His response to our tiny budget...

hello badrul. thanks much, the information provided does help. do you have an idea what total built up youd expect of your 8 rooms together with dining, living and kitchen? the budget would be tight if you have expectations of anything over 4500 square feet. my worry is that professional fees are included in the budget which will eat at what you now have. my fee for this project will be about rm50k with the current budget and built up area totalling no more than the said earlier square footage.

but it appears doable if i can control what is spent on finishes and fittings. the kitchen might possibly require a larger budget but if youre cool on experimentation, we can do you a country industrial kitchen with all the characteristics of hip laidback.

bedrooms will be intentionally small with the exception of the master bedroom, the rational being your children can build their bedrooms big when they grow up. the dining, living and kitchen areas will of course take spatial precedence in the design and apportionment of area.

no mention of a maids/utility area? more than one maid?

you can get more comprehensive with your brief if you feel it necessary. catch up with you in a bit then.

yours, kevin.

Our initial brief over email

Dear Kevin,
 
Our budget is RM500,000 for the construction of the house. We need you to fit in the built-in bits as well i.e. wardrobe, kitchen cabinets and whatever else, for all these we have RM100,000. Total budget is RM600,000, including your fee.
 
We are looking at single-storey, between 5-8 rooms. The rooms are:
 
- 6 bedrooms
- 1 study
- 1 media room
 
We thought we should also mention that we want an open plan so that there is no division between the living room, dining area and kitchen.
 
We have attached the precomp plan re your question earlier about the dimension of the plot. You will find the plots marked 22543 and 22542. 
 
Ultimately, you will tell us whether or not we can do this because it may seem ambitious. We look forward to your esteemed advice on how best we can utilize the budget.
  
Kind regards,
 
Shah & Shidah

His short response...

dear badrul, thanks for the information, your schedule appears to be fine. i will still require a budget (unimportant if its 10 or a million ringgit but the budget is probably the single most vital bit of information a client could possibly have for the architect)) and some idea of the number of rooms you will require before i can say. also, there is a document called a precomp plan which shows the boundaries of the plots with two numbers per boundary line, the first number refers to the length of that line and the second its bearing in degrees. would be good to forward this to me. the land titles should also have the lengths and bearings of the boundaries, so that will do fine as well. have a good weekend.

kevin.

And our reply...

We were ecstatic to receive your reply we can liken it to receiving an email from a superstar! Maybe Simon LeBon or someone like that… We couldn’t believe our eyes. We read it out loud. We printed it out so we can file it. We were literally jumping in joy. Seriously. Oh Kevin, the effects you have on people… you just don't know it.  
Yeah, we did take the trouble to get the cards. It was even harder to pen those words down. We figured, an architect of your caliber needs an extra effort to pull in. 
OK, just to give you the assurance that we are not stalkers (yet), we will now impart some details of ourselves.  
We are Malaysians currently working in London.  
We are in the process of procuring a land in Bukit Rahman Putra, Sungai Buloh. We’re assuming you are familiar with the place, but this is not in the established residential area. This vast tract of land is located on the fringe of BRP, next to an oil palm estate and it’s been subdivided into 12 lots. If the loan goes through, we will be the very happy owners of two lots with the combined built-up area of 12,227.90 sq ft, to be exact. 
We have two boys, aged three and seven. Two cars, one each for bah and mak. Probably a third car to transport the entire family but that’s not the immediate plan. That can wait till they outgrow their child seats.  
As far as the building, we are looking at next year or early 2009. This is just to coincide with our homecoming which is due in the latter. We will decide later on the best time to start when we have a fair idea of how long a project will take, from start to the end. Coming back to a rental with a container load of stuff is not ideal if you know what we mean. Anyway, this ought to give you a temporary relief so you can go on with your current works.  
How did we happen upon your website? It was Shidah’s late night surfing on the Net. She googled “Malaysian, architects.”  
Is this level of detail enough? Or did we find you too early too soon? We have the budget and other information such as layout, number of rooms and even things we like to do but you let us know if this is fine for later. To be honest with you, we couldn’t wait! 
Shah and Shidah. 

And the architect's reaction...

dear shah and shidah, you are clearly the wittiest and most intriguing clients ive been contacted by thus far; aside from your obvious creativity, you read my situation with understanding and precision....its not often one encounters enlightenment such as yours. 

but it was a touch scary to begin with, i could not tell if you were stalkers or admirers until the third card.

may i know how you happened on my work and website?

your project sounds interesting though i must say your cards top it by a long ways. where is your piece of land located? can i guess it is in malaysia? the british origin of your cards threw me a curve ball, i must say. i am very busy at this time, so you will have to give me a touch more information for now, your expected occupation of the house and its location would do well. little extras such as total built up, how many children and cars you have and some ballpark budget will be good too. but obviously your schedule would determine if we have a starter here, no?

thank you for your kind praise and the trouble you have taken to catch my imagination! i hope it will come to prove your time was well spent. 

looking forward to hearing from you.

kevin.

