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Shaking off the dominant paradigm with Kevin Mark Low

a browser special issue

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Reconstructing Monuments He’s known as Klang Valley’s biggest party pooper, pointing out the flaws of community activism and questioning the role of the creative class. So what does Kevin Mark Low want exactly? browser interviews the architect in the hypergentrified neighbourhood of Bangsar for a clearer picture of the state of design and society today.

The thought process.

How is your week going?

How often do you get invited to talks? What are the similarities and differences you find between the regions you speak at, regarding the people and your practice?

On average, once a month. Most conferences and events are rather shallow. It’s the global paradigm where conferences end up being a basic show and tell rather than anything of deeper import. And these will usually be about marketing one’s self and one’s brand.

For famous architects, it’s about getting work in other countries. Even if it’s a conference on academia, very few topics of academic worth are actually discussed.

In almost every case, architecture conferences are organised simply as

So it varies very little in terms of true differences between the quality of speakers. Now, in relation to audiences however, I’ve found a tremendous degree of variation from place to place — the Singaporeans are terribly polite, even if they do not like much of what they’ve heard; the Indonesians are like the Thais, they are more criticallyminded and ask a tremendous lot of questions, not such friendly ones if the presentation has not been to their liking, and considerably about the general sensibilities of the presenting speaker if they do; the Filipinos share similar traits with the Singaporeans, Australians, New Zealanders, English, and Americans — generally non confrontational; the Japanese and Chinese are close to being the least expressive; and finally, the Europeans show great variance in reaction, Scandinavians being the most polite, and the French and Germans being the most vocal and direct.

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I’m really busy. I’m trying to get through a design for a friend’s house that I promised him for months already now, and I’ve been too busy to get around to it so I need to get that finished. I’ve been busy writing quite a bit, too.

platforms for individuals to make presentation of their work, regardless of quality.

In relation to my own lectures in schools or at international events, I have to say that I’ve been attending conferences for so long now that I’m quite frankly bored sick about talking about my architectural work. So whenever I’m invited to speak, I try to discuss the work I’ve engaged in teaching and education instead, on issues that audiences can learn about their creativity, rather than mine.

Your attention to detail shows the work of a person who values the importance of order.

Do you follow a regiment or living pattern?

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I have a basic structure within which different things can happen. It’s a structure for accidents and chance to have a place as well. And my attention to detail appears so only because it’s generally lacking in the world. One would have the greatest concept and the most noble intentions but if one doesn’t pay attention to the development of narrative and concepts through detail, nothing good comes of it.

We use general terms like ‘community’, ‘society’, and ‘betterment’, and engage global solutions sold and believed to succeed anywhere, leaving our study of specific contexts so undeveloped and specific problems so unresearched, that our generic solutions fail everywhere.

Hip global solutions rarely ever respond specifically to the communities and individuals whose issues and problems are unique for each different place and time. We hardly ever pay attention to the details of specific context. So my attention to detail is in avoidance of that — of global one-size-fits-all solutions, none of which make any sense. The

specificities of the human condition and each project we undertake differ so vastly from one context to the next, that the way we evaluate and conceptualise each thing we design, subsequently demands our focused attention. The process of engaging detail is no different.

Automation. Artificial Intelligence. What are the efforts you have taken to keep your talent relevant, as these technologies will deem your profession redundant?

I think the biggest problem with automation is not necessarily the machines that allow us to automate, but rather the automation of our responses to things that require our greater direct engagement. Automated response is the most damaging thing any designer or architect worth their salt can possibly allow. It points to an intrinsic laziness, this desire to cut to the shallow chase of solutions, rather than putting the profound effort of thinking through first principles.

That results in, you might say, not an artificial intelligence bound by technology, but the artificiality of the human mind and of the thinking process itself. It’s artificial because it pretends to be about thinking and creativity when it’s primarily about building presence and a brand — building a collection of answers that appropriate global solutions of community and betterment without paying deeper heed and critical effort to the analysis of what creates a local problem. We don’t want to put effort into the understanding of difficult and specific problems because it’s faster, cheaper, and easier to build a brand by focusing on generic solutions.

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But what about yourself?

I’m so sorry! I know it appears I’ve diverged, but I’m actually talking about myself and the processes I put effort into. Not to stay relevant, however, but because I have come to understand over the years how badly we have been using technology globally — to cut-paste and appropriate solutions digitally rather than process our own critical thinking in analogue manner.

I try to make a change to how I think, rather than exploit how technology or hardware can brand what I may not have actually done in my work. The technology of artificial intelligence does not solve problems, it creates them.

And, this is because we haven’t first understood how to use the technology of our very minds. Artificial Intelligence

perverts the process of thinking. In relation to a tangible take-away, I draw and draw, and read and write as much as I think. I believe these analogue processes are what drive our most powerful abilities as individuals.

You are all about being self-critical in your presentations. What goes on in your mind when people praise your works, especially when they are young, impressionable students?

Someone made a post about the PJ Trade Centre some time back, with a comment on how great a work it was and I directed them to one of the photographs he had taken of an elevation that was completely bland and shuttered with blinds on the inside, because I did not pay enough attention to that one elevation that would be facing the hot morning sun at 11 a.m.

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“My attention to detail appears so only because it’s generally lacking in the world.”

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I don’t want to hear what I’ve done right. I know what I’ve done right. It’s silly to hear about successes because they are usually already known. I want to hear what my failures are because that’s the only way I can learn. You only learn from failure, not success.

So I cringe when people praise what I do because it doesn’t require praise. It’s just a bit better than average because the whole world merely aspires to mediocrity. If any of the work I’ve done is considered praiseworthy, I suspect that it’s only because what I have done is merely better than mediocre. Any architect who thrives and rides on the praise of others, while they drive that bandwagon of fans, does very serious damage to their own integrity and creativity, at the same time they make

icons of themselves. And this is the most regressive thing someone of influence can do to their society.

It is the reason why businessmen like Elon Musk and Steve Jobs exist, to just make stuff, money, and a name for themselves. While the ones who make actual difference, like the fellow who invented the Internet on which all of Steve Jobs’s devices designed by Jonathan Ive work off of, is someone most people can’t even identify by name, let alone face, because he’s too busy making a real difference than to spend time marketing his ideas and making money.

