Semester 2.5 is a 8-week fieldwork in Year 1 which requires us students to document historical and architectural buildings, through a set of measured drawings and report. It consists of 3 projects which are:
Project 1- Sketches and Journal
Project 2- Building Report and Video
Project 3- Measured Drawings & Model

My group was assigned to work on the Rainbow Shop Houses located in Jalan Sultan Iskandar, Ipoh to be measured, analysed and documented.

Project 1- Sketches and Journal
It all started off with the basic visual sketches and journal before getting into the details and precision. The first project is an on-site exercise which requires us to individually sketch and document the physical and intangible qualities of the buildings as well as the immediate context of the site. It aims on training students' observance to the surrounding, instilling the culture of documentation in architectural education and enhancing our graphical communication skills. The sketches are to comprise the genius loci, poetic quality, cultural attributes and technical details of the given building or site to show our own understanding and interpretation of it.
Below are my individual sketches.

Project 2- Building Report and Video
The second project is a group work comprising a report and a video compiled to elaborate on the significance of the building measured from architectural, historical and cultural aspects. It aims on documenting the building significance and analysing the relationship between architectural and significance of the building as well as its cultural heritage and inhabitation. The final submission requires a report, photobook and video which documents and provide 3D experience of the building given.
Below are the group compilation of our report and video.



Project 3- Measured Drawings & Model
The final project is the final compilation of the documentation and measured drawings of our building. This project, we were to produce a set of measure drawings of the given building and to provide a scaled model showing the architectural aspects of it. The project enable us to learn the appropriate architectural historic documentation, to recognize techniques of measured drawings and documentation as well as to explain the as-built building construction, architectural elements and details.
Below are our measured drawings done in AutoCAD and our final scaled model.

Making use of the seven repeating shop houses, we created a model which shows different stages of construction to carefully emphasize on different aspects in different shops. Starting from the purple shop house, the ground floor was emphasized, followed by indigo shop house with first floor slab, blue shop house with walls and ended with the red shop houses focusing on roof structure and an exploded wall which clearly shows the interior spaces.