THEORIES OF ARCHITECTURE & URBANISM [ARC61303] [ARC2224]
PROJECT 2: COGNITIVE MAPPING JOASH LIM YUN – AN 0317197
DR. LAKSHMI
The Streetscape of Star Hill City
INTRODUCTION The city of lights that is constantly busy day and night, ever lighting. The study of the image of the city is conducted in Bukit Bintang ( Star Hill) where observation are carried out to understand the theory behind the cognitive mapping drawn by various people who walks on the busy street of Kuala Lumpur. The city has drastically change over the recent years and is continuing to grow taller and taller, construction are constantly carried out to further improve the state of the city, this is due the attraction of the tourist and locals towards the star hill city. Shopping malls are booming, the street are capitalized by the commercial districts, a clear separation of path between the line of a food district and a shopping district. A few target has been acquired to provide a drawn cognitive mapping towards the appreciation of the walking street of their walking mode from the Bukit Bintang monorail to Pavilion. Ms. Yeong works at Times Square constantly walk around Bukit Bintang area for working reason and sometimes she will have her shopping time when she’s free. Mr. Lim grew up around city centre as he clearly remembers how the city changes over time with Ms. Leong; who drew a cognitive map of 1970’s of Bukit Bintang.
OBSERVATION AT SITE The human mind picks ups up a memory reflecting them on a piece of sheet, describing places, areas, names, fond memories and events that had happened. Some similarities of the drawings resulted to the same movement pattern based on the question asked regarding how they move about from Bukit Bintang monorail station to Pavilion. There are two walking paths from Bukit Bintang monorail station to Pavilion, one is from the Lot 10 (the commercial and shopping districts) and another is across the street where more food stalls and hotels are located. The food stall are mostly characterized as Indian and Arabian food.
Figure 1: The number of people circulating the commercial area as there were more shops
An observation was conducted to analyze the movement pattern of the people as how they circulate the spaces around the commercial area. It can be seen that the people walk rather slow as they see and shop around the building such as Lot 10, Fahrenheit 88 and even small niche market were attracting the attention of locals and the tourist. Apparently, the permanent small stalls shop were slowing the movement of the people as somehow or rather it provides an itch of glimpsing into the space of the small shops.
Figure 2: The stalls opposite the commercial blocks
The stalls creates a nodal point for locals and tourist as they stare about looking into the curtain glass. The movement pattern starts to change as from fast pace to slow pacing.
Some people who are giving out flyers indirectly causes the people to slow down as they are being distracted from moving from one point to another. Ice cream stall set up to provide service to customer whom thirst of cold sweet food. These small part of events interplays the affection towards the people circulating the space as how they orientate people around the street.
Figure 3: Ice cream stall
Figure 4: Flyers giving out to pedestrians
Traditionally, a walkway is one of the means of transportation which functions as a tool that connects the urban spaces and unites people and urban elements together (Wall & Waterman, 2009). The circulation of the two drawers (people on site) are of a circular manner, from going to the Pavilion using the commercial block and going back from the Pavilion using the opposite street. Another nodal point where people tend to remember is the Food Court below the ground level of Lot 10, the signage of different characteristics tends to lure the attention of pedestrian causing them to walk and look into the space, trying to understand the specialty of the place. Thus forming a node or an intersection point for certain people as mention by Kevin Lynch “Nodes may be both junctions and concentrationsâ€?. The red appearing on the green façade forms an intersection of movement pattern as people would eat at the corner area. The interesting architecture creates a concept of parasite on the Lot 10 shopping mall yet still able to blend to the surrounding. Figure 5: Lot 10 food court
Cognitive Mapping by Author
The dotted particles indicates the intensity of the people. Mostly of the gather point were about the intersection point which is cross junction as they wait about for the traffic light to turn green (pedestrian). From the Bukit Bintang monorail station to Pavilion, the male concentrates on moving toward the Pavilion although the female would prefer to look around the shops.
Figure 6: Intersection node point (traffic light)
Figure 7: Charles & Keith
Figure 8: Zara
The street is filled with people of different typology, such as tourist walking along the aisle, workers rushing to work, locals who casually shopping, students who comes along after school hours, and children following their families. Compared to other street users, tourists are those who travel at lower speed which make both distance and streetscape texture more relevant (Vojnovic, 2006).
