Kevin Mark Low's Visiting Lecture, Galeri Arsitektur SAPPK, Institut Teknologi Bandung, 18 November 2010, 1300 WIB
"small projects conceptualizes, designs and builds things. Primarily architecture, though there are many side orders to its concerns. smallprojects concerns itself with relevant design, architectural economy and spatial technology as related to specific context. In principle, smallprojects is singular: the architecture of garden houses are its focus. In application, it is plural: planning, project identity, building and product design and the space which can neither be called landscape nor architecture but sits somewhere in between are its concerns and passions. With each work it undertakes, big or small, it is less interested in what makes things different and more concerned with what all things share. small projects refers less to the size of things than to the intimate relationships which bind them. It is characterized by an entirely uncorporate identity, ironically grown from eleven years of corporate history. It is less concerned about the theatrical than it is about the dramatic. It has more to do with possibility than it does with statement. small projects is about the possibility of context. And subverting the dominant paradigm."
About Kevin Mark Low :
smallprojects was born in 2002. Its work involves house, building and utility design.
Primarily.
The company is run by Kevin Low who returned to Malaysia and culture shock after nine years in the west with a bachelor's and master's degree in architecture and a minor in art and architectural history. Kevin has, over various periods in his life, been professionally involved in writing, environmental sculpture, illustrating, teaching and copyrighting. He has presented papers on building technology at Harvard University and lectured in the architectural department at MIT. While in the United States, Kevin worked in architectural practices both on the East and West coasts and studied closely with the Aga Khan Foundation, earning awards of research grants and fellowships to Italy, North Yemen, Spain and Bangladesh. He joined GDP Architects upon his return to Kuala Lumpur where he stayed for the next eleven years, running the r + d and special projects division.
His work while at GDP architects included project branding, budget hotels and high end condominiums, a refurbished warehouse for a corporate office, various housing types, guardhouses, garden memorials, mailboxes and master plans; the last one being the master plan for Sentul in Kuala Lumpur.
Kevin currently divides his time between architectural and product design, concept master plans, teaching architecture at University Malaya and providing design concept services to clients and other consultants.
He still designs mailboxes.
And unusual houses for unusual clients with an emphasis on what he calls the garden house.