It was indeed wonderful to have the celebrated social media satirist Affendi Salleh amongst our ranks. In Volume 36 Volume 1, Affendi contributed ‘Surat (Terbuka) Kepada Arkitek Muda’ where observations of the idiosyncrasies of the Malaysian architectural practice environment are commented upon in a palatable and humorous manner. Affendi contributes a second article in this issue of AM.

In one of his observations posed to me, he asks if more critical views of architecture are being filtered out from this magazine, leaving us with descriptive text of projects often written by the architect. My views are that in AM, we are keen to publish written reviews of buildings by third-party writers, and we welcome the contributions of those who are keen to do so, efforts towards having building reviewers shall be explored in the coming issues.

I concur with Affendi that the dearth of innovation in public buildings such as schools, public housing, hospitals, and wet markets needs to be urgently addressed. The recent competition held for the Bukit Mertajam Wet Market convened by PAM in collaboration with Majlis Bandaraya Seberang Perai (MBSP) is a successful model to emulate for other public interest projects of a medium to large scale. The BM Wet Market Competition, with an allocation of RM28 million, can be considered a medium-sized public facility. Competitions could prove cumbersome for the large number of small public works required across the country in any given year. A horses-for-courses approach should be adopted in the procurement of public facilities.

PAM has its work cut out to carry out its role in advising the government on suitable procurement methods and where Architects can contribute to elevating the quality of our public facilities. With a short council term of 10 effective months, a policy vision of 5 years should guide the institute to respond to the needs of our members and the industry at large.

As with previous years, Issue 2 of Volume 36 features the work of the winners as well as shortlisted entries of the PAM Awards 2024. A total of 107 submissions were received, against 120 from the previous year. Of this number, 40 projects were shortlisted, and 17 projects were awarded prizes. The jury citations address why these buildings were deemed worthy of the awards bestowed, and it would be up to our dear readers to render their personal opinions on the merits of the jury’s selection.

Repeating my call from a year ago, we welcome all members of our fraternity who are keen to write critical reviews of exemplary buildings to communicate and articulate why something ought to be celebrated as a fantastic work of architecture. I am also open to receiving critiques of the awards process and ideas on how it may be further improved upon. As an institute, we should always strive to do be#er than before.

Malaysian architects must also be bold and open to being professionally evaluated by globally renowned architecture publications and award programmes. We must be confident to be open to scrutiny at an international level to determine if indeed the quality of our work is of an international standard – this includes the projects awarded by PAM.

David WL Teoh
Editor-in-Chief, Architecture Malaysia