A talented team of Master of Architecture students from TAR UMT secured a spot in the Top 20 of the prestigious 8th Guangdong-Hong Kong-Macao Greater Bay Area-ASEAN International Colleges Design & Construction Competition 2025. The results were announced in late January 2026.
Known colloquially as the Nansha Bamboo Competition, the event is a premier annual international challenge that brings together architecture and design students from across the Greater Bay Area and the ASEAN region.
The TAR UMT team, comprising Tee Ding Yao, Lim Mai Khee, Er Teck Zheng, Chong Jit Liang, and Daniel Lim Wai Zhong, got the judges’ attention with their project titled Whisper of the Sky. Inspired by the stillness of birds at rest, the design focused on ‘touching the earth lightly’.
The team utilised a sophisticated blend of:
- Bamboo members for structural integrity.
- Tensile fabric and cable systems to create wing-like canopies.
- A modular system designed for efficient assembly within a 4m x 6m site constraint.
The result was a lightweight pavilion that balanced compression and tension, offering shelter while maintaining a seamless visual connection to the surrounding natural landscape.
The Whisper of the Sky structure
Participating during their Master’s semester break, the students saw the competition as an opportunity to push the boundaries of their academic studio work and enhance their international portfolios. Under the guidance of supervisors Pang Ling Xiang and Ar Idr Esmonde Yap Shiwen, the team navigated the complexities of working with bamboo—a material they had limited experience with in real-world construction.
"One of the main challenges was translating an abstract and poetic concept into a structurally feasible design using bamboo," the team shared. "Through iterative design development and physical model testing, we achieved a balance between design expression and construction practicality."
The team credited their success to the robust foundation provided by the curriculum at TAR UMT, which emphasises a balance between conceptual thinking and practical application.
"Being students of TAR UMT has equipped us with a strong balance of design creativity and technical knowledge," they noted, adding that this well-rounded strategy was key to navigating the competition's strict height limits and site boundaries.
The team also noted that being students of TAR UMT led them to each other as all of them are from different states and secondary schools in the country, namely Ding Yao ((Sekolah Menengah Kebangsaan (SMK) Rantau, Jalan Linsum, Negeri Sembilan)), Mai Khee (SMK Abu Bakar, 87, Pahang), Teck Zheng (SMK Taman Universiti, Johor Bahru, Johor), Jit Liang (SMK Jinjang, Kuala Lumpur) and Wai Zhong (SMK Dato Syed Esa, Batu Pahat, Johor)
