Reaction papers

BACHELOR OF SCIENCE (HONOURS) IN ARCHITECTURE THEORIES OF ARCHITECTURE AND URBANISM (ARC61303/ARC2224)

NAME: Choong Lai Mun LECTURER: Nicholas Ng SYNOPSIS NO:

SYNOPSIS: REACTION PAPER (MARCH 2015) [5 MARKS] ID: 0313573 TUTORIAL TIME: 4-6pm READER TITLE: The Death and Life of Great American Cities AUTHOR: Jane Jacobs

In my opinion, the author is trying to indicate the issues of current city planning and rebuilding that are conceptual based designs done by architects from the pass and now. Through the book, Jane Jacobs is trying to identify the problems appear in the current cities planning and how does it affect the community livings around it. Based on the issues, she then analyzes it and suggests her opinion to on how a city should be planned. From the book, she mentioned that the current city planning are very distinctly separated, causing much negative social issues. For instance, the “Contemporary City” created by Le Corbusier indicates that the city center is located in the center of the regions, surrounded by the suburban and industrial context. When community leaves home in the morning and head to the city to work, the environment in the suburban area will be left empty, causing the minimal usage of streets pathways and vice versa. In another words, the current city planning creates a very distinct separation between human and architecture where there are no neighborhood communication and social life. As a result, people have no feeling for their neighbors, and no identification with the area.

In the book, Jane Jacobs thinks that the most important component of the vitality is an abundant street life. She focuses a lot on the human usage and activity in the city and communication between human in the city to create a lively city. She thinks that the most important component of the vitality is an abundant street life. One of the elements is the condition for city diversity. She argues that to promote a good city, there should be a mixture of users that lives in a city whether they elderly, young, rich or poor in order to create a balanced city, for example the New York”s Greenwich Village and San Francisco’s Telegraph Hill that she had mentioned in the book. In order to achieve that, there should be mixtures of building usage, functions, and mixtures of building ages. In a whole, when compare her thoughts and Le Corbrusier idea of city planning, I feel that Jane Jacobs further focuses on the users of the city and how the city can be self-sustainable and impactful to the users. I do agree that it is very important to be able to connect people from one place to another in a city to create a culture and liveliness in a city. In my opinion, city should not be just a place where people stay or work, but also for them to create their very own community.

WORD COUNT: 439 ASSSESSED BY:

DATE: 11 April 2016

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BACHELOR OF SCIENCE (HONOURS) IN ARCHITECTURE THEORIES OF ARCHITECTURE AND URBANISM (ARC61303/ARC2224)

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SYNOPSIS: REACTION PAPER (MARCH 2015) [5 MARKS] ID: TUTORIAL TIME: READER TITLE: AUTHOR:

From the article by Diana Agrest and Mario Gandelsonas, I understand that they interpreted architecture into 2 main forms, which are ideology and theory. In addition to that, because of the strong ideology most architects are following currently, it limits the new breakthrough in architecture to form a new theory that would bring the level of architecture into a completely new level. Therefore, the authors see semiotics as a way to deepen the understanding of the production of meaning in architecture. I do agree the idea that an ideology is in a way, tying down the people’s thinking to be more creative because they take the ideology as a reference or a starting point to design or create things. As the authors providing ways to encourage the new theory of architecture, my question is, so what is the ideology of architecture now? What is the thing or the thoughts that architect trends are taking reference to? As what the authors mentioned in the article, the theoretical blockade in architecture happened where architecture now are witnessed as a temporary fashion at the level of technique. I personally do not considered this as a failure in producing a new theory but a process into a successful one. This is because human behavior and thoughts changes every day and architecture are changing rapidly in order to fit the needs and demands of the new society. I think that is more of an objective of architecture, not an ideology of architecture. For instance, fashion design is designed for the people to be wear on top. As time goes by, we can see that fashion design keeps changing every season, even every day, from the material of the dress to the way a dress is made. There were a lot of evolutions in it. However, no matter how it changes, it still ties down to the objective, which is to serve the human needs. This happens exactly in architecture, I think that architecture is an art that serves human, and the environment, it evolves naturally to fit the new social environment. It is with an objective, not an ideology, or a theory. In conclusion, I do not agree with the whole idea of ideology or theory in architecture.

