VISITOR INTERPRETIVE CENTER
From a leper colony to a home for convicted inmates, a visitor interpretive center was designed to bring light to the rich history and landscape of Jerejak island
Location: Jerejak Island, Penang, Malaysia
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Scale: 500 sqm
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Year: 2013
The main focus of this design studio is to explore the notion of spatial poetry through an architectural design. Precedent studies were conducted looking at how the five senses can be touched on through aspects such as circulation, light, color and so on. The site for the design project was an island off Penang, in Northern Malaysia. Jerejak Island is an island full of history and heritage - once acting as a place where prisoners were sent to do their time. Textures, sensations and experiences were recorded during the site visit and used to develop a design that was truly rich in poetry, yet functions as a visitor interpretive center.
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From site-visit findings, it was apparent that this island was somewhat misunderstood. If a visitor interpretation center was to be successfully implemented, it must have the innate ability to tell the story of the island through its architecture. It had to be experiential, rich in spatial quality but yet still provide space for the users to be pensive. My main idea was to create a journey for the users, starting from having to go down, under this looming mass of a building above them, to a place unknown - reminiscent of the convicts journey when they first came to the island many years ago. Starting from this darkness, they would walk upwards and onwards to the light, leading them to the end of the first block. This space is wide and provides a vista out to old detention camps and to the sea. They would then be taken down to the restaurant which provides a strikingly different view - of the rich untouched green mountains. The ultimate aim is to leave the users with a longing for more, and to leave them in a state of wonder - of what was, what is, and what could be.
Revival of the landscape and its history to evoke the visitors’ sense of awareness of the careless treatment imposed on the island and develop a sense of appreciation.
To summarize my findings on the island, I found that the experiences could be categorized into being hard or soft. This applied for both the island’s landscape as well as its socio-cultural history. There were certain things which overlapped. Being an island means that it is physically isolated and historically the island was used to isolate a group of people from society. They were also both carelessly treated, with the land being torn apart for new developments and the historical buildings being abandoned and forgotten.
This formed the basis of what drove my design.
"What is left should be preserved and maintained."
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- Choong Kwee Kim
The brief for this design project was to create a visitor interpretive center for Jerejak Island. At the time, the island was occupied primarily by a resort aiming to promote eco-tourism, and by very few local fishermen. The island itself is rich in natural resources and has not been extensively damaged by man. However, it has a bad reputation due to its sociocultural past - being an island where convicts where sent to do their time at the island’s detention center. For many locals, this is what Jerejak is known for. We were lucky enough to get the chance to go on a site visit to explore and truly experience the island for what it was and is currently. We also had the chance to speak to an ex-convict who once called the island home for a few years.
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It was a profound experience to be guided through the remains of the detention center by this man, as he recalled fond memories of friendships, fights and freedom on the island.
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