The architect's living room. (Suleen's, in this case.) Nary an unused spot.
Share, and share alike.
Ranidia expounding on some of the corporate projects she had worked on prior.
Spent the evening of May 25th snuggling up over... well, a laptop, and a few samples of another architectural implement that's homonymous with Oreo. Yes, it was re:ACT's first portfolio sharing session, which very much came about after we realised we were beginning to lose track in what each one of us (at least, those of us who were in Singapore at that point in time) was actually doing, with regards to our respective individual creative pursuits.
(On a side note, can I call such sessions REAPS (REAct Portfolio Sharing)? I know it sounds extremely like any other acronym that government bodies are much too fond of (GEMS! SGEM! LOBO! NATO! - ok, so the last two aren't really from government bodies)... but it's a little take on the exposure we get from these sessions. Alternatively we could call it SOW (Sharing Our Works!) but that also sounds like the effeminate term for a rather unattractive animal. (Yet, SOW would actually be some sort of a tongue-in-cheek nod to another local creative group, FARM. Then again, so does REAPS I suppose??)
Got acquainted with some of the work that the core re:ACT members have been doing, whether for their architectural thesis in school, or at work (non-confidential projects, of course). The occasion was made all the merrier by "friends of re:ACT" - Pey Haw, Delft-grad and architect at MKPL; Wei Hui, recent NUS-grad and architect-to-be at DPA, and Ranidia, AA-grad who's currently at HOK's new office in Singapore.
We were also graced - not in physical presence but in digital-portfolio-presence - by Sern Hong, who introduced some work (electronically) on his thesis at SCIarc. It has quite a bit to do with Pirated Cities, and nothing at all to do with the utter misinterpretation of Singapore (and Singlish) in Pirates of the Caribbean (At World's End). Watch this space for more updates.
Suleen then showed us her very intricate model of her interpretation of what the *Scape Youth Park at Somerset should've been, which was also her design thesis project. This was followed by Ranidia's sharing on her work at various practices, as well as her thesis at the Architecture Association, London. I then shared images of my thesis (without actually expounding on the theories, influences and peripheral details), before we called it a very good night.
You might notice the large shift in scale from last year's exhibition-cum-forum (Let's TAP! / Architect-in-a-Bottle) into something that's a lot more, well, grassroots. That to us is very much a necessary step in first of all understanding ourselves, and what makes our creative personas tick. It's part of a long search for who we really are and what we really want to do, now that we're slightly more mature and slightly more capable of identifying - specifically - what it is that re:ACT is really about. You could say that one's greatest strength is actually in knowing what his strength is (I totally made that up - didn't get it from Confucius or Sun Tzu or anyone like that - props!!), and it's sessions like these in which we learn, grow, and learn to grow.
Someday soon we'd be able to set up feed off and into similar Pecha Kucha initiatives; one which immediately comes to mind in our context would be ROJAK. (Which will be talked a bit more about in my next blog entry here.)
Next REAPS (SOW??) session would tentatively take place on June 29th, possibly at my place at Sunset Way, 8 pm. Keep your calendars marked; invitations open to all who chance across this space. More updates soon.