Tim Berners-Lee was an English nerd in a Swiss lab who basically gave away the World Wide Web to us when he realised

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That sounds like you’re making an icon out of Tim Berners-Lee. Only because he’s not made one out of himself. And I’m not iconising him.

I’m merely drawing our attention on the fact that we live in a world where people who make money and brand for themselves are iconised over those who make an actual difference. My mention of Tim Berners-Lee is in recognition of fact and the true contribution of someone who didn’t need himself to

be known. He’s not selfless; none of us are. I’m driven as much by my ego as he or Elon Musk is. The differences lie in whether one’s ego drives one to an arrogance that’s predicated on building shallow brand for oneself.

Tim Berners-Lee is not interested in building a brand. And, I’m only interested in educating about these issues, to help us realise that for centuries, we’ve been building up individuals as perfection, rather than understanding that it is only in the study of their failures and ours, that we can truly learn.

Change doesn’t come through branding, which is what the world believes.

Change comes through the deep effort that happens away from networks and circles of fame, and where garden variety business instincts are found.

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how powerful it was — he chose not to patent it. This is unbelievable, not to choose to patent something as powerful and lucrative as what he had, because he believed everyone should have access to it. And governments now make money off of it instead.

Of the self and the neighbourhood.

Let’s learn more about your identity and heritage. What sort of family or community were you born into?

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All in all, I had great parents. My dad and I had a somewhat fractured relationship but really, name me one son that didn’t have a fractured relationship with their fathers.

Regardless, I don’t have anything to blame my parents for, as they were amazing in each their own right. We left Malaysia for Singapore when I was just about to begin with Primary One, and I stayed right up till pre-university, but I never felt I like belonged because I paid a higher school fee rate to my classmates and I was always sort of ‘the Malaysian kid’. And home was always where I would be spending the next few months, because we moved around so much in the first six years of my life in Malaysia.

What were your parents’ occupations?

My dad was a manager of an abattoir, a slaughterhouse, and my mum was a teacher. She taught geography, English as a second language, general paper, and economics. Some topics she had never taught before, so she was quite versatile in her own right. She, above all, encouraged me to draw, because she thought that was what architects did, not knowing in the least where it would

ultimately take me. She did not know in the deepest sense how drawing helps one think. And, she encouraged me to read — she’s one of the most important reasons for who I am today, because I believe she saw what I had in me, and she fed and encouraged that.

Growing up in Singapore, how did that shape your understanding about relationships and social structures?

It didn’t! I was too inexperienced to know any of that stuff. Of course everyone knew what the phrase ‘social structure’ referred to, it was the complexities of what it all really meant at the age of 18, that escaped deeper understanding. I think the late millennials and the early Gen Zs will know what it all means now, and with a whole lot more detail to boot. Are you a millennial?

Most sources define those who are born after 1980 as a millennial.

So you’re an early millennial — the thing about millennials is that, as early millennials, even you didn’t have as much access to information as the late millennials and the Gen Zs. They know five times as much as I did when I was their age, and they know two or three times as much as you did at their age. All because of the information

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had actually gone somewhere else but I didn’t, and I suppose my life just played itself out here.

And the misinformation explosion.

Malaysia was, and still is, an amazing world of exploration if one looks hard enough, and I’m still trying to learn to keep or understand to unlearn. I’ve had a wonderful time. I first worked on a renovation for an uncle and after a year and a bit, I joined Kamil Merican of GDP Architects. He was, at that time, the most influential person to me. He was the most generous person you could possibly imagine. I feel things changed tremendously after that, after he was co-awarded the Aga Khan award with Foster + Partners, and became famous — it changed him subtly.

Exactly. Comes with the territory, doesn’t it?

What do you find special about living and working in Malaysia?

When I graduated from MIT after my masters degree, I had a choice of working in Amsterdam, Sri Lanka, or Hawaii. But when I came back to Malaysia, there was so much going on — there was a process of sorts in place, but that process, as a professional sensibility of a country, wasn’t entrenched in a structure per se. There was tremendous room for experimentation that you wouldn’t have found in any developed nation. Perhaps I would have found my own room for experimentation if I

But you are still in good terms with him. You can still joke around with him, right?

I can call him and talk to him and invite him over to University of Malaya

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explosion. The young today know much more about social structure than ever before in history.

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“When I talk about an issue, I’m talking about the relationships that bind it inclusively with its context, not a mere opinion that excludes its reality.”

anytime, but I’ve stopped because he has changed in a way I feel that is negative in relation to his feedback to students, and his sway with the university bureaucrats that hold power over those same students in passing or failing them. He critiques in ways now that places emphasis on commercial instincts over deeper regard for the individuals of specific contexts, and that troubles me tremendously because in so many ways, he’s still easily one of the most generous people in Malaysia. I feel he’s been sucked in by other businessminded individuals, pandering to global paradigms of ‘creative progress’ and brand. Perhaps that’s always been a part of him in the past, it is difficult to say, but one thing is clear — he has put his business instincts and reputation ahead of his deepest responsibilities, as his collaborations with other businessmen

to gentrify Ipoh in the name of adaptive reuse and betterment, attest to. I feel very badly about it because he was so important to me at one point in my life.

That respect I had for an individual who is such a good person, has eroded terribly with passing years.

You’re known for your strong opinions on certain issues and in return, they attract strong reactions from the community. What is the difference between having those dialogues online, and offline?

Maybe we can take a step back and talk about opinions and viewpoints. I don’t express my ‘opinion’, because my opinion would be as viral as anyone else’s. An opinion is merely one viewpoint. But if you look at any one issue or thing, it’s made up of multiple viewpoints. This is your viewpoint, that is my viewpoint. You like pink but I

like blue. Who’s right and who’s wrong?

And really, who bloody cares? Because it’s only when one begins to understand the relationships between those multiple viewpoints and their specific context, that you begin to understand what a ‘thing’, or issue, is about.

