You are the Principle of MAKK Architects, where you run a one-woman show. How do you successfully juggle all the necessary balls simultaneously?

I am pretty much a one-woman show but I do work with a group of trusted technical officers that act as my second and third pair of eyes to check on all authorities-related matters. It is the same as when I was working with larger corporations and practices. The QP will always need their good, trusted team of technical people to assist on such matters. This frees me up from dealing with a lot of the nitty gritty of regulation compliance, leaving me more time to focus entirely on designing and experimenting. 

Up till today, I still insist on doing my own tender and construction drawings. I feel strongly that detailing everything and preparing them are, for me, literally building the architectural project, except on paper. I would go down to the smallest details and work out all the scopes and sequences, before capturing them in the appropriate drawing types. This allows me to identify critical dimensions and issues that may arise on site. 

I would usually comb through the construction process with multiple scenarios to suss out the most cost-effective and efficient solutions that will minimise future maintenance problems. A good amount of time is usually set aside for this, so when the project goes on site, it will have little or no changes. This cuts down on the variation orders during the construction process. As such, I will then have time to focus on the subsequent demands of overseeing the finishings. 

In not subscribing to a particular style or signature form, your projects are wildly different from each other. How do you come up with their concepts? 

I personally find it hard to repeat similar concepts, regardless of whether it is architecture or something else. It drives me nuts. So, to avoid this, I gravitate to viewing each project as a fresh, clean slate. This offers an opportunity to investigate whatever it is that I am preoccupied with at that point in time. To push this, I usually draw from my clients’ needs and the extent of their openness to accept anything unconventional in conceptualising the type of architectural spaces that they would appreciate and find refreshing. 

In my early days, while still searching for an architectural direction and angle of exploration, I found myself getting excited over the mere ability to play with interlocking volumes and creating a lot of visual and physical movements in spaces for their inhabitants. But, after a while, I got bored with the same species of spaces being replicated, where it was only the volumes that varied at the most. 

I therefore turned to borrowing species of spaces that belong in the public realm and scaled them proportionately to fit the domestic dimensions. For a while, that shed some light and new experiences in houses. Again, there was a limit to this before a project started to resemble the last one. So, to keep myself excited about the creative process, I have a penchant to search for new challenges, exploring something difficult to keep my energy up. I guess that is why each project differs wildly from another.

You also teach Architecture at the National University of Singapore. What are some recent academic developments in the practice that are exciting you?

I view the school as a place to push and test ideas that will become the norm in the next 10 years. So, to me, the school is like a laboratory to experiment with what reality finds hard, due to economic, technological and socio-cultural constraints. I run design studios and they will always have an angle in investigating something, while complying with the larger program requirements. I have always been a firm believer that everything in life operates on some kind of system. There is a “butterfly effect” of any action, so to speak. This belief runs deep in my exploration. 

Of late, I’m preoccupied with how new species of spaces can emerge from dynamic properties, like the wind, rain and sun – matter that we can feel, touch, smell and are all too familiar to everyone but remain dynamically formless. A slew of investigative questions then followed: how do you catch the wind and what do you do after you have found a way to catch it, etc. This mode of thinking sets up a series of architectural operations to break the all-too-familiar box of the 20th century. 

It is not shape-making that I am interested in but the possibility of unfamiliar forms and spaces emerging from basic needs to harness and birth certain emotive design systems. The outcome from this would be what it is, emerging from a need to perform and the architect will have to work on from this. Honestly, it is very hard. But I always tell my students, what is the point of investigation if it was not difficult.

Which three designers, from the past or present, do you most admire? Why?

1. Kisho Kurokawa: Without knowing anything about Metabolist Architecture in my early years at architecture school, I was naturally drawn to its idea of growth and change. Kurokawa was my  influence then. To think that the conception of architecture could be a living thing with a designed life of its own got me excited. I remember my first distant encounter with Kurokawa through an article in the newspaper on the idea of capsule living, sometime in the 1990s, while still a student. It intrigued me, leaving me pondering on the push factors that had made the Japanese readily accept such a manner of living as a norm. It struck a chord with me that it is a seed to a larger city’s social-cultural system. I was so intrigued that I had to make a trip to experience it myself. That is when I fell head over heels in love with Japan.

2. Herzog & de Meuron (HDM): The first project that drew me to HDM was the Signal Box, then the Beijing National Stadium a.k.a the “Bird’s Nest”, and, subsequently, a list of very different projects. Each is strikingly different because there is neither repetition of one formula nor a cookie cutter mould. I admire their penchant for breaking building typologies and doing this very intelligently, yielding new forms by melding architecture, structure, function and building aesthetics as one. My belief is that design architects must know structure well enough to integrate space formation with a designed structural system, combined with the exposure to and knowledge of the latest available technology. HDM, to me, is a master in doing this. Architecture, for them, is seldom a mere decorative skin wrapped around a “domino house” (with a post-and-beam system). Even when they do one, like the Signal Box, they do so very intelligently, by harnessing the wrap as a Faraday cage.

3. Kenya Hara: I encountered Kenya Hara through his books Designing Design then Ex-formation. From him, I learnt that design thinking and thought processes stem from the same thread. Only the outcome differs. The idea of investigating emotions and, in turn, translating them into physical objects resonates well with me. I could FEEL the pain, the happiness, the amusement, etc. that the designer set out to communicate in the objects. That is what design is supposed to do. Its key communication is to evoke and provoke some relevant senses from its users and make some impact. They are not just muted functional objects, but objects with character, soul and idiosyncrasies. After all, design should always cause some form of emotive impact other than serving and fulfilling its functional aspects. This is why we need designers in the world.

What are your three favourite buildings in SE Asia?

I am a Metabolist at heart and tended to gravitate towards that kind of architecture language when I was a student. In retrospect, I suppose because it is all about some kind of system, usually connecting to larger systems, like a city. If I had to choose my favourite buildings within SE Asia, it would be DP Architects’ Golden Mile Complex because it stems from the idea of growing a city. 

The other two are by IM Pei. His Gateway is a favourite for how he created an ultra-modern view using ultra-flat edges, offering an amazing possibility to the urban scape. OCBC Centre still stands timeless with its “core and drawer” system. Every day, I see these three buildings and never get tired of them. Both Gateway and OCBC Centre are by the same architect but command a totally different language because the ideas behind them were different. I guess such architecture draws me to them.

Lee May Anne is the Principal of MAKK Architects.