Muhammad Zuliandi Bin Abdul Azli

Slow Hands Make Quick Work: Detailing Diplomacy

Atmosphere and Agency

Supervisor - Erik G. L'Heureux

With the rapid inception of Chinese capital into Sri Lanka, the architectural thesis unpacks the modes and methods of architectural production in a climate that is both tropical and increasingly neo-liberal. The consequence of this inquiry, is to understand the ways in which architecture should be produced. Is there room to infiltrate a kind of prima materia consensus that has long preceded the developmentalist approach toward architecture in the tropics? More importantly perhaps, it looks to set up and formulate an understanding of practicing architecture in the contemporary context of the modernist metropolis within the contingencies of disappearing craft practices and emerging urban vernacular construction.

The project is demonstrated through a building which serves as a workshop for collaboration between Chinese construction workers and Sri Lankan craftsmen & labourers. The metaphor for fruitful exchange does not remain at the level of the building's function but is reflective in its construction process, down to the level of how two materials meet.