It means nothing until one understands what relates them all, when all the relationships between opinions and viewpoints are gauged and understood, in relation to the specificity of their surrounds, that common opinion is elevated to epistemology, that which is of knowledge, and truth.

The Internet and social media are very, very scary things because they are more used as weapons for untruths, expressed as viral blurbs and quick to read, because human attention spans have now become so truncated, very few people still know how to read with intelligence and perception. The weapon of lies that the Internet is, is very, very powerful; its bullets come across in very short but intense bursts as clipped sentences and gripping, but

I choose not to use the Internet that way. I write terribly long bloody posts which is a crazy thing because of the poor culture of reading that we have in Malaysia. But I feel that the people who matter, read. And they are the ones who will, or hopefully might, go on to make the biggest difference of all. And so, with the way I use Facebook — I sort of twist it into all kinds of kundalini yoga positions that it’s not used to, in an effort to create a deeper culture of deliberation and introspection through reading. I write long essays which sometimes don’t even fit into the space I’m allowed. In doing so, I try to engage explaining relationships, rather than just my viewpoint.

So, the Internet works fairly well for me [but] having a lecture works better, in terms of disseminating truth. Whereas the Internet works best as a weapon for lies, and not as well for understanding truth. I feel lectures and face-to-face discussions, confrontations in a very real, physical way, engage truth in a more powerful, meaningful manner. The Internet has educated us against reading, in the encouragement of connecting to soundbites in forming viral opinion. This is not only silly and unintelligent, it sets back learning and education by decades.

So your contempt for the Internet isn’t merely due to a ‘generational gap’, but rather its gloomy undertone that affects human nature?

I wouldn’t say ‘gloomy’, I’d say ‘subversive’. It’s damaging our abilities to think because of its instantaneous

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So when I talk about an issue, I’m talking about the relationships that bind it inclusively with its context, not a mere opinion that excludes its reality.

And of course, some viewpoints will be more important than others, by virtue of relationship. Unfortunately, popular opinions are not necessarily the most important ones because they still fail to take into account the actual thing that their opinion hides. Just to get that clear. I am not interested in opinions, mine or anyone else’s. I’m interested in the multiple relationships they share.

meaningless soundbites, intended to be read very quickly and virally absorbed.

form of engagement that demands our instantaneous responses. It leaves no room for the sort of introspection necessary for civil discourse, with others, and especially within ourselves. It drowns one in so much information that users avoid sifting through the meat and matter in merely picking up the already popular and acceptable. Unless one watches out for it on a constant basis, the Internet makes us slaves to the dominant paradigm — part of that herd of lemmings, packed into little metal boxes.

It’s safe to say your critics see you as the Nimby king of Bangsar. But some things need to change because we’re all part of this vicious cycle of life.

What is your say?

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Firstly, a lot of people see this aspect of Not-In-My-Back-Yard as something easy to understand because it’s already a viral opinion; that of being a Nimby.

But the less seen and understood aspect of being one raises rather more powerful questions about the intentions and motives of those others comfortable with the name-calling, than the communities or individuals labelled so.

When so-called ‘creatives’ push their ideas of social betterment and community service on to the locations of their interventions, they rarely ask any questions about the communities most closely sited to their interventions — they push interventions in neglect of the very communities they claim to better.

The thing is, Malaysian ‘creatives’ do not really know how to create, they merely parasite off existing communities already possessing character and charm, in something quite well known as a positive feedback loop.

Perhaps I can explain more clearly. The creative regime of the Klang Valley led

by Mr. Ng Sek San with Think City in ignorant support, selectively picks on neighbourhoods with character — the sort of affordable neighbourhoods that real people like electricians, pregnant housewives and retired nurses live in.

These neighbourhoods with charm are targeted for their affordability by the creative rich, who then put that charm to work for them through the creation of hipdom by their inappropriate insertion of ‘community libraries’, hip homestays, and ‘community gardens’, which they then reign over as slumlords who do not reside in the properties they own but rent them out instead for as high a value as they can find — as hotels disguised as homestays, high-end student hostels disguised as community libraries, and special interest hobby farms disguised as community gardens.

And, all that buzz and ‘creativity’ ultimately attracts the cool cafés, raucous bars, expensive eateries, art galleries, and the world of wannabes. With their hippy and creative-looking projects configured and designed to invite the participation of all, simply results in increased visitor numbers from all parts of the ‘creative’ community, increased vehicular traffic from the increased visitor numbers, which then brings in even larger numbers of wannabes seeking creative buzz, and the cycle is born — it is evidenced the world over and has destroyed community after community, most recently seen in Chelsea, New York City, with the viral intervention of the High Line project — this constitutes the foundations of the positive feedback loop that ‘creatives’ the world over employ,

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ignorantly or intentionally, to destroy once lively and vital communities of people. It works off the neo-urban principle that attracts more people than things, events, and other people that look creative, more people always brings more money, and anything or anyplace that brings in money ‘creates’ value.

And, here is where you’ll find the kicker — the increased rentals; the higher property costs; the traffic jams; the noisy crowds and viral social tourists that these once charming neighbours are now infested with. All that ‘value’ that’s created can only be appreciated by the actual community living in these places when they have finally had enough of their soldout neighbourhoods, and decide, themselves, to sell-out and make a profit from the heightened values of their

properties — the residents only benefit from the ‘value’ created when they stop being residents.

This is such a twisted concept of value, that I do not believe it requires further explanation. The thing is, those creating that so-called value refer to their efforts as ‘success’, and none of them actually suffer the outcomes of their creations because, as the slumlords they are, none of them reside within what they have virally created. And, the communities or individuals who choose not suffer the brunt of those interventions quietly, are called ‘Nimbys’.

This being the case, Nimbys should indeed be considered the world’s first community police force, no different from what Greenpeace and Earth First! activists have done for their respective fields.

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Vehicular congestion in a community garden that should not require driving to, if appropriately sited.

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Congestion in Lucky Garden, that did not exist prior to the adjusted traffic routing.

Greater Bangsar is now targeted by the same creator of the dismally located KebunKebun project, with street edge continuous fencing, reduced parking space, displaced motorcycle lots, and misplaced pocket gardens, all developed in contempt of the functions and needs of immediate community to the interventions. An appalling vehicular re-routing of Lucky Garden caps it all, reducing exits and increasing entry points in creating unacceptable gridlock, universally angering the business community and majority of the users of the area. Nimbys are the only ones able to see the problems created by entitled ‘creatives’.

I recently attended a talk by Lai Lok Kun, one of the more successful Malaysian architects from the pioneer generation. His works span five decades, but he has retired from the industry and now works on a spiritual venture. Do you have a

retirement plan that excludes your practice out of the equation?

I don’t have a retirement plan because I am of firm belief that retirement ends your life prematurely. I’ll always teach and write and do the work which is my research for teaching. If it’s a job that one doesn’t like doing, then of course retirement would feel like a good thing, but then again, we should not be doing the work we hate, should we?

That’s what we talk about, or refer to in life every time we are asked, yet most of us want to retire because the jobs we do are the ones we truly believe in. And that’s an awful thing. I love what I do and because of that, I will never retire, as I’ll just be subject to Alzheimer’s and waste away if I did so. So no, I don’t have a scary, creepy, spiritual retirement plan.

Urbanism and humanity.

What is a functional street?

So, five-foot ways as example, are an amazing invention that was brought to us from China — they provide for air rights over a public sidewalk, offering shade from rain and protection from the sun. Those ideas of how the room of the street become configured in different societies around the world are as intrinsic and particular to the specific activities of those places, as they are to the relationships between the 15 people that their streets grew from. The functional street is one that forges as

This is an idea that is not well understood in both architectural and planning fields. In relation to the shared public space of our streets, much of what happens in Malaysia has been brought in from the developed world, relevant perhaps, for their contexts, but so irrelevant in ours. Our lack of tolerance and intelligence over how to engage and deal with vehicular traffic is now increasingly leading to entirely separate vehicular traffic from people, leading to a positive feedback loop of ignorance.

In Mumbai, little differentiates between pedestrians, motorcycles, cars, buses, lorries and cows; so long as one is off the sidewalk, one becomes one of any multiple forms of animate street life.

It is an education to understand this powerful undifferentiation.

Australian streets makes pedestrians king, and in Amsterdam, cyclists are prioritised over pedestrians. If an accident happens on a street in rural Indonesia, the larger vehicle is always ruled to be in the wrong. So, what indeed makes a functional Malaysian street? Is it a question we have never bothered asking because we inevitably cut-pasted it all from someplace else?

I would like to believe we are more intelligent than that, but as with the — continued on page 18

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We often forget that buildings should not mean anything on their own in an urban environment. Or even in the suburban or rural environment.

Because buildings, most so in an urban environment, create the room of the street, and interface with their context, before they could ever possibly stand apart as statements of iconic form. And the room of the street is one of the single most important things one could ever understand because one doesn’t design a building for its own sake, the design of urban buildings and structures firstly creates the walls of the room that becomes the room of the street. In relation to your question, the street is about everything that happens within its room. And the walls of that room are vital only in as far as it serves the street before it serves itself.

many fresh and powerful relationships between human beings as is possible.

Under scrutiny: Pivot Window

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Full window dimensions

The pivot window was designed for a wall-sized opening facing prevailing winds to maximise the effects of cross-ventilation by day, while providing a measure of security at night — it pivots on its own weight, requiring the light use of a circular steel armature for control, with fixed glass panes above and operable aluminium louvres below for when the window pivots shut. The additional circular brass armature and lever arm are geared to a horizontal rod that actuates two latching bolts mid-span to secure the window when closed.

A steel wheel for window swing control and a brass wheel and arm for latching security

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Full room section

Gearing sketch

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Brass and steel wheels in context

stupidity of the current blue bike lanes on KL streets, cut-pasted from Europe with absolutely no regard for how they would be applied in our city, both conceptually and in detail, my belief appears to be unfounded.

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In New York, because of how dense it is, the streets start where the building face ends. The moment you walk out of a building entrance, you’re on the street.

Of course there’s a sidewalk, but there is very small difference of level between the sidewalk and the street so that cars and trucks can drive up and park on them. This is because all the servicing of buildings downtown, all that loading and unloading, is part of sidewalk activity that opens up to service doors and stairs underneath, leading to basements.

So there’s no separation between commercial vehicles and private vehicles?

There may well be, but it may be nothing more than a line on the ground, or a rule that can be broken under appropriate circumstances. In Los Angeles, where there is so much more space, everything is a lot more wide open, and a line on the ground makes a difference between life and death. In New York, it’s the wall that does that.

Even within the same country, you’ve got the sort of specificity of context which makes tremendous difference to how one engages the environment of a street. In Malaysia, where everything is so much tighter, we have barely enough room for the car. And, unlike Singapore, which has got a very intricate reticulation of drainage canals, separate from roads, with verges that can receive an entire new infrastructure of bicycles

lanes. Completely separate from the roads, until they come to cross junctions.

Then you’ve got traffic lights and then you’re OK. In Malaysia, we have basically robbed the primary everyday users of our streets.

Motorcyclists, car users, even the cyclists themselves — migrant workers who are the main form of cyclists on Malaysian roads. We have robbed them by painting a blue band that only bicycles can ride on.

I’ve cycled in urban centres around the world. Amsterdam, Portland, Copenhagen, the most comfortable bicycle-friendly cities, and some of the worst traffic in the world — New York and Boston. The roads in KL used to be incredibly safe for a cyclist, provided one is not a clueless joyrider, and if one has been street cycling one’s whole life. Because when you’ve cycled your whole life, you don’t joyride with other cyclists, you cycle alone and you’re constantly paying attention to what’s happening in your environment. You’re not looking around at buildings and sightseeing while you play follow the leader. You were completely attuned to your environment and Malaysia was safe before. I say this because I could communicate with fellow motorists, and could find my little way out through it all. It didn’t matter where I was on the road, so long as I communicated with other road users, because there was no bicycle lane. If anyone stopped in traffic and is in the way, I’ll cycle around their vehicle, waving to them as I passed by.

I only ever got honked on maximum three times in the 25–30 years I’ve been living in Malaysia, and in those

attuned to paying careful attention to the environment of their streets.

