At Universiti Teknologi Malaysia (UTM), Measured Drawing exercises have developed over the last four decades. In the early 1960s, the curriculum required students to do “building surveys” and produce sketches and text pin pointing significant buildings and giving some idea of their historical context. As for this year, one of the historical building that we measured is our own PM's birth home situated in Bukit Bius, Kuala Lipis, Pahang, Malaysia.
This form of documentation, where groups of students were sent out to survey and eventually stay on site to measure and document the history of a building, has carried on until the present at UTM. What’s different now is that, after two decades, photographic evidence and oral history is recorded in a more formal manner.
There were a few reasons why Measured Drawing as a subject came about. The first was that students were required to “learn from the masterpieces of history”, as this kind of study would sharpen their constructional, structural, and historical knowledge. In other words, the pedagogy was “object oriented”. The building was everything.
There was also some idea of learning about the culture of the people that used to inhabit the structures, but this was only a by-product, deemed necessary only to understand spaces, ornaments, and structural forms. Enjoy&Godbless.
