Buayan - Part 3

Category: Buayan

9 December, 2013

Buayan Work Week

Text and photos by Thomas Henderson-Schwartz

Tom, who has been living in Kg. Buayan for the last 7 months, reports on the successful ‘Buayan Work Week.’ 6 young volunteers from across Malaysia made a huge impact on the progress of the community building there.

The last month has been an exciting time for the Buayan project with significant progress on the construction. The past week, to further speed up the process, I had the pleasure of hosting 6 volunteers from around Malaysia; Vivian; Li Ie; Gordon Goh; Nur Ajwad; Julia Qistina and Ming Yang; who were interested all in gaining some experience.

We let the kampung men continue with the roof whilst we concentrated on the walls. We are testing a new type of Biocrete, using rice husk and lime as an infill material. The first job was to make the stud walls, using steel C-sections and fibre-cement board. We then mixed the lime and rice husk (in a ratio of 1 part lime to 4 parts rice husk) to infill into the stud walls. The resulting mixture has the appearance of soggy cereal. It compacted very nicely into the stud walls and thankfully we had no leaks. The next day I came back to the initial section that we had poured to see if it worked. The aim of the rice-crete infill is to act as a dehumidifier, much like an air conditioning system. To my great pleasure lying against the wall you could feel a significant drop in temperature.

We also continued to treat the bamboo for the floor, which has now been laid almost in it’s entirety. The work week team also made formwork for the fire place and poured the concrete. Plastering on the outdoor amphitheatre was another task that everyone got involved with. The local guys have almost finished the roof meaning that we now have a watertight building with floors, walls and roof – quite a great improvement.

But all work and no play makes Buayan a dull place so we took a lunchtime to learn how to fish with the local boys. We weren’t particularly successful but everyone enjoyed the swim. We also had a very enjoyable evening eating a freshly hunted wild boar (for the non-muslims). I have been keen to go hunting with the local guys and have finally convinced them to take me so I may have a little story about that in the coming weeks.

I have also now been joined by Nadhira on a permanent basis who will see the building through to completion which we expect to be around the end of January. A great thank you to the whole work week team who were incredibly enthusiastic and good humoured throughout their stay. The next blog will hopefully be of the finished building. Until then, Merry Christmas.

“[We] not only learn about architecture, we also built relationships with one another.”

– Vivian Yap, Kuala Lumpur. A-Levels student in Methodist College Kuala Lumpur

“The best moment is when we worked together to shovel and mix the ‘biocrete’. I had never heard of biocrete before and it is interesting to see that a mixture of lime, rice husk and water can be used to substitute the normal concrete [infill] we use.”

– Lau Li Ie, Kuala Lumpur. IB student in Cempaka International Ladies College

“[To] be open minded; there are many solutions to a problem, [to] be innovative and creative, and design in respect to local culture and tradition”

– Gordon Goh, Sabah. Landscape Architecture student in University of Tasmania, Australia (in reference to his experience and lessons learnt after being back-to-basics)

“I’m really proud with my accomplishments throughout this program because most of the activities were new for me”

– Nur Ajwad, Kuala Lumpur. IB student in Cempaka International Ladies College.

“YES, YES, YES! I think everyone will definitely enjoy this program even if it is not related to your career/studies”

– Julia Qistina, Kuala Lumpur. IB student in Cempaka International Ladies College.

“Yes, I love it. I WILL BE BACK”

– Chai Ming Yang, Johor. Architecture graduate of Taylor’s University.

23 September, 2013

Buayan Blog

by Thomas Henderson-schwartz
Kampung Buayan Bio-Cultural Heritage Centre

The Brief

The Bio-cultural Centre will serve as a place for Buayan and surrounding communities to gather, perform, practice, learn and share their local culture with each other and with visitors. Our team of design students from Edinburgh, UK are designing and building to benefit the Ulu Papar community and create an icon to represent their accumulation of bio-cultural research.

The Team

Lewis Kelly (previous Arkitrek Intern) and I contacted Arkitrek to set up a team of Edinburgh students for a Design and Build. The project offered in Kampung Buayan seemed like an exciting challenge. After a minimal amount of advertising we had over 40 applications from a variety of students from different academic fields. A series of interviews allowed us to narrow down to a final team of 15 people including architecture, engineering and fashion students. Meet them here:

The Fund-raising and Research

Throughout the university semester (alongside our degrees) we managed to raise a total of £6800 towards the cost of building through a variety of events. These included hosting ceilidh’s (Scottish dances), an architectural quiz, a blind date event and sponsored events such as swims, bike rides and half marathons. Most lucrative was selling cheese toasties outside clubs late at night.

We also researched local construction techniques, having a workshop with bamboo expert – bamboo Jack – who taught us how to join bamboo. Another experiment included building an earthbag wall in Marie’s garden, which withstood her dad’s tractor crashing into it!