We had to make ourselves known...

Here's an excerpt from the email we sent to him following the series of postcards...


Dear Kevin,
 
We hope you're wondering about the numerous cards you received in the last few weeks. We are assuming they got to you or this note would have been pointless. We were the senders (or culprits, depending on the circumstances), Rashidah and Badrul. That's Shidah and Shah for short. Let's leave it at that for now. 
 
   The cards was our way of shifting your attention to us. Judging from your website, we can tell you have been busy. And we thought it good for you to take a break, The few words in the cards tell you what we want and our opinion of you. Even the pictorial on the cover is relevant but why explain when it is self-explanatory? Anyway, we hope the cards worked.
 
   Our discovery of your website is truly blessed. We were in the market for a house but at the same time tired of seeing an even more tired design regime. We dare say that our hope has now changed we have totally scrapped the idea of buying an off-the-shelf house and decided to build it instead. The change of mind happened literally overnight, that is after bumping into your website.
 
   Let us tell you what hit our radar. The fact that you design and create furnitures (and mailboxes, and wardrobes.) The fact that you think good design doesn't have to cost. These days you can't have one without sacrificing the other. And your simplistic style. Till recently, we had failed to find a Malaysian architect who would meet all these criteria. 
 
   We had dreamt of having a house that passers-by would chuckle, thinking "with all that glass, people are going to know what they're doing inside." We don't believe in living in a prison either (read: no grilles). We don't fancy a perimeter fence which would further emphasise the prison. And roman pillars should be, well, should be just for the Colosseum. 
 
   Let us know if you are interested to board. We think it's going to be a great journey ahead. Whether or not we fit your bill of 'unusual clients', we guess you have to find that out yourself!
 
Shah and Shidah. 

Don't get the postcards?

Both my other half and I liked to watch Grand Designs while in the UK, an hour-long pseudo reality TV programme about people and the distance they would go to in building their dream homes. The subjects are real people, not celebrities or public figures so there’s always something that we could relate to. Problems like limited budget, disagreements with the builder and authority and busted deadlines keep cropping up. If you are subscribed to Unifi, try catch the show on the bundled IPTV facility called Hypp TV, on Tuesday nights I think.

The houses showcased are not your run-of-the-mill type, otherwise the whole show would have been an antithesis to the title. Granted that they do not all the time look weird or risqué, each episode is special in that there would be uphill climbs that the owners had to face in order to get it built. It could be anything from the difficulty of sourcing for an environmental-friendly material that at the same time an efficient insulator to countless visits to the local council to convince that a design does not disrupt the harmony of the existing community. There was one episode about an elderly couple who travelled all the way to Rheinland-Pfalz in Germany so that they could discuss in person with the folks at Huf Haus, the provider of pre-manufactured (or pre-fabricated, a term more in use here) homes. They would make few trips more to while the build was in progress at the factory before the final delivery of the finished product to their site in the UK. The trucks from Germany with German technicians arrived on the dot (typical Germans) in the morning but had to wait a couple of hours for the local crane operator to show. With utmost precision and professionalism, it was amazing to see how they built the unit within days without much trouble. And did I mention that while the old house had to be torn down to make way for the new house, the owners lived in a rickety caravan just adjacent to the site? Quirky moments were one of the things why we like watching the show.

The house that we want to build is a grand design from our own point of view but is definitely not TV material so it’s apt to be called small projects. 

Back to the show, it is hosted by Kevin McCloud, an industrial designer turned TV personality. Boasting a very laidback style of presenting, Kevin also narrates and writes the script which as a result, make him ‘one’ with it. The only thing that perhaps needs addressing is his sense of dressing. Needless to say, he’s passionate about the subject matter. And the architect that we want is the ultra cool presenter's namesake.

Opulence is not our style of choice and all that we want is only straight lines. Of course, the architect is also into simple lines and clean design and minimalism judging from the pictures on his website. This one ought to strike a chord with him.

The last card had a picture of a British mailbox (pillar box to be more accurate) on it. And we said we like his mailbox better. Besides being an architect, he also takes a stab at designing furniture and other accessories around the house and we think he is rather good at it. Of course, there was an actual mailbox he designed that we saw on the Internet.

38 MPC stands for 38 Mount Park Crescent, our home address in Ealing, London.

So, do you get the postcards now?