Exploring Design and Architecture with Steem

Hello, I'm @kimzwarch!

I am a practicing graduate architect, based in Malaysia. Along with @kymio, not only we are striving to become a licensed architect, we want to contribute to the society by creating more value than just designing buildings. In Steem platform, I am also the co-founder of @archisteem which I initiated along with two other partners, @cklai and @funtraveller. This is part of the extension of my own brand @kimzwarch to expand more channels for me to engage with the large and ever-growing Steem community.

In real life, I am a keen traveler and love to visit places and meeting people with different background and interest. The principle that I believe is that when I walk out from my comfort zone and put myself on an adventure, the boundary of my world will become limitless and I will be more open to more ideas and collaboration with any potential partners in all parts of the world (just like how Steemit works). I am someone who believes in social culture whereby every one of us will have some attachment to a certain group of community and fond of a certain spectrum of culture. By understanding these social culture aspects, I could understand a person deeper and establish a better mutual relationship with them.

Another point for myself is that I am very into advocating better quality living environment for the future generation. In this realm, I am more focus on agritecture (a combination of architecture and agriculture like urban farming) and also the affordability of housing in the urban area. One of my recent planning is to launch a smart urban farm in a matured community near to my living town, which happens to be the smart city of Malaysia. Nonetheless, there are lots of work that needs to be done before things can happen and I also looking for partners who can work with me in terms of financing and business development. As for affordable housing, it is a joint research with different entities which include my company, public university, other private consultancy firms and also a private institution. Our ultimate goal is to make affordable housing more accessible to the public, especially the quantity of supply and the quality of the work.

I was introduced into the blockchain world by my friend, @cklai. Steemit is my first encounter with the blockchain world. Before that, I read about blockchain and also cryptocurrency whereby I wanted to understand the mechanism and philosophy behind this new technology. However, without practical experience, it does not bring any much impact on me. Once I was given an opportunity to start playing with blockchain, I started without any hesitation. My aim is simple, to explore, understand and turn blockchain into my tools. That is why I am still here with Steem and still very keen to utilize the technology to more of my works.

@cklai and me during our Master of Architecture Convocation in 2017

Nonetheless, the main driver for me to explore blockchain technology is that industry like architecture and engineering consultancy services is very old and in need of innovation to improve the efficiency and quality of service as a whole. Thus, it is no more about in-house innovation but an open source collaboration between ‘competitors’ to make the consultancy services work better and serve better to the society. Due to the complex structure of roles and responsibilities in this field, I think that blockchain could deliver some way to go around such complex issue, especially on the transparency issue, trust building between collaborators and also genuine of information. This will require me to understand not only the blockchain technology but also the building industry I am in before I could understand the full view of the ecosystem. Nevertheless, it is very exciting to dig on and spark new ideas to improve bit by bit.

Goals Looking Forward

1. Archisteem community building

This is the main goal which is to build @archisteem into an interactive and established a group of the community consist of people with different background but bear the similar vision which is to improve our future living environment. @sndbox and @teammalaysia have been my inspiration since the very start and I wanted to create a community that discusses topics surrounding built environment, like how I listed in the @archisteem introductory post.

2. 1001 Places to Remember project under @archisteem

This is the first project launched by the @archisteem team to get more people to be involved in the community. This project was first inspired by different #travel related posts that revolve around people sharing about their traveling experience. We then thought of why not we search and curate for some of the best stories out there, which we focus on people and places, and make it into real publication. The publication will then be shared not only within the Steem community but to the real world as well. Not only this could encourage more people to contribute to the community but it also helps to promote Steem.

Ultimately, the project is to provide a collection of well-curated stories from all around the world, by different people about the places they had been to or stay. By going through the collection, it is as if you are listening to 1001 people talking about their unique experience traveling places around the world. Aren’t this an amazing experience to have especially to the young kids who have not able to afford to explore the world on their own? This is the main value that we see in those amazing stories we collected.

This is one of the banners that we made to promote the project.

3. Branching into Archistarter

Archistarter is an idea marketplace which @cklai and I wanted to start by end of this year under @archisteem. During our time in architectural school, we found that there were a lot of great ideas that could become reality. However, due to the shortage of industry engagement, public feedback, and financing mechanism, the ideas cannot be put through a testing ground with its version of the Minimum Viable Product (MVP). Thus, the Archistarter is a place whereby anyone with a creative mind that has a great idea can share their idea up here and pitch to the community to see whether there is any possible collaborator, backers or commenters.

4. First blockchain based Architecture Idea Competition under Sndbox.

There are different kinds of competition being held on Steemit platform, but not architectural competition. We are thinking, why not? Besides being a gimmick in a sense, it also helps promote Steem to more users. The architecture competition can range from the idea to small furniture and sculpture to building proposals. However, the special thing about winning such competition is that not only the winners get to earn cryptos as a reward, the winners also get to engage different another platform like Archistarter, @fundition and more to fund and find collaborators for their project to kick off in the real world. That will keep the value of the created idea being stretch to a longer length of a period during which most of the competitions do not have.

What is your background and how have you found it impacted by crypto?

Being a practicing architect and entrepreneur wannabe, being immersed in this crypto and blockchain technology does impact my way of thinking and doing things.

First of all, I observed that intellectual property can be permanently linked with a single account and traceable. Although it has its pros and cons, the pros will be that creation of a person will have much more value than before as they can keep on creating design and products, publish them under the blockchain account and linked up. Then, this copyright or patent can be applied to worldwide nations (as long as it is recognized and protected under the law and regulations). As for the current copyright system, all the license have to be applied in the respective countries.

Besides that, I also learned about alternative ways to approach financing which are crowd-funding or go for ICO. The later is much more interesting as it involves creating a business module and creates a token that trades within the ecosystem of the business. However, it is important to be clear that the business has to be sustainable and feasible or else the token created will be just a shit coin in overall.

From my professional background, both of these affected me pretty much as architecture is very much related to copyright and getting the fund to realize the project. Hence, I see there will be more potential coming as I learn more about cryptocurrency and also blockchain.

What has been your experience so far on Steem and on other platforms?

The growth of myself on Steem platform is tremendous to me. I personally did not participate in other platforms other than Steem related ones due to limited energy and time. However, being able to focus and build something from Steem is something I never regret doing. My early experience was pretty confused and lost due to the lack of guidance. In addition, I am not a blogger at all when I started on Steem which made it even more challenging to write that frequent. Nonetheless, I kept it going and learned from different people like @bitrocker2020 and @zord189 from Team Malaysia, plus many more others! Moreover, during the peak price of Steem, I actually had some of it cashed out and funded myself on my trip to Taiwan which to me was astonishing. This had further convinced me to build something from the Steem ecosystem and help more people access to such fascinating platform.

What would you like to offer the Steem community?

The Steem community is a unique community that is innovative and engaging. Steem itself is not more than 3 years old plus and it has developed into a unprecedented growth and ecosystem. This truly amazed me as I never expect that I will be that much involved in Steem. The commitment of mine is pretty straightforward for the Steem community which is to build @archisteem into a sustainable and impactful community. This could empower more people to grow not only their wealth but to bring more talented people together and work on impactful projects that ultimately improve the future of our built environment.

^{My 2018 banner to remind me about keep on learning and focus on the four aspects Steem (Archisteem), Innovation (Agritecture), Professional (Kimzwarch) and Love (Kimiji).}

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This post was authored by @kimzwarch, a member of the sndbox incubator. Learn more, follow @kimzwarch or begin a conversation in the comment section below.

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Posted from my blog with SteemPress : https://sndbox.blog/exploring-design-and-architecture-with-steem/

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