utilizing the concept ‘Reminiscence, Resilience, Reignition’ which embraces the spatial-time relationship of the past, present and future, respectively.
Out of hundreds of submissions from around the world, only 11 were shortlisted for presentation at the Symposium.
The team was awarded a grant of JY300,000 to participate in a series of workshops, site visit and final presentation in Sendai from 20-22 September 2016 which covered the airfare and costs for the 5 team members.
They experienced a site visit at Shichigahama and also the Disaster Recovery Public Housing and Evacuation Shelter on the first day of the workshop.
On the second day, their proposal went through a mid-review with Prof. Ika Putra of Gadjah Mada University, Indonesia while the final presentation was made on 22 September 2016 at Tohoku University.
Last but not least, the team received the Makoto Shin Watanabe Award, which was a special jury award from the the Chief Juror.
The achievement brought not only pride to the Department of Architecture, Faculty of Built Environment UTM, as well as being an invaluable global experience that is beneficial in the architectural education realm of spatial-environment design, people and community, culture and technology.
The International Symposium on Architectural Interchanges in Asia (ISAIA) is a biennial international symposium co-sponsored by the Architectural Institute of Japan (AIJ) together with the Architectural Institute of Korea (AIK) , the Architectural Society of China (ASC).
The Organizing Committee of ISAIA welcomes researchers, architects, building engineers and students to take part in the symposium and contribute papers.