Building Like A Bee

New Straits Times - Property Times 4 June 2005 issue -

Building like a bee G. Umakanthan

Can something six hundred years old find meaning in today’s modern civilisation? More pertinently, can it have the power to positively influence the way we live? Mazlin Ghazali seems to think so. In fact, this Cardiff-trained architect has harboured this conviction for so long that he practically lives and breathes it. “It”, in this case, is a 15th Century Islamic architectural pattern involving tessellation. Since he started practising his vocation in 1984, Mazlin has been looking at ways to adapt the art concept into township planning as he feels it is the answer to conventional terrace housing layouts, which he describes as “boring and unsafe”. And now, 21 years later, his passion has paid off - his concept for a more efficient form of living won the Gold Award at the 16th International Invention, Innovation, Industrial Design and Technology Exhibition held in Kuala Lumpur from May 19 to 21, while the Korean Invention Promotions Association presented him with the “Most Commercialisable Invention” award at the same exhibition. Mazlin says terrace housing has long been considered the densest form of property development and in Malaysia it has become the stereotyped form to accommodate the masses, with the exception of box-likehighrise flats. However, what bothered him was that if this style is so efficient, why doesn’t it exist in nature? “I believe man must live in harmony with Mother Nature and there are only so many shapes and forms that can coexist with nature,” he says. That’s where tessellation - the method of repeating patterns so that there is no overlap and no gaps comes into the picture. Akin to the laying of tiles, Mazlin, who is regarded as an authority on social housing, says it also describes the honeycomb pattern used in beehives and which was the basis for his Honeycomb System of Housing. “In honeycomb housing, the tessellation method of planning allows all houses to be built around small parks with large shade trees in hexagonal cul-de-sacs,” he explains. “These can be efficiently interlocked to form townships that, if seen from the sky, resembles the bees’ honeycomb.” It was this concept that won him the two awards recently. Mazlin says artists and craftsmen have for centuries been using tessellation as a tool to create visual effects on surfaces, with tiling being the most common product. Muslim craftsmen in 15th century Spain created beautifully complex visual effects by tessellating a small, simple tile pattern, from which intricate and complex patterns were built up. In honeycomb housing, Mazlin says, the creative power of tessellation is not merely decorative but representative of functional space. Here, a small triangular tile that he calls the “mother tile” is the basicbuilding block to create a layout that can contain three requisite elements of a township plan, which Mazlin colour codes as yellow for roads; red for houses and gardens; and green for public green areas and parks. These coloured segments are called “daughter tiles”. Mazlin says, “the mother tile, and close variations of it, tessellate according to simple rules to form

what appears to be a complex and intricate pattern. Daughter tiles meet and link up with similar ones in adjoining tiles. “Daughter tiles of the same colour form conjoined tiles. It is the complex shape of these interlocking daughter tiles that we perceive, rather than the simplicity of the triangular grid.” Conjoined house and garden tiles form the basis of new house types. Linked honeycomb houses are ideally joined back-to-back and are accessed through different cul-de-sacs, as is the case with the duplex and triplex layout plans that Mazlin has patterned out. However, the houses can also be linked side-by-side, as in the case of the quadruplex and sextuplex designs. Courtyard neighbourhoods A “courtyard neighbourhood tile”, containing the elements necessary to form a small community, is created by tessellating the mother tiles to form a hexagon. Communal space is in the middle, surrounded by the houses. An access road runs by each unit, on the perimeter of its courtyard space, to form an efficient circulation system. This design allows for the creation of a spatial boundary - a central area that can become the communal focus: There is a sense of entry into the space, and there is a clear, common perception of the neighbourhood. To create a bigger neighbourhood out of this, the courtyard neighbourhood tile is tessellated. This causes the roads to be linked, creating cul-de-sac neighbourhoods without any loss of efficiency in land use. Dwelling units can be linked into multi-unit blocks along the tile boundaries. Joining many courtyard and cul-de-sac neighbourhood tiles on a real site, Mazlin says, is simple and efficient. “This results in more liveable space and helps build better relationships between people, people and cars and people and their environment.” Safe and secure Since houses are built around a small park with plentiful shady trees, this communal garden is easily accessible to all in the cul-de-sac, allowing it to act as a social focus to promote small, friendly neighbourhoods. It is a defensible space as well, as it acts naturally to reduce crime in the sense that strangers are quickly spotted. The short winding roads put a stop to speeding traffic, and certainly dissuade snatch thieves on motorcycles - therefore becoming safe for children and pedestrians as well. The network of roads in honeycomb housing consists of looping cul-de-sacs and short connecting roads leading to distributor roads. This pattern slows traffic down naturally, while the short, connecting roads with no access to the houses provide space for visitors to park. It is very easy to get lost when looking for a house in a typical Malaysian township. Petaling Jaya is a fine example: Make one wrong turn and you will easily compound this mistake with other mistakes, taking you further and further away from where you want to go. The road system in the tessellation method allows people to navigate the streets without any worry of getting lost. For example, in a 100-acre site, the main access road can be 66ft-wide linked to smaller 50ft-wide distribution roads. The houses are accessed from cul-de-sacs in a hierarchical fashion with each culde-sac related by name or number to the distribution road it is linked to. “The fact that smaller roads do not connect to other small roads means that if you make a wrong turn

into one of them, you will have to go out the way you came in. Miss a turn on a circular road and it just means going around until you come back to the junction you need to turn into,” he says. Mazlin also views outdoor spaces between buildings as important areas for social contact and spontaneous interaction as they develop a sense of community. “The central courtyard becomes the social focus of the neighbourhood and is easily accessible to all to enjoy. Sociologists find that individuals relate better to small groups than large ones,” Mazlin points out. A typical honeycomb housing neighbourhood can contain anything between five and 40 housing units that are defined clearly by single access roads and communal courtyards. In such a neighbourhood, he says it becomes easy for people to get to know one another by sight, to get acquainted and to set up informal social groups to initiate collective action. So, what future does this award-winning housing concept have in Malaysia, the land of its inventor? Mazlin and his fellow collaborator in social housing research, Mohd Peter Davis, who is a visiting scientist with the Institute of Advanced Technology at Universiti Putra Malaysia in Serdang, Selangor, are confident it will be accepted, gradually. “The trouble with people here is that they are so engrossed in their blinkered views. This is a homegrown concept that can be used anywhere in the world, so it makes sense if Malaysians embrace it whole-heartedly,” Mohd Peter says. Mazlin has discussed the concept with many developers in the peninsula who are happy with it, but they fear adopting the plan because they have doubts about obtaining approvals from the housing authorities as well as the local authorities. “The concept is new, so they are reluctant to take it up,” he says. Nevertheless, Malaysians will still get to see his concept, though in a highrise version. Construction has started on apartments that will serve as Universiti Industri Selangor’s student hostels in Shah Alam 2. Another positive development is the endorsement given to honeycomb housing by the Sarawak Ministry of Housing, which is encouraging developers in the State to adopt the system for new housing projects. - Property Times 4 June 2005 issue -