DEGREE THESIS: PENANG CONFLUENEC CULTURAL COMMUNITY CENTRE

The Penang Confluence Cultural Community Center is designed for cultural enhancement for the local community. The whole composition intends to bring back the society and community closer again to the local culture and customs which seems to fade especially within the local youth. This center intends to form a community based cultural center in interest of youth for cultural regeneration, enhancement and education. The 4 acre piece of land is proposed to be served and surrendered back to the use of the local community. The confluence cultural community invites the 3 parties to flow together towards sustaining the local culture between the cultural artist, tourist and most importantly the local residence. The location of the site suits the need of the building as it sandwich in-between the town of Georgetown and the residential area, not only for the local Penang cultural coordination but also engage a collaborative atmosphere and opportunity to draw people together from both, the town and residential area.  

The town, a home to the many retaining culture is slowly losing its significant over time as people moving away from the area over many other developments. The center shall be a capitalism to bring back the community into the old town and revive the old city, drawing people back together, the way it used to be with multiple programs from leisure, recreational, entertainment up to education and research.  The cultures in Penang from the era of the ancient Kedah sultanate until today being declared as a UNESCO heritage site, is very vast in type but most of them shares the same nature as it all started from the street which is in a big influence over 500 years of trading and cultural exchanges. In the idea of bringing back the culture, the building emphasizes on the nature of Penang culture, the ‘street culture’.

The whole forming of the building is kept simple to not over take the neighboring heritage shop houses but to rather compliment them. The building composition installs the character of the ‘street’ in to the architecture of the building by optimizing pedestrian connection and movement. For that purpose, building formation and special networking plays a significant role. The building form is designed to be ramping up to pull the vertical connection to the other floors. It also works as an open live exhibition to visitors as it displays the neighboring living heritage city as they walk up. With the extract of Penang old town, the center is designed with a wider pedestrian area and a central cultural plaza for open cultural activities, from weekend’s cultural trainings to school pupils, hawking, open performance, screening and etc. The overall design is to bond the community together in experiencing the vibrant local cultural activities, as a platform to motivate, enhance and inspire. 

the internal spatial design is composed to meets the elements of the culture. 

The cultural arena (the plaza) intend to bring back the photographic moment and the charm  of inner city of Georgetown, Penang with random hawkers on street, wide pavement for pedestrians and trishaw-like streets furniture.

The cultural game court

The traditional games used to be played as an entertainment during leisure times. Some of the games like 'galah panjang' used to be played below the 'on stilt house' as the house was raised. The stilts below the house was used as a part of the medium of the game. The design of the game court applies the elements of the game norms.