INTRODUCTION
CURATOR'S NOTE
DATUM MEANING
DATUM TEAM
INTRODUCTION
DATUM: KL
KUALA LUMPUR ARCHITECTURE FESTIVAL 2011
1 JULY 2011 – 31 JULY 2011
Pertubuhan Akitek Malaysia (PAM) / the Malaysian Institute of Architects is pleased to announce an exciting new initiative, the inaugural
Datum:KL 2011 Kuala Lumpur Architecture Festival with a variety and vibrancy of encounters over at least four weekends in 25 days; including installations, exhibitions, talks, dialogues, workshops, forums and conferences. We envisage the Festival to be the definitive regional event for architecture, design and arts.
Datum:KL was previously the annual architecture and design conference begun nine years ago which in 2011, will now be restructured as a month long multi-programme platform to be held throughout July 2011. Modelled along successful international festivals such as the Venice Architecture Biennale and the London Architecture Festival, PAM seeks to celebrate architecture, design and the city of Kuala Lumpur with a comprehensive list of events designed to appeal both to the professional domains (architects, engineers, etc.) and stakeholders as well as, importantly, the general public and citizens of Kuala Lumpur. Importantly, the Festival seeks to invigorate beneficial discussions and participation amongst the public towards the direction and development of Kuala Lumpur.
According to PAM President, Ar. Boon Che Wee, the Festival is "our opportunity to build a sustaining, energetic and positive engagement with Kuala Lumpur in the public domain, and showcase of our initiatives to excite a newer and wider audience; to reinforce the notion that architecture is an essential consideration in the cultural agenda of the city".
This Festival is our effort to constructively bring architecture – in all its depths and forms – into the mix, if not the front and centre, of the thinking on Kuala Lumpur.
The Festival is centred around three major strategies and focus:
EXCELLENCE
PAM continues to uphold and promote excellence of the professional disciplines by organising conferences, forums and symposiums, with the principal annual event being the new NOW Conference, featuring presentations from some of the most exciting and innovative talents globally and from Malaysia today.
ENGAGEMENT
In addition, PAM will also host a series of exhibitions throughout the Festival, with a major consolidated show entitled the Datum ShowBox, featuring three major curated exhibitions.
RELEVANCE
As Architecture is the fundamental basic activity that seeks to provide shelter and protection as well as the uplifting of human aspirations, PAM continues to underline the professions relevance and integral role in the transformation of cities and humanist responsibilities. A major announcement on this position will be made at the end of NOW Conference.
The official launch of the Festival will be officiated by the YAB Prime Minister of Malaysia on 1st July 2011.
Datum:KL is directed by PAM President, Ar. Boon Che Wee with Curator Ar. Ang Chee Cheong.
PAM is proud of the official support accorded to the Festival by the Dewan Bandaraya Kuala Lumpur (DBKL) and hereby records its thanks.
CURATOR’S NOTE
NOW CONFERENCE – SEASON 1
A MOMENT IN THE PRESENT…
ANG CHEE CHEONG
CURATOR, DATUM:KL KUALA LUMPUR
ARCHITECTURE FESTIVAL 2011
It’s been quite a ride…
The annual conference, previously known as DATUM:KL, remains the principal event for the inaugural Festival but shall from this year on be re-structured as the NOW CONFERENCE. This year the conference also accompanies and complements a series of exhibitions, workshops, events, etc., that will form part of the larger, inaugural Datum:KL, 2011 Kuala Lumpur Architecture Festival.
The first conference in 2003 examined various themes both within and outside architecture as it found itself in the new millennium. Since then, architecture had confronted unprecedented challenges and new, accelerated, continually changing conditions. In that short period of only nine years, and short by way of human history, Architecture and the world had experienced, amongst others – the boom and bust of Western financial system; the rapid growth of eastern Asian cities; the delirium of the Dubai project and its subsequent sobering hangover; the idolatry of star-chitecture and star-chitects; renewed climatic anxieties and rediscovered empathies; the persistence of natural disasters and man-made human tragedies; the pervasive reach of (new) media and the Internet social order; the rise of preservation/ conservation and the burgeoning nostalgia industry, etc., architecture continues to finds the ground shifting and its foundation in question. In this scenario, our concept for NOW simply implies an imme-diacy, a moment in the present to establish and consider new priorities and to generate fresh possibilities and potentials.. to post perhaps, an ‘architectural’ status update!
The maiden NOW conference will seek to examine and describe key trajectories of current contemporary thinking and practice, and to underline the essential transformative aspects of architecture as a critical instrumentality to engage a continually changing world. NOW CONFERENCE – SEASON 1 will feature a series of lectures and conversations from a wide ranging selection of both established and newly emergent architects and designers from a divergent range of approaches and backgrounds from both within the region and internationally.
This years’ conference will also have a refreshed and updated format but will leave intact the many things that have worked well in the past. In addition to introducing a new set of exceptional talent to the Datum community, this year we also re-connect and welcome back to KL some of our original speakers who, over the years, had risen in stature and profile alongside Datum:KL, which over the years had grown to almost seven times the initial event in 2003.
The next two days will be hectic and densely programmed, and we hope that, in the compacted (and freezing) space-time continuum of the Plenary Hall, you will take from NOW and for now, some new intuitions and various insights, some useful knowledge and much illuminated pleasures…
Until we all meet again next year, for Season 2..
DATUM MEANING
‘datum’,
– noun plural data. See also data.
- a piece of information.
an assumption or premise from which inferences
may be drawn.
- a fixed starting point of a scale or operation.
DATUM TEAM
Coming Soon.
