Being humble as he is, Kevin always concluded his long talk with such sentence, trying to avoid a one-sided, press conference vibe. but we ended up throwing another question to him anyway. This was the chance.
At glance, the public celebrates his oeuvre of beautiful tropical rustic buildings with fetish of details and tectonics. But beyond, Kevin Low is a very critical, rational, and straightforward architect. Learning from him, it was either an enlightenment or embarrassment—for the naivety of what i did as designer.
Kevin detested narcissistic architecture so much—that kind of building that instead of addressing the context, it chooses to stand out. After all, being "stand out" doesn't necessarily mean tacky facades. But only us, the designers ourselves should confess whether something is coming from our intention or actually what the context needs.
His good analogy was "here is the context, here is the problem, and the building that i designed is standing above the problem. "Look at me! I am the architecture!"
And astaghfirullah how many architecture were built that way. Hard to admit. We designed projects for months, realized them for years. why can't we show the little bit of "me" inside the design?
On the previous day, we met another Malaysian architect and we talked about Kevin Low too. "Oh He is too extreme, too critical" he complained jokingly. "But we need someone like him in the profession" he added.
Agreed. Kevin is SJW mentok max. Being critical is an enemy of many, after all. But we do need a person like him. Our conversation felt like chicken soup for the profession, to be digested for years.
#kevinlow has a good taste too. Restaurant Siu Siu was a killer.
Reminiscing #TWAMASYA to KL 2024