They know the moment they take two wheels out on the street, they are taking their lives into their own hands, and they do not take that lightly. They use their streets more for commuting and necessity than for joyriding, and when they do ride for leisure, it is with strong respect for the street.

You can’t apply the same thing that works in countries like Denmark and the Netherlands to Malaysia, because people have been riding the bicycle in those countries since they were children. They’ve already grown up

So sure, cyclists say “You cars, you’ve got to stop driving” and you go, “Wait a minute. Why don’t you start by sharing the road first before you start asserting your First World-inspired right to your bicycle? Why don’t you learn how to ride your bicycle first?”.

Ride it safely and responsibly before you assert your right to painting a blue line, disenfranchising other road users, of what was originally created for them in our country. Because those roads that leisure cyclists were so happy to put blue paint on were not designed or originally dimensioned for cyclists.

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two times I was honked at, it was my fault — I was very errant and careless during those occasions with my riding.

On no other occasion have I ever been honked at, and cars have even braked for me with no impatience, whenever I communicated my intentions, through a transactional means of engaging traffic which is such a powerful thing. And one does this as an experienced cyclist. This lovely, transactional way of riding in KL no longer exists, because the blue bike lanes have given motorists so much grief in robbing them of what little street space they had, they rarely ever yield for a cyclist any longer — the goodwill has all but disappeared.

In Malaysia, we do not have this culture.

But instead of focusing on education, which is the single most important thing in any field, we just gave Malaysian joyriders unresearched and badly applied infrastructure. The blue lanes are really nothing more than a superhero outfit to have cars watch out for cyclists instead of cyclists watching out for themselves.

That’s wrong. Ever since the blue lanes have come into place, I have found riding twice as dangerous because motorists look at me as a perpetrator now. They don’t give me way anymore. I’ve invaded their space because of the blue bicycle lane, that superhero outfit, has taken from them what little they had.

Should the form of things dictate the user’s behaviour, or should the user’s behaviour dictate the form of things?

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It’s a combination of things. Of course, you can’t progress if you just let bad habits prevail. But you can’t entirely overturn it with a cut-and-paste idea from the West. It’s unintelligent. So what you see here in Bangsar are these ridiculous fences we have on the sidewalk edges to stop cars from parking on the sidewalk. Look, most of these sidewalks aren’t even used by groups of pedestrians anyway. All one really needs are the dimensions of a five foot way for them to pass. What’s the problem with a car being half on the road, and half on the sidewalk if there’s sufficient room for pedestrians and other road users to proceed unhindered?

And the craziest thing about this, is that these things are even more dangerous to cyclists and pedestrians.

I can’t cross the road safely anymore because the fencing is in the way. And if I’m riding a bike, and the car gets too close, I can’t use the sidewalk to leap off to as a safety net in case an accident is imminent, since a continuous street fence is in the way from my protection of the sidewalk. It’s crazy.

These little experiments on the public realm that have started in Bangsar have spread to other parts of KL because Bangsar is being used as a testbed for unprofessional ideas supported by Think City and DBKL (Kuala Lumpur City Hall) because of the powerful influence that Mr. Ng Sek San wields in both places as a technical advisor to Think City. But no one is seeing this because

he hides behind the façades of the organisations that fetishise and protect him. It is basically the same relationship Jho Low had with 1MDB. So you see, it all ties together, this Malaysian, this rakyat mentality. You can change a government a million times but if the people stay the same, nothing bloody changes. I’m sorry, I’m just so angry about what’s happening in Malaysia. We didn’t sound our voices in the last election. We just allowed a more corrupt old man to shout louder than the existing corrupt ones who stole slightly less money than he did, possibly because they were in power for less time. And the people are only now beginning to understand what that means. Opposition sold out the rakyat, the same way the leaders in every field in our country are selling out the people in their same fields. I can’t push blanket critique on every single field because

I might not know them well enough, but I know what’s wrong in relation to politics, and I for sure know what’s wrong with our creative industry.

What is your personal prediction of the future of human life?

If this is indeed true, it will mean that we, arguably the most virulent species ever to inhabit the Earth, will be finally eliminated. Now, is that good or bad? From the tradition of Abrahamic religions, it is a bad thing, because since the beginning of its time, these

We are a virus. And it’s our ability to be self-conscious [that has] enabled this to happen. To look at ourselves as objects, to think of ourselves as separate. So my hope... I don’t want to talk about my prediction because I don’t care much about predictions... my hope is that this is not true. That we can still be part of this amazing circle of life that our children, not mine per se because I don’t have any, but that our children can grow to understand they’re part of, and not one that gets rules over.

Never mind architecture, never mind design. If I care that we do not become extinct, it would not be because the perpetuation of the human species is so blindly important, but because I would not want anything that is part of the circle of life and its amazing diversity to become extinct.

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This is a difficult one. At the risk of sounding very bleak, there’s a German filmmaker by the name of Werner Herzog, who makes Hollywood blockbusters as well as he makes some remarkable documentaries. He’s made this amazing one about the cave paintings of the Chauvet Cave in France, called Cave of Forgotten Dreams. That’s a lovely one to watch. He’s also made a documentary ten or more years ago called Encounters at the End of the World.

I believe it was funded by the National Science Foundation, who withdrew their grant when Mr. Herzog came back with what was finally released. Basically, what Mr. Herzog discovered was that most scientists in the McMurdo Station in Antarctica do not believe that the planet will be able to sustain human life over the next 50 years — that we’ve gone past the tipping point. It doesn’t mean that the planet will be uninhabitable, as other forms of life will still thrive on as the Earth tumbles its merry way around the sun, healing itself. It just means that it will be uninhabitable for human life.

That’s how badly we’ve treated our planet.

religions have made the human species the centre of its universe. This is wrong and it’s false. In the most important cultures in the world, the Hopi Indians, Buddhism to a certain degree... the ones that existed when Sanskrit was born — we’re only visitors to this planet.

We’re only part of the entire system that life is about. Close to three million years before we came into the scene, Yuval Noah Harari tells us in his book Sapiens, there were five other human species that existed — Homo erectus, Homo neanderthalensis, the others escape my memory. It is possible there were more than just five. Within one thousand years of our showing up, we basically pushed them into extinction.

