ABSTRACT
The ubiquitous community hall in the Malaysian landscape, as it stands now, has long passed its time of usefulness.These community halls go by many names: dewan serbaguna, dewan orang ramai or even balai raya. However, as it stands today, the community hall in our midst is nothing more than a large empty space used for games like badminton or ping pong and the occasional event. The changing modern Malaysian society demands more of this simple, out-dated facility; there must be a place for the various ethnic groups to meet and fulfill modern needs such as family days, health checks, child’s play, music lessons and other important functions. The present dewan serbaguna (multipurpose halls) are, in our opinion, dewan serbatak-guna (unused halls). The idea of an all-functioning room dates back a century ago to Mies van der Rohe’s idea of universal spaces. This idea was logical, attractive and simple: put up a long span of space with no interior columns and make it high enough to suit functions such as sports and community gatherings. The problem with this idea is that the room is valid for two purposes only: community gatherings that occur once in a blue moon and a weekly badminton game. This paper strives to identify and analyse some of the
architectural problems in current community centres in Malaysia with the focus on the spatial aspects and space usage. The discussion will consist of four major parts: community centre development in Malaysia, the types of community centres in Malaysia, case studies of the situations of current community centres in Malaysia and architectural problems in Malaysian community centres. It is expected that this paper can give a clear picture of the problems faced by Malaysian community centres with some considerations and a framework to develop a new scheme for community centre development in the future.
