Architecture Competition Greening the Industrial City Honorable mention winners – Susanto Soenjoyo, Reyhan Frumentius Layrenz, Zen Zhang and Nevin Yu

We’d like to take the opportunity to introduce you to one of our Honorable mention winners for our "Greening the Industrial City" competition – Susanto Soenjoyo, Reyhan Frumentius Layrenz, Zen Zhang and Nevin Yu from Indonesia!

Honorable mention from Indonesia

PlaceMaking Architects (PMA) studio was established in 2018 with people as the main focus, altogether with our common passion to provide a better environment for our adjacent neighborhood. Currently we have a total of 8 people set across worldwide in 3 locations. Headquartered in Hong Kong, during these past few years PMA already expanded its office to Shenzhen and just recently to Indonesia.

We work closely with clients to provide cutting-edge design solutions to deal with projects of different scales and help customers solve various problems encountered in project development and provide design decision consulting services. In 2022, PMA was awarded the “Best Emerging Architecture & Urban Design Practice Asia Pacific – 2022” by Build Architecture Awards.

Brief information about the projects that you/your company have been involved with. For instance, what scale have you focused on/preferred, any significant projects where the company/ individuals have been involved?

PMA focuses on various types of urban design and conceptual planning with a wide range of projects scale, ranging from architectural building (500-50,000 sqm) to city-planning projects (200-1,000 hectares). We are also widely involved in architecture, landscape design and interior design projects of commercial/retail, office, medical, hotel and other typologies. PMA aims to create diverse sophisticated and vibrant places and spaces for cities. Our projects mostly revolved in dilapidated site context which is a worldwide phenomenon that needs to be tackled with careful investigations. We are currently working on a few large scale urban regeneration masterplanning in China with the main focus to create a resilient development.

What does architecture mean to you and what is the role of an architect in your society?

Architecture is more than just creating beautiful buildings forms and facades, it’s about creating places and spaces that can sustain and nurture community. As urban designers, we often collaborate closely with architects and other disciplines to create a better built environment in our cities where we live and work and play. The role of architects is becoming more and more prominent these days and our work could and should be able to be experienced and enjoyed by all.

Why do you participate in architecture competitions?

We participate in architecture vision competitions as our means to improve our creativity and skill sets. PMA is composed of designers that are longing to create a better environment through practical solutions. Despite our busy schedule, we always try to spare time to join competitions to give the opportunity especially for our junior staff to learn and grow. By joining these competitions, not only it gives us knowledge of current problems and issues, but it also provides us the chance to research the latest trend of this discipline.

What advice would you give to individuals who struggle to decide whether it would be beneficial for them to participate in architecture competitions?

Be bold, be creative, be intuitive but also be responsible. It is often that we forget that we as designers have unimaginable endless capabilities to change the world. While participating in these competitions gives you limitless freedom, we should always be reminded that architecture is meant for people to enjoy and grow.