We then proceeded to eliminate 95% of the world’s flora and fauna. So what we have now as our lovely planet is a vague skeleton of what used to be.

The world in turmoil.

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In the West, there is a shift towards nationalistic ideals in places where the local population is faced with a sudden influx on migrants. Where does the East stand in this conundrum?

How do I see that? That’s a tough one, isn’t it? Because for the longest time, we [Easterners] are the ones who were doing all the migrating, so I guess we’ve always seen that as a positive thing. But let’s first talk about why it’s happening in the West. Why is this increase in nationalism and conservative right-wing thinking happening? It’s because of this virulent form of liberal neoclassical thinking by the liberal left, only because it’s so politically correct as a brand, and not because it has actually been reasoned through relevantly. This huge rise in liberal everything, every single liberal ‘ism’ is what’s causing viral and negative nationalism to be on the rise; liberal capitalism, neo-socialism, social commercialisation... anything connected

with the pseudo-liberal left is behind much of what’s causing this.

And the liberal left that Hillary Clinton is so entrenched in, is exactly the problem.

Little to nothing separates her from Donald Trump — the big difference is that Donald Trump is the monster you see, the bastard you can criticise. He cannot hide the creature he is. Not so for those belonging to the liberal left, because they hide the truth of their existence, like Hillary Clinton does, behind all that protocol and platitudes, while the sordid dealings and business of politics goes about each day in the same good ol’ way.

If you ask me, Donald Trump is the best thing that could have happened to the United States as a reflection to everything their collective beliefs already represent. Except that the Americans have not seen it as this wonderful opportunity to critique

The fact is that the East, as an ethos, hasn’t a clue what it’s about — just about everything the East has beliefs about is either in opposition to or in endorsement of, what the hip liberal West propagates as ‘correct’ i.e. the East responds by way of reaction to the West, rather than through any deeper introspection regarding critical issues.

With that said and done, liberally entitled thinking, this fifth column of sensibilities rather than of physical presence, is rapidly taking over popular culture in the East, in Malaysia especially. You’ve got more brands here than anything else. You’ve got bicycles for refugees, cafés for Rohingyas, you’ve got all these commercial entities that pretend to be about social business and we’ve seen how all of these end, haven’t we?

I hate to sound racist but because I am myself predominantly Chinese [by origin], I don’t feel the guilt — I worry for China because the Chinese mind is mostly about money and brand.

How can they see through the likes of Elon Musk and Steve Jobs? It’s tough.

I hope they can but they’ve got their own compromised little Jack Ma-styled businessmen. How are they going to see past these businessmen to the deeper truth of what they do is a tough one.

I really don’t know.

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themselves in their demonisation of him, rather than understanding what he represents as the embodiment of everything wrong in the country. But the demon isn’t Donald Trump. It’s in each one of the influential and empowered liberals and compromised conservatives who belong to the American regime of entitlement. It’s disturbing, and it’s incredibly frightening that they’re not seeing this as the deeper enemy they have to guard against.

My only concern is less about Malaysia or Singapore, because our populations aren’t big enough to make that great a difference. It’s countries like China, and regions with the biggest populations in the world, that hope stays strong they learn quick enough to make a difference because above all, China is the only country in the world that doesn’t have the luxury to make the same mistakes everyone else of us did.

Because any mistake they make is multiplied a thousand-fold and the world pays for that mistake. They, unfortunately, do not have the burden of not making any mistakes because it will mean the end of our global village. I hope they see quick enough, but will they?

Would that need another cultural revolution?

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Yes and no. Cultural revolutions, in terms of China, are associated with bloodshed and I rather not have bloodshed, but who knows? I don’t know if it’s a revolution that has to do with culture. I think it’s a revolution of our individual minds. Because the mother of all revolutions, the French Revolution, didn’t change a single bloody thing.

We think we did, but it only had us substitute royal empowerment for economic empowerment. And then creativity came along, so we threw out blood privilege and money privilege, for the privilege of passion and creativity — creative empowerment. We just conveniently forget they all share the same filthy, dark parent — entitlement.

It’s about the arrogance of forcing whatever visions of personal beauty a ‘creative’ has, over a community of people. It’s wrong, regardless of where it comes from. Blood, family ties, money, or passion — one simply cannot use any of those as a reason for the exercise of reputation over responsibility. We put effort, work, and study those individual lives in places that we want to change before we suggest any marginal change even. But we don’t care about that because we are so bubbling to make ‘change’. We don’t want to change ourselves, we just want to change everything around us. What rubbish.

In an era where information about other cultures are easily accessible, why do you think humans seem to intentionally not want to be informed?

Because it’s too difficult to think. And, we want to be liked, to be appreciated

and respected. This complicates engaging deeper thought about issues, since all sorts of conflicts then crop up in relation to who we are, what we have done and are doing, in opposition to what responsibility actually asks of us. This is the reason why we avoid being informed, being educated in a deeper way. It involves the classic internal conflict each of us has between reputation and responsibility.

Our reputation is important, but how much more often do we usually serve it before responsibility? Most known creatives behave no differently from Damien Hirst or Ai Wei Wei — businessmen artists who claim their art brings awareness to the issues of the human condition, when the truth is how they use the horrors of the human condition to bring global attention to their art. The posturing and pretense of creative ‘brand’ is part of a global

paradigm that requires considerably greater discourse and critique.

Manuel Cervantes of Mexico made mention to me of the new rexkl that was recently curated for the Malaysian annual architectural conference, which he remarked was mundane and boring as every other creative centre he had seen across the Americas and Europe — except that they had already burned through it all ten years ago. Without being prompted, he mentioned having similar reaction to the Kebun-Kebun Bangsar project that was presented at the architectural conference as well.

The fact is, all the ‘creative’ ventures currently seen in Penang, Ipoh, the Klang Valley, and Bangsar in particular, are not creative in the least, being merely trendy and copied from other countries.

