Major Project Rationale

Welcome Home

Arif Rahman Wahid MA Narrative Environments

Major Project Rationale

Introduction

Welcome Home is a walking guide through Santa Modern Market designed to reveal the relationships between the market trader community. It is located on the top floor of Santa Modern Market, Jakarta, Indonesia. This project is a medium to answer my research question: How to make people respect indigenous values nowadays? This question was arise because I saw Santa Market has specific—like family—characteristics in the connection between traders. They promote each other, share their raw materials, and even exchange end product for keeping the market being sustainable. Unfortunately, these unique qualities inferior to the problem that faced by the market. Mainly because of increasing tenant rent fee and street development outside, at this moment around 40% of the traders leave the market and lost its visitors. Therefore, my dramatic conflict is “Shifting Kinships”. My target audience is creative young adults looking to start a business. My client is Jakarta provincial government, and it is important to help Jakarta provincial government re-promote Santa Modern Market as a creative hub while celebrating its values.

Practice Context

�

Image 1. Passage Tells Brixton by Daisuke NakazawaSource:http://www.slmpickings.com/urban-explorer/where-the-walls-have-ears-passage-tells

There are some projects that I found similar to mine. The first one is Passage Tells Brixton by last year’s MANE student Daisuke Nakazawa. Based on Nakazawa (2015), it is similar because both his project and mine happen inside a market. We also collected the story from traders, and as far as I know Brixton Market has an active community as well. The difference of my project is my project focused on mapping the relationship between traders; not all story revolve around them. Next, while Passage Tells Brixton happened in one passage which has start and end, there is no exact one start or end in Welcome Home. It also takes more visual form than Passage Tells Brixton that is more audio.

The second project that I found is Cornelia Marland’s Mapping Project. Her project is about visitor created a collaborative map that allowing people discusses psychogeography, perception, and memory (Marland, 2015). I inspired by the way she let the visitor do the mapping, whether it real or imaginary, and give them the freedom to drawing together. In my case, I collect memory and perception from the traders, transform it into a map as an example, then by the time the map could change and expanded frequently.

Major Project Rationale

� �

Image 2. The Mapping Project by Cornelia MarlandSource: http://www.corneliamarland.com/

Theoretical Context

I intrigued by psychogeography approach, especially in dérive. According to Debord (1958) in Bmilligan (2009), Dérive is “…a technique of rapid passage through varied ambiances. Dérives involve playful-constructive behavior and awareness of psychogeographical effects,…”. One of experience perceived by people who walk a Dérive is getting lost deliberately. As Debord (1958) says “…let themselves be drawn by the attractions of the terrain and the encounters they find there”. Essentially, that is what I want to achieve with my project. I will let the audience immersed in the market, walk through it looking the connections between stores instead of concern about their geographical location.

Impacts, Sustainability and Resilience

This project will give impacts in the cultural aspect. By celebrating Santa Market’s creative spirit, eventually, Welcome Home will invites more people to start their business in the market once again. Related to visitor’s experience, this project gives a new way to exploring the market. Visitors could walk through the kinships between traders, completely ignore their physical location. Indirectly, it also gives an economic impact because the increasing number of tenant will attracts more visitor and vice versa, in the end, it will increases the rate of trades. I am thinking the intervention will last for one or two months, after that I will let the market community expand or forgo it themselves.

Research Methods

Desk Research

�Image 3. My Pinterest Boards

Major Project Rationale

Beside using my research book and read books, I gather all of my Major Project related articles on my Pinterest. It is very useful to organise my desk research materials that work as base knowledge. Desk research is also used to collects information about case studies. Hence, I can compare every different projects and take an inspiration out of it.

Site Research

� �Image 4. Existing Site Condition

Being able to be on site gives me spatial feeling about the whole space. I also can measure the physical scale of my intervention.

Social Research

� �Image 5. Interviews

Interviews play a big part in my project. While I am still in London, mainly the interviews conducted by my sister. These interviews shape the whole map of Santa Market. So social research is a core to my project.

Testing

� � �Image 6. Poster Test Around the Market

Prototyping and testing idea are very important in my project, because I contact with real people, in real environment. Unfortunately I did not have a chance to test my prototype there, but at least I

Major Project Rationale

spread posters that indicate the kinship between traders. The response was very good, most of them are open and curious for next intervention.

Constraints

The biggest constraint that I am dealing with is to work remotely from London to Jakarta. It is hard to make sure everything work as I planned because I am not physically on the site then I do not know the actual space condition in real time. For several months my work based on photographs and my memory about the market in 2014. Finally, last December I had the opportunity to went back to Jakarta and worked directly from there. It is very helpful because I spent my time testing my idea with real traders, interviewing and observing the market first hand. Other constraints that I feel are legal and financial constraints. I contacted Jakarta provincial government but receive no response. I am also given a limited amount of money from my scholarship to do this final project, and most of it allocated for the ticket from London-Jakarta-London.

Collaboration

Regarding collaboration, I am in touch with three collaborators for this project. First one is Edinburgh based interior architecture student whom I have been work with for more than five years. She acts as my concept developer and gives the idea what aesthetic grammar that would suit the concept. My second collaborator is my father. His role is in photography field as he takes and suggests what kind of photographs I should use. We have the same vision because he also feels the urgent of keeping the market sustainable as it is a platform for young people to test their business idea. There is also my sister who is a psychology student; she is in charge of interviewing visitors and traders as well because her expertise in getting information based on several interview questions.

Aesthetic Grammar

� �

Image 7. Aesthetic Grammar

To unify all elements in the market, I choose orange and green which are two colours that already exist in the market, also a branding colour of PD Pasar Jaya, part of local provincial government who manages traditional market around Jakarta. On materiality, I use material that is already in the market and reflect the connection between traders. For instance, I pick metal cutlery to show two stores that share their spoon and fork, used vinyl to connects two music stores that sell different genre, and cheap printed paper to displays the connection of a hot dog store that provides a voucher for another newly-open shop.

Major Project Rationale

Bibliography

bmilligan. (2009). URBAN TRANSECTS REVISITED #2. Available: https://freeassociationdesign.wordpress.com/2009/12/20/urban-transects-revisited-2/. Last accessed 28th Oct 2015.

Debord, G. (1958). Theory of the Dérive. Internationale Situationniste. 2

Marland, C. (2015). The Mapping Project. Available: http://www.corneliamarland.com/about-2/. Last accessed 4th Dec 2015.

Nakazawa, D. (2015). Passage Tells Brixton. Available: http://passagetellsproject.net/brixton/. Last accessed 9th Nov 2015.

Slmpickings. (2015). Where the walls have ears: Passage Tells. Available: http://www.slmpickings.com/urban-explorer/where-the-walls-have-ears-passage-tells. Last accessed 9th nov 2015.