Good Planning and Design

I’m taking you Hangzhou to this tea house. You will notice the white building in the background and the surrounding area you see the beautifully landscape, plants and vegetation that has been provided. You will notice here there is a little pond, if you look carefully underneath the tree on the right-hand side there is tea pot sculpture there. You are in a tea house and it provided this sculpture to create a sense of place and the intended atmosphere. Taking you again now to West Lake, along the full shore notice what you find the trees, the flower in the garden bit on the right-hand side, so use landscaping to maximize we feel.

I’d like to share with you a series of pictures and ask you when you look at these pictures tell me, what’s wrong with these pictures?

Taking you here to Macau to Fisherman’s Wharf, what’s wrong with this picture? Yes,here we have a traditional roman style building, and you see a candy chaos. Now we all like candy, but is this appropriate to have this colorful modern style candy chaos next to this traditional room style building? It doesn’t fit in, it’s not appropriate. Taking you here again to Fisherman’s Wharf in Macau. When you go to Europe, you look at this European style building will you ever come across Song room like this? Certainly not! Taking you to Leifeng pagoda in Hangzhou, I couldn’t believe this when I saw this pagoda. What do we see?

Two elevators and on the left an escalator, now yes,certainly we need to provide for the needs of the disable and the elderly, but is this what you should be doing? So as a planner what would you suggest? What would you do?

That’s the escalator and the elevator have be located exactly in front? Certainly not! If you are a good planner and you are thinking from sustainable perspective, you would locate some distant away or at the back, it doesn’t have to be where has been placed here. Taking you still in the ancient street, the old town of Hangzhou, you see the traditional building on ever side, if you look at the very end,what do you see? A modern style building it doesn’t fit in. From the sustainable planning perspective, what do you have done here?

You would put and impose restriction if there is gonna be any building of the end of the street, it must be developed and built in traditional Chinese style, then it would not look so out of place.

Good planning in design what do they involve? Mentioned here that right,there must be clear purpose. You need to prepare and research. And when I referring to research I’m talking about conducting market research, conducting your feasibility studies. Having a set of principles and guideline that I’ve shared with you the four basic principles of planning of order, balance, co-ordination and establishing an appropriate experience. It involves commitment of leadership because if you don’t have the commitment of leadership, then this gonna be little or no direction provider. So it’s important for your leadership to have a vision. Importantly as we can see in the slide that I’ve shared with you and I show you what’s wrong, attention to detail is very important.

When I share this picture of Marina Bay in Singapore, you know that they design the planning is boat and innovative. And when you look at this picture, if you’ve not been to Singapore before, you would probably want to say “Oh,I want to go there and visit and experience this particular resort attraction.” I’m taking you now to the Maldives, this is a Hilton Hotel room. When we look at this picture, where is the concrete?Where is the MABU? Where is the air-conditioning? There is no need air-conditioning here. So attention to detail. I’m taking you to Hong Kong Disneyland, you see on the left picture, how many mickeys are there? You see the real mickey, what others mickeys do you see?

You see in the fence,the blue mickeys is. If we look at the wood play, there are two more mickeys is and if you are looking at the distance of the background, there’s another mickey is. So in fact there are five mickeys here. Attention to details is one of the cool values and principles of the Disney Company. If you look at this carousal, which is a traditional red provided in all amusement and theme parks, you will notice at the crown of this particular carousal that it is gold colored. It’s not only gold colored,it’s gold plated.

Now if you were in the mainland department and you said to your supervisor and your boss, “Hey why do we save so money?This plated gold the guests and visitors to Disneyland will not know the difference.” But why do they insist upon ensuring that this is gold plated?Yes,the guest do not know. But it is for the benefit of Disney’s Club members or their employees. Because Disney said we are a quality company, we pride of ourselves in giving attention to the details. So obviously in their intention and training, they would have made reference to this illustrate, what is the important value and attribute of this company.