Everything we are ‘creating’ has been

A huge part of intentioned ignorance comes from a lack of critical reading ability, an issue that plagues our country, as Malaysia has never been known for its culture of reading. Reading, widely and with purpose and question, is the single most important thing towards developing the critical thinking necessary for critical discourse and of being informed — it is something terribly lacking in Malaysia. Look at Taiwan as an example, with their 24-hour libraries!

You’ll only ever find one copy of any one title on the shelf because they’ve got more varieties of titles than shelf space; all the additional ones are in storage.

The most important libraries or bookshops in KL shelf ten copies of the same bloody title at any one time, usually because we read so little and with such limited variety of subject matter, drama and mystery predominantly, that our shelves get used as storage for multiple copies of the same titles. No one wants to read and understand deeper issues of politics, science, critical history, or philosophy, as we are too busy reading exchanges, viral soundbites, and banal posts on Facebook as juicy gossip. But for the few Malaysians who do read, absorb and yearn for more, most others are either too afraid to challenge their preconceptions, or protective of their reputations to accept the truth of being informed.

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Creative branding has engulfed the masses in such pervasive and yet subtle way that few realise or understand the depth of its influence over us – in Malaysia, we are playing so hard to the tune of trends that we cannot conceive of it all being the already tried and done with. From ‘community’ gardens, pocket parks, ‘maker’ culture, ‘bicycle’ lanes, urban playgrounds, and the ubiquitous ‘shared’ public domain; to our localised Malaysian appropriated equivalents of kebun-kebuns, private art galleries, creative hubs and hip neighbourhoods — nothing changes from there to here, in our adoption of everything hip from the developed world. Our sad attempts to cut–paste everything we believe is politically correct is reflective of our insecure need for assurance.

tried and tested in the iconised West, regurgitated and brought back for local consumption usually with a hip Bahasa Melayu twist for a name, then marketed, monetised and given ‘creative’ brand by businessmen believing themselves to be creative. And we buy into it all with a relish born of ignorance.

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"Free speech is about intelligent discussion and one’s ability to say what is needed to be said, rationally and relevantly.”

Those who do read critically are mostly silent because they too are afraid, too measured to want to stir shit. Or they are too young to want to face the social backlash of non-conformity. The truth is that I am old, angry, and foolish enough, and have also established enough of a platform for myself to speak out without worry for my reputation.

I believe I have enough respect and standing in the ‘design’ community that sufficient people at least make an attempt to read what I write, and that’s the only reason why I’m getting away with my otherwise perceived incendiary posts. It’s because people read what I have to say and go “Wait a minute, he’s not just making wild, rude accusations that lack veracity”. I think they understand when they read the essays I post that I’m not just another stupid, ignorant troll on the Internet.

The problem is, there are just as many who believe that my criticisms are all personal in nature. But the question is, when does something personal becomes something that’s not? My attempts to stir critical discourse in relation to the ‘creative leaders’ of our field comes from the analogy that if corruption is rife in any country, one does not target the common street policemen, nor do you speak about corruption in a general way as an already known bad thing. None of that means or changes a damned thing because it is already known. Instead, one has to target the very leaders of that country, the very individuals who must be identified for all to be able to understand what and whom exactly is being referred to as being corrupt. One goes after influential individuals who have perpetrated those acts to such degree, as a direct example of what is wrong, and

not in vague definition of what corruption might constitute. One targets individuals like Jho Low and Najib. I’m doing the same for the field that I know best in Malaysia, for the specific individuals who are most responsible in our design field.

Do you believe in free speech and are there limits to it?

Free speech is about intelligent discussion and one’s ability to say what is needed to be said, rationally and relevantly. It’s about knowing one’s shit and sticking to the shit that’s being discussed. It is not about suddenly or constantly changing the subject matter under discussion simply because one is unable or afraid to answer what has been brought up as a case in point.

Many Malaysians are very good at avoiding both accusations and confrontations. And, they avoid rather than confront and rationally debate issues because of the fear of intelligently acknowledging accusations, or they’re not able to explain their reasons in doing what they have done,

Social media is behind powerful movements like Extinction Rebellion, #MeToo, #UndiRabu etc.

What kind of online activism do you find useful, and which of them are harmful?

I think generally speaking, most forms of it is harmful because it’s open for everyone to use, and that means that the lowest common denominator will have access to it, that will commonly result in its abuse. I think it is most positively used when one does not just merely engage soundbites that incite and generate viral opinion over critical introspection of issues. If a blurb is used, it has to be relevant and completely in keeping with the context of the whole discussion, rather than something that merely narrows focus to something that was previously said, in isolation of the entire specific context of the discussion.

Most soundbites do not respond contextually. Viral opinion is created through the isolation of relevance in relation to reply — when one’s understanding of context is intentionally ignored in the process of reply.

I think many people who are trying to make a difference have been accused of many things on the Internet. There’s a very interesting man, I’m not sure what he’s up to right now but he is a professor of clinical psychology — sorry, he was a professor of clinical psychology at the University of Toronto...

Jordan Peterson!

Of course, Jordan Peterson. He’s being criticised by many as a viral

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I believe in free speech. What I do not believe in are vulgar insults, as in not calling someone else a ‘dick’. One does not resort to vulgarity. Free speech is not about having the right to merely say whatever one likes. People have perverted its meaning. It’s about saying things with reasons and follow through from what has previously been said as part of constructive rational conversation that others can then logically understand and debate on. A lot of what gets said on the Internet does not represent free speech, but the ability to influence the general public with subtle lies.

or they fear for the loss of their shallow but precious reputations.

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“Balance is not something to be restored, found, or attained — it is a constant state of delightful struggle to be continually achieving.�

right-winger. However, [based on] his early lectures and interviews, he is not. He was merely tired of the twisted logic regarding proponents of the pseudo-liberal left, and firm about getting naysayers to rationally support their viewpoints which most could not. His arguments on the Internet are incredibly powerful, his earlier interviews. His later ones, it feels like he’s become less relevant and more arrogant because perhaps fame has gotten to him. That bothers me quite a bit, as I have tremendous respect for the way he thinks and how he conducts his arguments.

privacy get abused? When white-collar liars, businessmen posturing as artists or designers, or politician criminals find refuge in it. Nothing in extreme is a right.

