The Inspiration, Story Museum

The Sungai Buloh Settlement was established for a reason. In the 1920s, many leprosy patients were isolated from society at a leprosarium in Setapak, Kuala Lumpur. The leprosarium was like hell on earth. Life was dull, and many of the patients there wanted to run away. Those who were unable to flee could only rely on government-supplied opium to numb their pain.

The Sungai Buloh Settlement is the second largest leprosarium in the world. The settlement is situated 25.6 km from Kuala Lumpur. It was officially opened on 16th August, 1930. There is a multifunction hall, Dewan Orang Ramai which is situated at the entrance of the settlement. The hall was serve as a community space for the patient for having different outdoor activities. The hall was a gather spot for the patients to gather and communicate. It was the soul of the whole settlement. However,

In our final project we are required to create insightful and innovative designs to convert existing community hall ‘Dewan Orang Ramai’ of Sungai Buloh Settlement into a story museum, a place to commemorate the history of Sungai Buloh Settlement.

We are encouraged to think of a new museum typology that redefines the idea of the museum in contemporary culture. With architecture as the narrator, or as memory container. The museum will house a numbers of artifacts collected from the leprosy sufferers, old photos, documents, drawing, models and all kind of materials that represent the story of the Disease, the Place and the People.

In our previous project, we do a lot of analysis and study about the settlement to reinterpret our idea into a installation. In the final project, I try to design the story museum base on the emotional story and information of the victims. I feel very interested about their own story. They were affected by the same disease and they live together in the settlement during the segregation, but there is a lot of different story and experienced. All the story and experience was happened in different period and different era. Instead of focusing the disease which affected the patients, I would like to concentrate on the emotional part of their story.

During the research and study, I found that the settlement as an architecture which was built to segregate the patients and the society. And this make the patients was rejected by the society even they were recovered due to the appearance of the cure.The segregation had created a gap in between the patients and the society. I was inspired by the door of the house in the settlement. It is very different that each of the door was attached with a different number tag to show the date of the patient enter the settlement. This is use for the management to record their information. The door is very interesting that it was contained with different memory of the patients, and it actually speaks and told a story which is related to the patients who lived inside the settlement. I create a kind of installtion inside the museum which is to recovered back the scenario and situations. Althought, the visitor could touch and feel the door , they can't see throught the installation and know what is the situation inside the installation. The visitor might need to go till the top to see and feel.

I was inspired by their different story too in placing all the spaces of the museum according the timeline. Different era having different story and contents in the independence spaces. I place two spaces which is the climax of the whole timeline look like floated to enhance the core of my idea to show the unstability and sorrowful life of the patients on that situation.