FDSA 2026: Ar. Dr. Chang Choong Yew from Tunku Abdul Rahman University of Management and Technology on Future Design Star’s Progressive Platform

by Monisha Sivanesan

Ar. Dr. Chang Choong Yew inculcates the importance of education beyond the four classroom walls in his students, and with hopes of branching out to the masses, he helps induct Tunku Abdul Rahman University of Management and Technology into the Future Design Star Award initiative

After Prof. Dato’ Indera Ir. Dr Lee Sze Wei, President of Tunku Abdul Rahman University of Management and Technology (TAR UMT) signed the MOU agreement with the 2026 Future Design Star Award (FDSA), Ar. Dr. Chang Choong Yew—Associate Dean of the School of Architecture, Faculty of Built Environment—kindly sat down with us for a short interview on his prevailing expectations around the initiative and for his participating students.

For over five decades, TAR UMT has prided itself on its ‘Beyond Education’ approach to learning, where its role to mould and equip students to be global leaders and thinkers goes beyond the confinement of a classroom setting. Having since adapted its courses to run in line with the new norms of the world, the institution equips its students with firsthand industry insight, making it almost a given for the institution to join FDSA: an initiative developed to submerge students in an experience mimicking the competitive nature of the Malaysian design scene.

Tunku Abdul Rahman University of Management and Technology signs MOU with Future Design Star Award

Exclusive interview with Ar. Dr. Chang Choong Yew

Why did Tunku Abdul Rahman University of Management and Technology join FDSA? What do you hope to result from joining as an institution?

We are very excited that ACG Media is willing to enter into a strategic partnership and collaboration with TAR-UMT, especially our School of Architecture, which comprises the architecture and interior architecture programmes. This is a good opportunity for students to not only get their design work exposed and published but also to be seen by renowned industry players via networking. With that, I think there will be a higher chance of students getting employment after they graduate.

With this partnership, we also hope that our school can obtain industry linkage in the future, meaning that we hope to have more industry projects which will be integrated with the students’ design studio works. We believe that the students will enjoy partaking in the design process more, knowing that it is a real-world project and not just an academic one—these are the few aspects that we are most excited about.

What specific expectations do you have for the students who participate in the initiative?

Apart from hoping that they will do well in their projects, we hope that they enjoy studying interior architecture and architecture and that they become successful architects and interior designers in the future with the help of ACG Media who’ll publish their work and help them network with the industry.

Most educators often focus too much on how to match the curriculum with the industry when in actuality, education itself should be nurtured and preserved. Many parents and even educators think that education serves its purpose purely just for employment; I do not quite agree with that.

I believe education has its own purpose. It is to make a person develop independently and become a good decision maker. So, we hope that through this process of design education in the School of Architecture [with FDS being a part of it], students learn to become independent thinkers and be able to advise their clients independently without just strictly following the client’s instructions.

About the 2026 Future Design Star Award

The Future Design Star Award is an initiative that seeks to discover and platform young talents within verified design institutions across the nation whose work reveals an immense level of potential for the industry. With a unique system in place, ACGMEDIA works directly with a handful of distinguished schools and academies across Malaysia to bottleneck only the very best projects—eliminating the ambiguity of participants and solidifying the relationship between the institution and its award candidate students.

The Future Design Star Award evaluation process requires each member institution to submit a fixed number of their very best student projects. The top three students of each school will then present to a panel of esteemed judges to compete for the ultimate prize: winning at the DOTY level. Following this, the three student projects that led the live presentation stage will receive their win at the DOTY 2026 ceremony, where they gain access to a crowd of Malaysia’s most elite design studios and industry partners.

For more information, please visit
Tunku Abdul Rahman University of Management and Technology | www.tarc.edu.my

Keep up to date with the 2026 Future Design Star Award through the official Designer of the Year (DOTY) Awards Facebook page!