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BACHELOR OF SCIENCE (HONOURS) IN ARCHITECTURE THEORIES OF ARCHITECTURE AND URBANISM (ARC61303/ARC2224)

NAME: Choong Lai Mun LECTURER: Nicholas Ng SYNOPSIS NO: 3

SYNOPSIS: REACTION PAPER (MARCH 2015) [5 MARKS] ID: 0313573 TUTORIAL TIME: 4-6pm READER TITLE: The Geometry of Feeling AUTHOR: Juhani Pallasmaa

The article The Geometry of Feeling by Juhani Pallasmaa discuss about the relationship between the architectural form and how architecture is experienced. In the text, he mentioned that architecture nowadays are too focus on the form of the building rather than the user experience in the building itself, it is the spatial experience of the architecture that gives the users a memorable feeling to the building that they visited. He also said that new buildings now do not leave memories for the users and gives no feeling to the user at all. I do agree with his argument that user experience is the core and the soul of an architecture. However, I do not think that the form of building is solely a meaningless ornamentation hat gives no feeling to the users like what he had mentioned in the article. In fact, I think that the form or the physical look of the building plays a crucial role in the architecture as it act as the first impression of the building to the user whether the user would choose to experience the building or not. Another statement that hit me the most was he mentioned that people today completely mistaken when they claim that buildings should be designed for the needs of real people and asked that which architecture was not built for the idealized of man. He argued that it is the element of the architecture that gives feeling and memories to the users. I, in this case, do not agree with what he argued. I feel that it is the people, the users that use the architecture and the space that leaves memories for themselves, not the architecture itself. It is not like what he mentioned, designing a building that evokes the users’ feeling, but rather design a building that fits the usage of the people. If the building fits the usage of the users, they would come by more often and eventually the users themselves create their own memories and feeling of the architecture. In conclusion, I do agree on the main statement he made which was the importance of the user experience. However, I would have a few opinions on his arguments about how an architecture would create feeling and memories to the users.

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BACHELOR OF SCIENCE (HONOURS) IN ARCHITECTURE THEORIES OF ARCHITECTURE AND URBANISM (ARC61303/ARC2224)

NAME: Choong Lai Mun LECTURER: Nicholas Ng SYNOPSIS NO: 4

SYNOPSIS: REACTION PAPER (MARCH 2015) [5 MARKS] ID: 0313573 TUTORIAL TIME: 4-6pm READER TITLE: Towards a Critical Regionalism AUTHOR: Kenneth Frampton

From the chapter Cultural Versus Nature, he strongly emphasized on the importance of architecture reacting to the topography of the site giving meaning to the architecture itself in terms of its prehistory of the place, archeological past and its culture when compared to a meaningless tabula rasa tendency of modernization of architecture than built over a flat bulldozed irregular topography. Besides that, he also stated that other than topography and context, climatic and light response of an architecture should also be considered. He criticized the used of artificial lighting and air-conditioned in a building in recent modern architecture making the whole architecture “placeless”. I do partially agree on his statement about bulldozing an irregular topography of a site is as if taking away the history and the culture of the site and how climatic response plays a crucial role in making an architecture meaningful.

However, at the same time, I think removing the original topography of the place would not completely taking away the meaning of the site. In fact, it can be redefine by using other elements of architecture such as material used, the structure of the building or the use of light, etc. would also bring out the meaning and evoke the spatial experience of the culture and history of the site itself. On the other hand, on the chapter The Visual Versus the Tactile, Frampton mentioned on the domination of universal technology in architecture that gives priority to the look of the building and ignoring the fact that tactile is an important dimension in the perception of built form. In the text, he gave example of how the filmmaker Luchino Visconti emphasized on the use of real wooden parquet to allow the actors to be able to produce an appropriate and convincing postures. Not to mentioned also, Frampton also gave example of the building Alvar Aolto’s Saynatsalo Town Hall on how the tactile gives a total unique experience to users that cannot be explain through any kind of medium. In this chapter, I agree with Frampton’s emphasis on the user experience of the architecture in terms of tactile when compared to visual. This is similar to the statement by Juhani Pallasmaa in The Geomtry Of Feeling where he mentioned that architects should not primarily design buildings as physical objects, but the images and the feelings of the people who live in them. In conclusion, there are always pros and cons in every arguments or a statement of a philosopher. Sometime, there are also things that have to be considered in sight of an architect rather than a philosopher.

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