Compiled synopsis

BACHELOR OF SCIENCE (HONOURS) IN ARCHITECTURE
THEORIES OF ARCHITECTURE AND URBANISM (ARC61303/ARC2224)
SYNOPSIS: REACTION PAPER (AUGUST 2016) [10 MARKS]
NAME: YVONNE CHIN YUN MIIN ID: 0315662
LECTURER: AHMAD NAZMI MOHAMED ANUAR TUTORIAL TIME: 2-4PM
SYNOPSIS NO: 1 READER TITLE: IN THE CAUSE OF ARCHITECTURE
AUTHOR: FRANK LLOYD WRIGHT
From the essay “In The Cause of Architecture”, written by Frank Lloyd Wright, it stated the
architectural aspects that of forms and motifs having the connection with nature. This essay mainly
emphasized on form and function, and proportion that intimates with the nature, whereas men are
able to cultivate inspiration itself from the richness of Nature and develop his own work of art into a
reality. Wright’s intuition was to embed the sense of organic into any architects, providing a few key
elements to his statement.
For starters, simplicity creates a quality sense of grace and beauty in any art along with the
consideration of space articulation. Secondly, the fenestrations should be counted as an integral
feature of the form, and possibly its natural ornamentation. Wright also stated at his third point that
decoration can be dangerous if it does not create a scenery as a whole and if a picture must be used
as a decoration, it should blend in with the whole. Next, he recommended that fixtures should be
assimilated together with the structure’s design. Also, it would be even better if the furniture was built
to become a part of the integral unit. Color scheme happened to be a conventional element too in
creating a good decoration, but bringing out the nature of the building materials will give a stronger
effect of embodiment with Nature. Wright encourages people to have the individuality to express
themselves in their own environment, and with that it helps in creating a building consisting its own
character to be more valuable.
From my point of view, Wright’s ideology is a great way to discover individuality and to develop it into
our work in the form of local expression and style composition. It creates significant identity to the
people and the nation. Our country can adapt these key factors in future designs in order to have
better understanding on what the current built environment needs instead of instinctively developing
more buildings without realizing the disruption of the harmonious relationship with the surrounding
status. It will help to form the community as a whole through social conventionalization and fulfilling
the needs to mend the issues in the community with the guided design strategies of Frank Lloyd
Wright.
WORD COUNT 373
Key points (2.5)
Appropriateness of
Terminologies (2.5)
Clarity in Opinions and
Reactions (2.5)
Logical Progression (2.5)
DATE: 10/10/2016 TOTAL MARK & GRADE
ASSSESSED BY:

LECTURER: AHMAD NAZMI MOHAMED ANUAR TUTORIAL TIME: 2-4PM
SYNOPSIS NO: 2 READER TITLE: ARCHITECTURE WHERE DESIRE CAN LIVE
AUTHOR: JACQUES DERRIDA
In this interview on “Architecture Where the Desire Can Live” between Jacques Derrida
and Eve Meyer, Derrida explained his theoretical philosophy of ‘deconstruction’ through
explorations of different possibilities of thinking that happened to link with the
architectural time. At some points, I agree with Derrida’s way of thinking, of how he
dismantled the concepts into the start of how the ideas evolved through time and
thoughts, the very origin meaning or concepts of the creation. What architecture meant
to him was a way of writing that resembled metaphors, in a way that express the way
of living, where an architectural model just cannot become a metaphoric expression.
One of the things he kept mentioning was that, architecture is a language. Every
proposed spatialization or an arrangement was lead from the pioneer thoughts of a path
created, where he meant that for any inhabited place, the building’s location was led by
a path that was initially created before the building was ever built. With that,
deconstruction existed to analyze and question people’s concepts and thoughts, rather
than just taking things for granted without realizing the rich history that lays beneath
every possible creation made and restricting their own thinking.
Derrida spoke about the Tower of Babel, a scripture that was written in the Bible where
it holds the fact that the world once had one common language and speech, before
God descended and confused the people’s language. In God’s view, if the people were
determined to build the tower together, nothing would be impossible. But the confusion
of language caused the people to have a hard time in understanding each other and
they scattered over the world without finishing the tower. That was when the tower got
the name ‘Babel’, resembling the noun meaning confusion. Diverse languages were
born from then but the construction of architecture remains like a labyrinth, a
complicated thing. I believe with the diversity of languages formed, people will have a
different point of viewing things and we should embrace that opportunity of having
different perspective views and thinking, and not giving up for the sake of one’s thought.

It is like sitting down and having a discussion together and understanding bit by bit of
the matter together, instead of compromising without understanding and voicing out
opinions.
Lastly, community is by far the most important aspects that exists in the architectural
world. I agree that without any commitments or works from the community, the
individuality and originality will be gone. Take our country as an example, Malaysia is a
multi-racial country, filled with diverse customs and cultures from different racial groups.
We live together in the community, and through time, cultural assimilation grew and
made us understand each other by putting ourselves in other people’s shoes. The
religious architecture is one of the symbolic structure that is evident to my point of
having a community that is committing and understanding among each other,
embracing the architecture that was created by our ancestors to remain our certain
cultures and believes.
In conclusion, “places where desire can recognize itself, where it can live”. From my
understanding, we need to know the root of the architecture that was designed in the
past in relation to the context and the human perspectives during that time, and what
the architecture would turn and time passed by, before we conclude in our final decision
of creating a design for the specific place.
WORD COUNT 643
Key points (2.5)
Appropriateness of
Terminologies (2.5)
Reactions (2.5)
DATE: 24/10/2016 TOTAL MARK & GRADE
ASSSESSED BY:

LECTURER: AHMAD NAZMI MOHAMED ANUAR TUTORIAL TIME: 2 - 4PM
SYNOPSIS NO: 3 READER TITLE: THE EYES OF THE SKIN
AUTHOR: JUHANI PALLASMAA
The book of “The Eyes of The Skin” written by Juhani Pallasmaa was divided into two parts, where
he talks about senses that can be related with architecture around us. The focus on the first part of the
book was discussing about the Western philosophers who discovered that sight is the noblest among the
other senses, creating good philosophical thinking was abound with ocular metaphors which they find that
having a clear vision and light is the way of finding the truth. This form of thinking is known as the
Ocularcentrism. They formed a hierarchy system for the five senses, putting the sense of sight at the top
and the sense of touch at the bottom. This philosophical thinking was used in the sixteenth century, but in
our generation, full of new technologies and still advancing throughout time, the sense of sight does not
work by itself anymore.
Critics of the Ocularcentrism is emphasizing the fact that the fusion of the senses of sight and the
other sense can help reduce the negative tendencies that were created by just the “mind of the eye”.
Ocularcentrism is stilled carried through the generations to generations. To make things simple, people
who possesses this philosophical thinking are called visionaries. Like the metaphor “the mind of the eye”,
they create any form of art and architecture by picturing what they see and creating a form inside their
mind. They are the people with the narcissistic eye, where they view architecture as their own self-
expression, and most of the time this is followed by their ego-consciousness, which it separates us from
the world. Most of this could be found in contemporary architectures, where the designers have partly
disregarded the sense of the belonging of the users with the space throughout time. But in Mies van der
Rohe’s works, rich with visual paradigm, he successfully fused the oppositional and contradictory
intentions and allusions together, opening up the necessity of emotional participation for the observers.
I strongly agreed with the critics who reminded us the other senses are as noble as the sense of
sight. It helps us unite the world and it is a way of art and architecture to reconstruct the experience, rather
than separating us from it. Edward T. Halls saw that communication was an essential tool to create a
design with intimate, bio-culturally functional spaces. Likewise, Walter J. Ong analyzed the oral to written

speech culture was the key to the human consciousness, memory and the understanding of space. The
sense of hearing is important as well as sight to purely oral people.
Existence, is a question that we all have to think about, where it is a parallel matter that exists in
the space-time continuum. All the matters that exist in the world takes time for thorough understanding of
the space with time. With that, it can prevent the rise of architectural autism, people will hopefully not
blindly create idealistic visions without the experience and understanding of culture and people of the
surrounding space.
WORD COUNT 502
Key points (2.5)
Appropriateness of
Terminologies (2.5)
Reactions (2.5)
Date: 7/11/2016 TOTAL MARK & GRADE
ASSSESSED BY:

LECTURER: AHMAD NAZMI MOHAMED ANUAR TUTORIAL TIME: 2 - 4PM
SYNOPSIS NO: 4 READER TITLE: TOWARDS A CRITICAL REGIONALISM
AUTHOR: KENNETH FRAMPTON
In Kenneth Frampton’s point of Critical Regionalism and World Culture, he emphasized the term of arriére-garde to be a
critical practice in architecture nowadays, meaning of putting ourselves back into the past, returning to the origin architectonic
forms before the generation of advanced technology. I believe that his theory of applying arriére-garde practice would be
relevant to the architecture today, in a sense to cultivate a resistant and identity- giving culture, which is unfortunately lost in
the midst of blind idealistic developments, possibly protect and giving back the identity of the world from the unorthodox
works of the avant-garde individuals.
I believe Frampton’s fundamental strategy of Critical Regionalism could be implied in our country especially the heritages
that still exist in some regions around the cities, with the ambition of dualism between the world culture and the civilization,
and with the intention of providing a deeper meaning with the understanding of the past beliefs through the creative values
of thoughts, arts and even architecture, finding “its governing inspiration in such things as the range and quality of the local
light, or in a tectonic derived from a peculiar structural mode, or in the topography of a given site.”
The next point Frampton pointed out had a relation with the birth of the Megalopolis, the chain of metropolitan areas which
was later recognized in the year 1961 by the French geographer Jean Gottmann for his landmark study. Martin Heidegger
stated his critical vantage point of universal placelessness which Frampton took as a reference in the resistance between
place and form. From Heidegger’s view, a place and a space has its difference, which are defined by with or without a
boundary. The bounded place-form is actually related to the politics of the place, acknowledging the term “the space of
human appearance” by Hannah Arendt, where she stated the only crucial factor in the new generation was the presence of
people living together, leading to the rate of urban density, creating the existence of the “polis”.

It is important for us to study the contextual elements of the given place and adapt its characteristic with its identity and
culture of the people living there, rather than taking the place for granted. We can create a space by creating an enclosure
but its borders should be where it begins its presence. This helps in creating pseudo-public realms where the place-form of
its spatial organization should be resolved with its relation to the exterior qualifications.
WORD COUNT 410
Key points (2.5)
Appropriateness of Terminologies
(2.5)
Clarity in Opinions and Reactions
(2.5)
Date: 21/11/2016 TOTAL MARK & GRADE
ASSSESSED BY:

Compiled synopsis

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