Theories and urbanism

Bachelor of Science (Honours) in Architecture

THEORIES OF ARCHITECTURE AND URBANISM (ARC2224) (ARC61303)

Project Part 2: THE IMAGE OF THE CITY AN ILLUSTRATED ESSAY WITH A COGNITIVE MAPPING OF SELECTED URBAN SPACES

NAME: STANLEY WONG KHUNG YOU STUDENT ID: 0317236 TUTOR: MR. LAM SHEN FEI

Site Boundary

Path Selected for Studies

I have chosen Dang Wangi as my site due to my unfamiliarity to the site, hoping to find something new and interesting about the site. As I had my first site visit there, I notice that Dang Wangi is very different as it has a lot of shops selling scarf and fabrics especially the shopping district around Jalan Tunku Abdul Rahman. There are a lot of foreign workers at the site mainly from Indonesia. The city is very crowded and the majority of people around are Malays. After spending one whole day at Dang Wangi

and having my own impression towards it, I would say Dang Wangi is a very active and modern city with multiracial people in it.

In this assignment, we are required to produce a cognitive mapping of the selected site in this case, Dang Wangi and also a comparative essay analyzing the cognitive mapping. Cognitive mapping can be defined as a process composed of a series of psychological transformations by which an individual acquires, codes, stores, recalls, and decodes information about the respective locations and attributes of phenomena in their daily spatial environment. To make it simple, a cognitive map is an overall mental image or representation of the space and layout of a setting. Irrelevant or unimportant information was excluded from the mental map. Thus, cognitive maps can be very different from an actual place. The differences between the mental representation and the physical characteristics of a location may reveal what humans and animals consider important, revealing the most authentic memory of each individual.

The requirement of this project is to create cognitive mapping of selected significant urban spaces in the city of KL (Dang Wangi) to understand peoples’ perception and spatial behaviour in cities today. First of all, I had a total of 3 site visits at Dang Wangi.

The first visit is to build up my own first impression to the site, the second is to request people to help me draw their cognitive mapping which failed miserably and verbal interview is taken up instead. The final visit is where I successfully acquire a few cognitive mappings and also some memories and impression of the person I encountered. Although the cognitive mappings they produced are simple, after studying and investigating the maps regarding the site, hypothesis and conclusion can be carried out successfully. I have chosen three cognitive maps based on gender, races, occupancy and site visiting intension.

Cognitive Mapping of Mr Jamal From the cognitive mapping of Mr Jamal, a Malay technician from Maytower Hotel, it shows the three iconic shopping malls around the area which are Sogo, Jakel Mall and Time Square . From my interview with him, he said that the reason he remember these buildings is because his wife love to go shopping in these shopping malls. There is another drawing of INSAF, a restaurant near Maytower Hotel which sells delicious Indian cuisine, a place he have lunch every day. Besides that, he drew a train shaped object with komuter as the annotation. After my studies, I found that Mr Jamal meant the Dang Wangi LRT station as the drawing looks like a LRT and it is closer to his working place. The first thing Mr Jamal drew was Sogo mall, a building remembered by most of the people that went to Dang Wangi. From my studies, the reason is because of Sogo’s strategic location at Dang Wangi. Sogo is located at the center of Dang Wangi, every road travelers will eventually pass through Sogo by either entering or leaving Dang Wangi. Besides that, there are lots of transportation options to reach Dang Wangi, as Mr Jamal said he uses variety of transportation methods to reach Dang Wangi to work, such as LRT, buses, and cars, and all those methods will pass by or uses Sogo as a stopping point. Sogo provides sufficient parking space for vehicle users and also having a very large food court for the people around the area. His wife likes to go shopping at Sogo is probably because Sogo is the first luxury shopping complex in Malaysia and every Friday, there will be sales and offers for their branded products such as handbags and clothes, thus the reason why people will line up outside of Sogo before its operation hour and also significant increase in traffic jam around the mall on Friday.

As for the second drawing, the Jakel Mall, another shopping complex recently rebuilt at Dan Wangi. Mr Jamal said that his wife loves to shop at the mall too, but when I noticed

the way he drew Jakel Mall, he actually drew out the façade of Jakel Mall while the façade of Sogo and Time Square remain as simple as possible due to his inability to draw, which mean that the façade of Jakel Mall somehow attract Mr Jamal’s attention and map itself into his memory.

Jakel Mall has an outstanding shape compare to the buildings around it, the lower half the building has a slightly curved front façade while the upper half of the building appears to be expanding the more it reach the top.

Upper Building

Lower Building

Jakel Mall Form Outine

The most eye catching design is the decorative steel mullion on the faรงade of the upper half of Jakel Mall, the slanted design makes the building unique and significant as the other buildings surrounding Jakel Mall are designed with verticality and horizontality.

