The Business Times Weekend
Issue 07-09 June 2019
Artists in Architecture
by Mia Chenyze
By day, they design buildings. But in their free time, these four established architects show that they make impressive artworks as well.
(below is the excerpt from the full article)
LEE HUI LIAN FARM
Lee Hui Lian is quick to point out that doing art isn’t a relaxing, by-the-way activity for her. “I need to consciously set aside time and mentally prepare myself. I spend the same amount of energy doing art as I do architectural work,” she explains.
So much so that when she took part in a charity exhibition last year, she had to take leave from work – she’s now Associate at FARM, and adjunct lecturer at the National University of Singapore – to prepare for the show.
But she won’t give it up. “Art keeps me sane. As an architect, I’m always dealing with people, juggling expectations. With art, I’m not answerable to anyone. In a way, it is therapeutic because I’ll be so focused that I’m forced to rest my work brain.”
As the daughter of two artists, art has always been in her life. For much of her childhood in Klang, family bonding was exploring random kampungs and streets to sketch or paint. Art is a form of self expression, but the soft-spoken 33-year-old is also incredibly down-to-earth about it.
“It’s not so much about consciously using a certain colour palette to convey my mood, but when I look back at my works, I can get a sense of how I was feeling at that time.” She’d initially chosen architecture for pragmatic reasons, but on hindsight, her father might have seeded that idea in her. “He’s always been quite scientific and he would make me do things like detailed section drawings of his sculptures, or draw floor plans of the house. Maybe he meant to steer me towards architecture.”
Still, architecture is such a big part of her identity that she can’t envision giving it up for her art. “Despite the stress, I feel there’s joy in architecture, in creating spaces. Just like how an art piece is composed, architecture is about its relation to the site and how spaces within relate to each other. It’s sometimes hard to justify voids in spaces to clients, but I feel that like pauses in music, they’re necessary to allow a place to breathe.”
One of her most cherished projects to date is an intermediate terrace house. After moving in, the client would often send photos depicting the way the light filtered through the space at various times of the day. “It’s rare to receive feedback on the space in itself, or light quality, so that was really nice,” she recounts.
Full article here: https://www.businesstimes.com.sg/lifestyle/feature/artists-in-architecture
This article also appeared in the Peak Magazine online edition. Here: