Home
In commemoration of our Journal's one-year anniversary, I thought it is appropriate to record something about the notion of a 'home' — a safe place where family members can gather and be counted, be acknowledged and not judged. Since our launch on 1 May 2024, we have welcomed 64 projects and their designers into the BA.J family home.
In order to be fostered, you simply have to be:
From Borneo, and designing/building locally or elsewhere.
From elsewhere, and building/designing in Borneo.
It is that simple.
If you already have your own website, or have been featured elsewhere — you are still welcome. We value your company; you can have more than one home.
In our lifetime, most of us have lived in several homes — the one we grew up in, the one we build with our spouses, and numerous other 'temporary' ones along the way. Each forms part of our personal history and its own cache of memories — their importance waxes and wanes depending on how and what we are doing at the time.
The family home we grew up in usually forms the strongest memory for many of us — our young minds, sponge-like, absorbing stories to be re-told years later. Like the story of how a family of seven could live in a one-bedroom flat and still welcome relatives from Kuching to stay with them during the school holidays. Or how Grandma would call each of her daughters on the phone every Sunday to recite that lunchtime’s menu, as enticement (or instruction) to come ‘home’ for lunch once a week.
But it is inevitable that the family home would slowly empty, and each time we re-visit, it feels smaller and more jaded. A home must do more than simply house its inhabitants — it must continue to foster new relationships and nurture the existing ones.
Part of growing up takes us away from home; work, studies, or relationships can momentarily relocate or dislocate us. During those times, do we set up house? Or do we ‘nest’ and create a home? Some use time to gauge whether it is worthwhile to create a home from a temporary situation, while others think ‘wherever I lay my hat, that’s my home’ (Paul Young, 1983).
A friend of mine travels around the world with her favourite paintings, and hangs them up in her 'home' if she knows she is going to be there for more than three weeks.
I recently experienced this first-hand — a home-invasion by sixteen students from Chung Yuan Christian University who arrived to stay at No. 40 (my parents’ house, or Amah's house as they call it). They were second-year students, here to do research and design projects for local sites. Each weekend, we would go over and cook for them. My friends brought food and joined us, and we watched them.
I like how they gradually made themselves at home — running up and down the stairs, hanging laundry here and there, sudden bursts of laughter and conversation as the night draws on. At the end of their stay, I asked them to send me photos of their time at Amah's house, and they sent me these, which I am sharing as part of this article. It would appear that they know how to make themselves ‘at home’. They are coming back later this year; this time round, I have no doubt that they will be hanging up paintings — not just laundry.
Many of us have had the experience of leaving our home country, ‘tanah air’, for further studies. Some of us returned, and many more did not. In a recent conversation with friends, we talked about our individual reasons for returning home to practise architecture. When I turned to the prominent Taiwanese architect for his answer, his was simple: ‘You should never need a reason to come home.’ The most succinct remark on this matter came from my tennis partner (not an architect), who wished his children were working in Malaysia and not overseas: ‘They should come home to serve the community that grew them.’
To conclude, we simply encourage you to join us — and make yourself at home.
Photos by the sixteen Chung Yuan Christian University students who called Kuching home during their 24-day internship in August–September 2024
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