The Trek

Kampung Buayan is located in the heart of the Crocker Range at the centre of the historic Salt Trail. This was to be the start of our trip, trekking through the jungle, braving raging rivers and hungry leeches.

The Design

We started the design by a series of group workshops. The highly enjoyable “What If” exercise allowed us to imagine the great extremes of what we could come up with. “What If” the building: was made of rice, had see-through sewage pipe, could only be accessed by rope swing etc.. A meeting with community members gave us a great insight into the expectations. We came up with about 4 completely different designs initially which were whittled down to the final design. We then presented this to the villagers after church, nervously hoping that they would like what we had come up with. Thankfully they loved the design and we were given clearance to start construction.

The Construction

The inaccessibility of Kampung Buayan means that the cost of transporting materials in was well beyond our budget. Therefore we had to collect as much as possible from site and surrounding area. A monstrous initial task was collecting aggregate by hand from the river! The timber required was milled by chainsaw by the local men of the village. At the end of our 6 weeks we had designed and built the entirety of the super-structure alongside some fun details, including the bamboo peep wall, earthbag formed concrete amphitheatre and a floating bamboo staircase.

I’m going back into Kampung Buayan this week and will hopefully finish off the construction as soon as possible. Updates to follow….

Further reading on the Global Diversity Foundation site

29 July, 2013

Bamboo Weaving at Buayan

By Nur Filzah Jamjam
Buayan: 20-26th June 2013

This workshop, led by weaving expert Joiwit from Buayan, began making woven bamboo building components for a Community Bio-cultural Heritage Centre in the Ulu Papar region of Sabah. The workshop was coordinated by Arkitrek and Global Diversity Foundation.

Joiwit introduced a selection of weaving patterns to learn throughout the workshop. Representatives of the community gathered in the balai raya (community hall) to try out the patterns with coloured paper first. Next, participants were given 2 hours to go harvesting bamboo, after which the weaving lesson started with a pattern named ‘Minangulop’.

Everyone worked on a standard panel size of 2feet x 3feet and by the end the day each had a half-completed panel.

Workshop on day two had new participants arrive and some of them used polypropylene straps for practice. Later after lunch Joiwit introduced a new pattern which is perforated and suitable for blinds.

The day two went smoothly where everybody tried to finish their panel. By the end of the day, two panels were finished.

On the last day, 23rd June, the agenda was to finish all the patterns and then learn to make a frame from bamboo tied with rattan. We also had new participants from another nearby village in the Ulu Papar area named Tiku.

After the end of the workshop everyone was keen to continue on their own to finish the panel. An extra day was needed to dry the bamboo used for framing and to fully complete the panel.

To put in a nut shell, the workshop went well and got positive feedback from the community. They enjoyed learning new patterns from each other and are motivated to develop this as an enterprise opportunity. They also started to imagine the weavings being used on the proposed Bio-cultural Centre building and are looking forward to the project.

30 June, 2013

Buayan Recce

By Nur Filzah Jamjam

A Visit to Buayan Village, Crocker Range

“The first 45 minutes is the hardest” they said. Interestingly I spent a day and a half struggling hard to keep moving, or in the exact word, ‘trekking’. But it does in fact feel awesome. Our trip was about a project for a Community Bio-cultural Centre which has been proposed for Buayan Village. The site is located near the Crocker Range national park, a hill dipterocarp forest in the west coast of Sabah, about 25km from Donggongon town. To go to the village a person can choose either by trekking through the forest or by driving a 4WD truck. Apparently trekking is far more interesting because you can find many species of flora and fauna endemic to Borneo and enjoy the breath-taking scenery.

Buayan villagers treasure their rich cultural heritage and knowledge of the forest. They remarkably understand and appreciate the forest and still practice traditional ways of doing things in their daily routines. They acknowledge the significance of their culture and the need to pass it down to the younger generation and eventually to share it to the world. Hence the brief for this project is generated.

The objective of the Bio-cultural Centre is to serve as a place for Buayan and surrounding communities to gather, perform, practice, learn and share their local culture with each other and with visitors. Arkitrek, in collaboration with the Global Diversity Foundation and a team of design students from Edinburgh, UK will design and build a building which is beneficial to the community and at the same time act as an icon which can best represent them.

The building will have facilities such as theatre room, multipurpose hall, classrooms, and dormitories. The building will use local materials for earthbag, bio-crete and bamboo as a sustainable design approach on a remote site.

The Edinburgh team arrives in Sabah on 8th July 2013 and will stay for six weeks. With the mounting anticipation from the community and the inspiring Arkitrekkers we are getting excited and hope the project will be a catalyst on promoting bio-cultural heritage to support sustainable livelihoods to all villages in Sabah.

More links about Ulu Papar and the Bio-cultural Heritage Centre
Global Giving: Help Communities in Borneo Protect their Heritage
GDF: Ulu Papar Bio-cultural Heritage Centre

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