Quest for Big Architecture

TALL buildings, shallow architecture. Big mosques, small stature. In Malaysia, we are short of architects with spiritual substance to inspire the younger generation beyond just architecture.

We need architects whose focus is on building a sustainable society for all Malaysians and not just building taller buildings or bigger places of worship.

We need architects whose works also create “buildings” within the spiritual realm with a vision of upholding the ideals of the Rukun Negara.

Humans are hardwired to tell and listen to stories. So, architects must be able to integrate their professional expertise and spiritual experience into a single narrative that would serve as the foundation to weave a story of humanity, cutting across ethnicity and religion.

This would be a perfect example of the “idle thought” theory expounded by renowned Chinese philosopher Wang Dongyue in his book A Unified Theory of Evolution: Natural, Mental and Social (2019): “Human nature is the expression of all beings; human being is the miniature of the universe.”

All in all, we want architects who are storytellers that can narrate a story, much like history underlies the whole evolutionary spectrum of humanity. To give the story a larger-than-life quality while also making it appealing to ordinary people walking on the street or surfing the Internet, a no-nonsense, evidence-based approach is paramount.

In our efforts to search for such talented storytellers among members of the architect community, the Asian Big History Association has teamed up with the International Big History Association (IBHA) to hold a webinar titled “Big Architecture: Building a Sustainable Society for Humanity” on July 9 at 9pm local time (https://bit.ly/3QaFE5g).

We have invited three architects respectively from Malaysia, the Netherlands and China to join our efforts to search for such talented storytellers.

To give the “headhunt” a flavour of Big History, two Big Historians from Japan and the United States will also be participating in the discussion. We cordially invite you to join us in the search to design and build a global spiritual community.

Established 10 years ago, the IBHA is a young organisation that tells a very old story. It is a platform that seeks to understand a young discipline called “Big History”, which is rooted in the innate curiosity of humanity since time immemorial. The discipline gained momentum after the highly exalted philanthropist, Bill Gates, together with the founding president of the IBHA, David Christian, began planning for the Big History Project (BHP) in 2010 (https://bit.ly/3Nsdml8), which culminated in the TED talk (https://bit.ly/3O2TSna) with the launch of the BHP, a free-for-all online course.

We want the efforts or webinar to be led or moderated by a young Big Historian who can represent the younger generation.

The idea is to give an opportunity for youngsters to hone their leadership skills in managing differences. After all, the generation to come is going to have to manage the planet with all the problems we, the older generation, created for them.

TAN CHEE KEONG

South-East Asian Coordinator,

Asian Big History Association

(The Star columnist Prof Dr Mohd Tajuddin Mohd Rasdi is one of the three architects in the panel)