He’s changed his image as well.

It does seem so, and that troubles me. His early YouTube videos show a wonderful way of engagement and a solid, positive voice of learning. The unfortunate bit is that many viral rightwingers are twisting his arguments to their advantage, which is wrong. Many disenfranchised right wing young men are using it in the wrong way. The Internet can be twisted in many ways and the only way around it is when people read books of critical worth more regularly and with more focus, to separate truth from conjecture.

Yes and no. Access to energy should be a human right in many ways, but how much energy does one really need? A lot of what we have is in excess of what we actually need. So it’s a human want, isn’t it? If you were to reduce things to needs, we need very, very little.

The human race has gotten almost everything we’ve ever wanted over the last generations. We’ve forgotten to ask a single question about what we really need. This is the problem. And we haven’t yet organised a global event that engages critical discourse regarding human needs. This is frightening beyond belief.

After food, shelter, and clothing, what’s an essential human need, or right? Some say the Internet is a human right. Some say privacy is a human right.

The world will always be imbalanced. As private individuals, do we have an obligation to somehow restore the balance? Or do we let nature take its course?

Privacy is a human right, unless it’s abused, too. The Internet can be a right; I don’t know if it’s a human right.

In some cases, it has been twisted to serve inhumane wrongs. When does

Balance is an interesting thing. I love it when people come to me and you’re talking with them and you ask them how their lives are and they go, “I’m coming close to finding my balance” or “I’m

Food, health, housing, education, however, these are basic human rights.

Not even energy, because energy is something one can generate oneself, through the eating of food. One may not have the money to afford an electrician, but one can learn how to work one’s own household electricity.

How about access to natural resources as a human right?

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living a balanced life right now”. It’s the most silly thing to hear because... when you’re living a life worth living, you’re in a constant fight for balance.

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Any life worth living means you’re on that tightrope, living a life with passion, doing something you’ve never done before. It is scary beyond belief and you’re constantly fighting to stay on that tightrope — one is only balanced when one is in that fight for balance. If you’ve found your balance, you’ve probably fallen off that damn thing and you’re dead, or walking on a safe sidewalk with absolutely nothing to worry about because that sidewalk is a comfort zone of safety. And that’s not a life worth living, I feel. If one is going to walk a tightrope of passion, of what is worth living, a life of ideas, then one will always be in constantly fighting for that balance. Balance is not something to be restored, found, or attained — it is a constant state of delightful struggle to be continually achieving.

As private individuals, I feel we each have that duty to challenge that want for comfort, that want of knowing where we are headed, the security and confidence that comes from having a pre-knowledge of outcome. Allowing nature to run its course spontaneously suggests a faith of sorts, and offers excuse for not doing everything or anything we can to change ourselves in struggle for balance. This does not represent the best we can do.

From your passionate essays and exchanges regarding the architecture community and beyond, you seem to have a lot of things you are against. But what are the things you are for?

I find it terribly silly to discuss what those things or issues are, that we are for, because those will inevitably be things or issues that already have more support than they could possibly need — they are less about values of critical worth than they are representative of the painfully obvious. Issues such as inclusivity, universal design, maker culture, technological or programmatic innovation — it’s terribly tiring to keep being drummed with the same continuously repeated things of what people are for. We have heard it a dozen times over already.

Instead of the constant banging on regarding the creation of awareness of issues or things everyone is already aware of, I am more concerned about critique of these existing paradigms we have appropriated from the developed world, as many, if not most of them, fail to address the details of their development in passing of generalised concepts as global solutions for the adoption by all. And, it is very important to understand that being critical of something is not the same thing as being negative about that thing — it is, in fact, the single most positive thing one could ever do for the creation of deeper awareness.

So, let’s first discuss what we are against, in analysis of the failure of the majority of the paradigms that surround us as blind, collective belief, before any further discussion of how well new paradigms work. As with the globally misunderstood notion of what design actually is, or entails, let’s first discuss what cleanliness means before talking about what brand of toilet paper is best to use.

Any plans to write another book?

Most people don’t look at books on architecture this way. Architectural books are mostly picture books, coffee table books, and extended brochures of the way projects look, not how they are processed, and I wanted to change that paradigm. I wanted to change the paradigm of architects hiring specialists to record, curate and brand their work in the form of a ‘book’. I wanted to write a book that could be read, and not merely looked at, as a work in itself, and not merely something that served as a book about work.

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God, I’ve been asked so many times.

The problem with writing a book, is that the moment you know it’s going be a book, the moment you know exactly where it’s headed, it’s almost impossible to write it. The adventure basically ends when one ceases to explore the possibilities of the unexpected. The first book I wrote came about by default, as it wasn’t even meant to be a book. It started as a series of essays intended for my students and young architects starting out to help them understand that all of us go through exactly the same struggles. Vicente Díaz Faixat from Gijon saw something I had built, and sent me an email to say that I should put together a collection of projects of the work I had completed, and it was then that I realised what I started writing as essays actually worked better as an appendix to what could be a book — one that would describe a journey applicable to any architect’s life, since everyone goes through very similar problems, albeit in very different contexts.

Regarding this next book, Thames & Hudson has been after me now for almost eight years to get something started. And I just haven’t had the heart, the impetus to want to do it because I already sort of know what it’s going be about. The writing of a book is an adventure, not an epitaph, and when the knowledge of what a book is going to be or become is defined in outcome before the writing has even started, it becomes an impossible task for me to engage honestly. It is not an easy thing knowing how to begin under such circumstances.

I know I will get there at some point, as there are some very important thoughts and ideas on design and teaching that I need to put down in writing, but for now, the struggle to hide the ending from myself continues. [b]

Write to Kevin at lsd.sps@gmail.com and view his works at www.small-projects.com

We live in a world where people who make money and brand for themselves are iconised over those who make an actual difference.

Agitator a browser special issue

July 2019 Writer, art director Liyana Photographers Jun Kit, Liyana, Kevin Mark Low Liyana.Aina@gmail.com instagram.com/pfrsch PayPal.me/LiyanaAina #BrowserMagazine Special thanks to Rebecca Chew.