Geoffrey Bawa memorial Lecture to commemorate Geoffrey's 100th birth anniversary was held at Foundation Institute on 30th May. This year the guest speaker was Singaporean architect Mok Wei Wei and true to his Singaporean style it was short, sweet and to the point. More importantly I could understand most if not all of it. He spoke about the challenges faced by architects due to Singapore's complicated and stringent building codes and how they could be adhered to while being creative. This bring me to an issue I have been thinking for a while. I always thought that the more stringent (and of course meaningful) building codes would be more beneficial to the architects, both creatively and commercially. Creatively because, such regulations always allow them to play with a little bit open space here and a few meters of set back there even though they could be a nuisance (in fact, IMO one of the points highlighted i the lecture). commercially because more complicated they are there will be fewer and fewer people who could interpret them!
Geoffrey Bawa Commemoration Week
Building and Construction Authority (BCA), Singapore
commercially better for Architects? or for shady government officers? rules suck because these only apply if an architect goes and tries to build, for a draftsman anything goes...if you talk about rules, in Sri Lanka such rules exist only for Architects. at the moment it does nothing to help the architect but it does far more to hinder his freedom. ultimately what happens is that the client's move towards more "user friendly" draftsman, who deals with these underhanded government officers.
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