{"id":4301,"date":"2021-11-29T17:49:51","date_gmt":"2021-11-29T09:49:51","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.akademisains.gov.my\/asm-focus\/?p=4301"},"modified":"2022-11-07T10:27:46","modified_gmt":"2022-11-07T02:27:46","slug":"tropsc-webinar-series-joyful-chaos-in-the-tropics","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.akademisains.gov.my\/asm-focus\/tropsc-webinar-series-joyful-chaos-in-the-tropics\/","title":{"rendered":"TropSc Webinar Series | Joyful Chaos in the Tropics"},"content":{"rendered":"

[vc_row][vc_column][vc_column_text]On 3 September 2021, as part of the pre-conference webinar series \u201cThe Future Belongs to The Tropics\u201d leading up to the International Conference of Tropical Sciences (TropSc 2021), the Mahathir Science Award Foundation (MSAF) together with the Academy of Sciences Malaysia (ASM) successfully hosted a public discourse on the \u201cjoyful chaos\u201d of cities in the Tropics.<\/p>\n

The speaker of the discourse, Ga\u00e9tan Siew, past President of the International Union of Architects and UN-Habitat Special Envoy, shared his views on the unique characters of tropical cities. Professor Dato\u2019 Seri Dr Mazlan Othman (Chair of TropSc 2021), started the webinar with her welcoming remarks, sharing her view that the \u201cchaos\u201d arisen from transition in tropical cities can eventually to lead to creativity and growth.<\/p>\n

During Ga\u00e9tan\u2019s sharing, he first took a deep dive into exploring the role of traditional knowledge in Dushanbe, the capital of Tajikistan. He described the city as having an invisible layer of knowledge that is only shared among the locals or those that have deep knowledge of the city. He mentioned that such layers of knowledge are often seen in emerging worlds, such as colonial cities. Ga\u00e9tan expressed that these cities are usually the combination of two types of cities: spontaneous cities and top-down approach cities.<\/p>\n

He then went on to outline the different evolving visible layers of cities, such as the space, the people, its function, and time. An eye-opening insight Ga\u00e9tan shared was that besides the visible layers mentioned, cities are also made up of invisible layers such as the layers of people that move to and from different locations. He said, \u201cThe world is made of mobility for survival and better life, in terms of refugee movement, exchange of ideas, goods services and trading, and capital.\u201d<\/p>\n

The audience was brought to full amazement as Ga\u00e9tan related the repetition of geometric patterns in plants, such as fractal leaf patterns to the organization of cities such as Mumbai, Istanbul, and Naples. These cities, in terms of land-use efficiency and resource optimisation, are organised in an invisible manner. Ga\u00e9tan also emphasised other elements of cities such as languages, desire as an invisible knowledge, innovation, and materials that are provided a second life through transformation.<\/p>\n

As he reached the end of his presentation, Ga\u00e9tan explained that a new layer of the city has emerged as a response to the post-pandemic situation. This new layer consists of internet connections that do not require any physical infrastructure. His words left the audience some food for thought to figure out the future of our cities and its multiple layers.<\/p>\n

All in all, the discourse session thoroughly intrigued the audience. During his presentation Ga\u00e9tan referenced and recommended two books that you may want to add to your reading list:<\/p>\n

(a) The God of Small Things by Arundhati Roy<\/p>\n

(b) Invincible Cities by Italo Calvino<\/p>\n

<\/i><\/div>
\n

This webinar is a free pre-conference event leading up to the International Conference on Tropical Sciences (TropSc) 2021 to be held from 25-27 October 2021. Ga\u00e9tan Siew will be speaking at the conference during our Smart People-First Cities in the Tropics panel session. To register and find out more about the Conference, visit msa-foundation.org\/TropSc2021<\/a><\/em>. <\/em><\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

Prepared by Ms Celine Ng.<\/em><\/p>\n

<\/div><\/div>\n[\/vc_column_text][vc_video link=”https:\/\/youtu.be\/-Chq9L6uZhY” el_width=”60″ align=”center”][\/vc_column][\/vc_row]<\/p>\n<\/div>","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

On 3 September 2021, as part of the pre-conference webinar series \u201cThe Future Belongs to The Tropics\u201d leading up to the International Conference of Tropical Sciences (TropSc 2021), the Mahathir Science Award Foundation (MSAF) together with the Academy of Sciences Malaysia (ASM) successfully hosted a public discourse on the \u201cjoyful chaos\u201d of cities in the Tropics. The speaker of the discourse, Ga\u00e9tan Siew, past President of the International Union of Architects and UN-Habitat Special Envoy, shared his views on the unique characters of tropical cities. Professor Dato\u2019 Seri Dr Mazlan Othman (Chair of TropSc 2021), started the webinar with her welcoming remarks, sharing her view that the \u201cchaos\u201d arisen from transition in tropical cities can eventually to lead to creativity and growth.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":4275,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":true,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[448],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-4301","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-october-2021"],"aioseo_notices":[],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/www.akademisains.gov.my\/asm-focus\/wp-content\/uploads\/sites\/10\/2021\/2107-09\/NW_2021_July-Aug-Sept_Layout_11.png","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/pajCBQ-17n","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.akademisains.gov.my\/asm-focus\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4301","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.akademisains.gov.my\/asm-focus\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.akademisains.gov.my\/asm-focus\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.akademisains.gov.my\/asm-focus\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.akademisains.gov.my\/asm-focus\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=4301"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/www.akademisains.gov.my\/asm-focus\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4301\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":4303,"href":"https:\/\/www.akademisains.gov.my\/asm-focus\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4301\/revisions\/4303"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.akademisains.gov.my\/asm-focus\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/4275"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.akademisains.gov.my\/asm-focus\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=4301"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.akademisains.gov.my\/asm-focus\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=4301"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.akademisains.gov.my\/asm-focus\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=4301"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}