Buildings around Jakel Mall

Cognitive Mapping of Mrs Tiong

The second cognitive mapping is from a local Chinese shop owner at Masjid India named Miss Tiong. Miss Tiong is a middle age lady inheriting her family business, thus staying around Dang Wangi for a long period of time and having all kinds of insight and memories around the area. She drew Maybank on her cognitive map, stating that the bank is very important to the shop owners around. As the shop owners are mostly wholesalers, they earn a lot of money in cash from shop dealers and thus burglary often happens around Masjid India. Therefore, Miss Tiong will visit Maybank every 3 to 4 hours to bank in her cash for security purposes. As the reason she doesn’t use the other banks is because Maybank is nearer to her shop and the service provided is the best. She actually have multiple banking account in different banks with preference arrangement of Maybank, CIMB bank, Affin Bank and lastly, RHB bank. As Sogo is also in the drawing, Miss Tiong said that she travels from Kelana Jaya LRT station to Dang Wangi LRT station, after that she will walk from the station to her shop, the walking journey will pass by Sogo.

Miss Tiong also drew Semua House in her cognitive mapping. Semua house is a shopping complex too but her intention is not to go shopping but to have lunch or dinner there. She remembers the food court at Semua House because there is a stall that serves pork and it is the only place around the area that serves non-halal food. Besides

serving pork, the food pricing at the food court is considered cheap compared to other places.

Jalan Tuanku Abdul Rahman is drawn by the Miss Tiong too as she speaks of the memory about the events happened on the street. As her shop is located close to the street, she remembers the major events happening on the street such as Bersih and also the red shirt rally. As she is also a DAP supporter, during the confrontation of the polis towards the supporters of Bersih 2.0, she and other shop owners provide a hiding spot for the supporters so that they don’t get caught by the polis. This shows a significant relationship between Masjid India and Jalan Tuanku Abdul Rahman, as the shop owners can monitor the street and provide relevant response to the events happening on it.

Cognitive Mapping of Mr Peruja

The final cognitive mapping is from an Indian traveler from Delhi named Mr Peruja. His intension to visit the area is to purchase gold and fabric for his family, thus the map clearly shows the shops that sell gold and jewelry and also shops that sell fabric. As I noticed Mr Peruja only drew the fabric shops around Sogo but not Jakel Mall which sells the best fabric in the area, I ask him about it. The reason is because the fabric shop around Sogo sells their scarf and fabric with a significant lower price compared to Jakel Mall. The last drawing is the shops along Jalan Tuanku Abdul Rahman. From my interpretation, I think that he remembers the shops as the façades are different compare to other shops at other street. The buildings are designed by using British Colonial style, thus creating a beautiful street view and on top of that, painted with different colours that attract people’s attention.

British Colonial Style Building Façade

The similarity from these three cognitive mapping is that there is Sogo Mall in all three maps. Although the intension of having Sogo in the three mappings is different, such as Mr Jamal which remembers it as a shopping place, Miss Tiong who remembers it on her way to her shop and Mr Perumal which uses it as a place to identify the shops he wanted to visit, Sogo will always be mentioned by the people visiting the site, thus it is very certain to say that Sogo is the most significant landmark in Dang Wangi. The other similarity shown in the three maps is the interaction with Jalan Tuanku Abdul Rahman.

As the people studied which have a different race, occupancy and site visit intention have a significant impression of the same street, showing that Jalan Tuanku Abdul Rahman is an important path with its own identity by giving prominence to the mind of observers that are familiar and also unfamiliar with Dang Wangi. Moreover, the other similarity is that all three persons prefer to use LRT to travel to their destination. This proves that the existence of the LRT is very convenient and well known to the public.

The dissimilarities of the maps are that the dining places are different such as Mrs Tiong who remembers the Semua House for non-halal food and Mr Jamal who remembers Insaf for halal food. This situation will create nodes for the halal group and non-halal group of people. Besides that, the three studied mapping shows different interest on architecture façade. From Mr Jamal’s mapping, he remembers the façade of Jakel Mall while from Mr Peruja’s map, an interest in British Colonial Style can be studied from his mapping. During my interview with Mrs Tiong, she stated that she prefers the demolition of the British Colonial style façade into normal modern simplistic building façade.

By referring to Kevin Lynch’ theory on Image of the City, environmental images are the result of a two-way process between the observer and his environment. The environment suggests distinctions and relations, and the observer – with great adaptability and in the light of his own purposes – selects, organizes, and endows with meaning what he sees. The image so developed now limits and emphasizes what is seen, while the image itself is being tested against the filtered perceptual input in a

constant interacting process, Thus the image of a given reality may vary significantly between different observers. This theory is well accepted as all the cognitive mapping varies significantly from an actual map of Dang Wangi and also, varies with one another, proving no cognitive map is the same. Besides that, the elements introduced by Kelvin Lynch which are the path, edge, node, district and landmark play an important role in urban orientation. In Dang Wangi, Sogo becomes the primary landmark by situating at the center of the city, getting the attention of all kinds of people and becoming the icon of the city. Although Kelvin Lynch made a lot of strong theories, I disagree about his theory of finding ways in the city by relying on vision only. I believe the other 4 senses play an equally important role in an urban city.

As for conclusion, I think Dang Wangi is well organized city but certain areas are neglected such as Jalan Raja Laut, Jalan Doraisamy and Jalan Raja Abdullah due to major activity only happening around the shopping complex. The sense of security around Dang Wangi is very bad as people hold certain precaution towards others approaching them, making the atmosphere of the site hostile and dense. In order to improve the quality of the city, I will propose an improvement in security and a well distributed amount of landmark throughout the area, so that paths can be recognized and edges, nodes, districts can be developed.