Cognitive Mapping by Ms. Yeong
Yeong describes her movement pattern as how she circulates the area from Bukit Bintang monorail station to Pavilion, when she not in a hurry she would usually look around the shopping street at commercial blocks such as Vincci, H&M and Sephora and others. She would usually stop by the ice cream shop, this indirectly form as an intensive foci to and from which she is traveling (Lynch. K, 1959). When she is done doing her shopping in Pavilion she, would use the opposite street to get back to the monorail station but her pace would speed up as there was nothing much to look about as the stalls sells food. Although when she’s up early she sometimes uses the opposite road to buy some breakfast from WOLO hotel which the ground level consisting of bakery stall (Tous Les Jours), the node becomes memorable to her (Lynch. K, 1959). The Green lines indicates her movement towards Pavilion when she’s in hurry to specific location and the Blue line indicates her movement slowed down as she walks into stores for shopping while heading to Pavilion. The paths she identified, have continuity as well as an obvious functional necessity (Lynch. K, 1959) to how she turns back the alternate route as she heads home.
Cognitive Mapping by Mr. Lim
Mr. Lim has a similar pattern movement with Ms. Yeong as she would use his casual walking street on the right hand side which is the commercial area as there was more attraction compared to the opposite road besides, he mention there were too much construction on the left side road thus causing a danger to pedestrian. Both has a similar intuition of the left side of the road. The small shops on the same commercial street would consider to be blocking the flow of the pedestrian as some people tend to stop and see the shop therefore distracting other people’s movement to the Pavilion. He would normally rush to Pavilion and not look about the spaces within the commercial blocks such as the Fahrenheit.
Figure 9: Congested road due to narrow road blocked by the small shop lots.
Mr. Lim made a statement of the small stalls may and may not seem to be fascinating for the locals but for the foreigners or tourist, they may see it as something interesting. After he has done visiting Pavilion he would walk to the food lots and back to Bukit Bintang monorail station which is indicated in red arrow.
ANALATICAL REVIEW Landmarks are another type of point-reference, but in this case the observer does not enter within them, they are external. They are usually a rather simply defined physical object: building (Lynch. K, 1959). A mere conclusion can be summaries as people tend to draw the same landmark located at Bukit Bintang, it was explained as these landmark are noticeable from afar due to its height. Cognitive Mapping by Information Centre
The image was drawn by a guy who is at the information centre, the question asked was what are the possible mapping that is usually shown to the tourist or local who has no knowledge of Bukit Bintang area, thus a map shown was all the shopping mall located at the commercial street, which in line has a similarity of the map drawn by the Ms. Yeong and Mr. Lim.
Figure 10: Analysis of the street map
The district is generally separated by a path where the red indicates commercial block while the yellow indicates the mix use of shop lots. The road lead to one way incoming traffic from the Pavilion while the pedestrian movement has two alternatives walkway, one is at the commercial block the other is mix use shops. Through the analysis that has been conducted, the movement pattern around the commercial block is more congested and slower compared to the mix use pathway as comfort in walking has been associated with higher walking rates (Alfonzo, 2005). It is to be said that walkability (short distance) is link to how people orientated themselves in term of understanding permeability and legibility. Through identifying their location the drawers clearly known their way about when it comes to the way finder as they do work around the area. But as for the tourist the permeability about the street might be simple if they are moving from the monorail station to the Pavilion, as the street is in a single line heading towards the entrance of the Pavilion. The nodes can be important even when the physical form is shapeless and slippery (Lynch. K, 1959) as how they bring about the permeability of the street. The authors also state that urban context is about relationships, and the legibility of these often complex relationships allows us in turn to make sense of the city (Ujang, N., Salim, A., & Maulan, S., 2012
The hatched colour building indicates the landmark that the locals usually known when describing Bukit Bintang. But as for the tourist, small niche shop would be consider as a landmark nodal point as they find them rather interesting as they appear to blend in to the street of the commercial site along with the big building such as Fahrenheit and Lot 10. Edges are the linear elements not used or considered as paths by the observer. They are the boundaries between two phases, linear breaks in continuity: shores, railroad cuts, edges of development, walls (Lynch. K, 1959). The edges form are the roadway along the stretch with the monorail station. CONCLUSION Cognitive Mapping by Ms. Leong
Before the existent of Pavilion, a secondary school was held at the exact area located and the commercial area was an area of squatters houses and wet market, after many year of demolishment of the school, Bukit Bintang undergo a major change in term of district, as commercial start to rise among the area, the residential were moved out for shopping mall to take place. The image of the place has change drastically after decades, as now the area is grew larger in context and more commercialized. Besides, it became one of the popular spot for shopping spree. The high rise of the building with its architectural elements are modernizing thus the image of the city has change from a quiet street into a busy street.
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Lynch, K. (1960). The Image of The City. Cambridge, Massachusetts: The MIT press
Vojnovic, I. (2006). ‘Building Communities to Promote Physical Activities: a multiscale geographical analysis.’ Journal Compilation of Geographical Analysis 88(B) I: 67-90.
Wall, E. & Waterman, T. (2009). Urban Design. United Kingdom: AVA Publishing.