Theory project2 part B
- 1. SCHOOL OF ARCHITECTURE, BUILDING AND DESIGN BACHELOR OF SCIENCE (HONS) IN ARCHITECTURE THEORIES OF ARCHITECTURE AND URBANISM (ARC61303/ARC2224) PROJECT PART B NAME : LEE YAUE SHEN ID : 0315381 LECTURER : IDA MARLINA MAZLAN
- 2. 2 1.0 INTRODUCTION Figure 1 The Entrance 1.1 THE LITTLE INDIA, KLANG Located at the south of Klang, the Little India reserve along Jalan Tengku Kelana and is considered the biggest Indian street in Malaysia. This place is located about 10-15 minutes walk from Klang Komuter Station and is one of the famous tourist spot in Klang. Little India is a strong cultural area that consists of mainly Indian and Chinese traders and is comply with variety of business. This area is full of all type of household products, decorative products, Indian food, spices, clothing and textiles. As walking along the shops, many kinds of products are being displayed transparently. These include gold and jewelries, cooking pots, bangles, flowers, watches, silverwares, clocks, saris and electrical goods. The price in Little India is cheaper compare to other places, this is due to the high competitive level among the shop owners that sit along the rows of shops on the left and right of the road including the stalls spilling onto the sidewalks and back lanes. Myriads of items such as saris, colorful accessories such as bangles and necklaces, textiles, stainless steel pots, Indian delicacies, gold and flowers are sold here. During Deepavali, the street is transformed into a colorful spectacle of light and sound befitting the “festival of light”. Most shop owners will work together creatively and harmoniously to decorate the street and the walkways of their places once a year.
- 3. 3 The street will be decorated weeks before the actual festival and the atmosphere around that area is amazing and traffic will be clogged up as thousands of people make their way to make their purchases. Some shop owners will also invite shoppers into their shops to sample delicacies and to celebrate the festival together. Little India is located in a strategic area that is close to many types of public transport. Besides that, with the aid of its cultural essence, it attracts many locals and tourists to visit and shop. 1.2 COGNITIVE MAPPING A cognitive map is a type of mental representation which serves an individual to acquire, code, store, recall, and decode information about the relative locations and attributes of phenomena in their everyday. The term was introduced by Psychologist E. C. Tolman to explain how rats learned the locations of rewards in a maze. Besides, humans and animals use them to find their way and to help recall important features of the environment. For example, asking people to sketch a map of a location is a way to find out what his salient features are for them. A cognitive map can show what is important, and by omission, reveal what is less important. Sometimes a standardized outline showing major feature of an area is used, asking respondents to fill in the details. City planners or landscape architects who want to know more about how a space is seen or used could use this procedure. Cognitive maps can be constructed for spaces as small as a rat's maze or as large as planet earth. They have been used to study how children's conception of space expands and becomes differentiated as they mature. It can also provide insight into the worlds of those with sensory deficits and physical handicaps. The maps of blind people make more use of sound and touch cues than do those of sighted people. People in wheelchairs emphasize physical barriers in their maps, obstacles that are missing from the maps of those able to move more freely.
- 4. 4 2.0 ANALYSIS AND SYNTHESIS In the Kevin Lynch's classic text The Image of the City that published in 1960 by The M.I.T. Press, it introduces urban designers and planners to a new way of thinking about the urban form of a city. Rather learning through professional maps and plans, Lynch focuses on how people in the city actually use and perceive their physical environment. Besides that, Lynch also argues that people in urban situations orient themselves by means of mental maps, which mean cognitive mapping. He compares the three American cities, Boston, Jersey City, and Los Angeles by looks at how people orient themselves in these cities. For instance, a common exercise in urban design and urban planning courses is to ask students to draw a map of their neighborhood or city, or a common geographical area in order to develop a better understanding of the differences between the physical map and layout of an area to show how people actually perceive the same area. Legibility, also called as imageablility and visibility. Legibility means the extend to which the cityscape can be ‘read’. People who move through the city engage in way finding. They need to be able to recognize and organize urban elements into a coherent pattern. “In the process of way-finding, the strategic link is the environmental image, the generalized mental picture of the exterior physical world that is held by an individual. This image is the product both of immediate sensation and of the memory of past experience, and it is used to interpret information and to guide action”. As a conclusion, Lynch proposes that these mental maps consist of five elements: paths, edges, districts, nodes and landmarks. For this project, we as students are divided into 3 groups that assigned with 3 different sites. In a group, we are required to have meeting and conduct site visits, it either go by groups or by our own. However, it is better to go as a group to discuss and observe the site based on Kevin Lynch’s theories. We are required to present an in-depth and analytical research study on the designated topic in order to understand one’s perception and spatial behavior in cities today. The selected site for my group is Little India that located in Klang.
- 5. 5 First of all, going across the Klang River by car using the path Jalan Tengku Kelana, it is very obvious that this is the main Path or bridge that connects people from the other side of the river. As moving through this road, as an observer, I can clearly know that Jalan Tengku Kelana somehow separates Little India into 2 parts. Besides that, this is also the main road that lies from the entrance till the end or main exit of Little India. Jalan Tengku Kelana is the main path that serves as a center primary road that connects every secondary road. Lynch mentioned that path consists of the channel along which observer customarily occasionally, or potentially moves. These can include streets, paths, transit routes, or any other defined path of movement. Therefore, it is obvious that there is a train track that falls along the Klang River; this clearly shows the transit routes of Klang KTM Station, which is not far away. After observing in a bigger scale, it comes to the smaller scale, which is pedestrian walkway. Most activities are happens at the pedestrian walkway, but the most happening walkways are along both side of the main road, Jalan Tengku Kelana. This is due to the exposure of these walkways are higher compare to other. Besides the proper walkways, there are also multiple alleys around Little India. Edges provide the boundaries that separate one region from another, the seams that join two regions together, or the barriers that close one region from another. They can be physical edges such as shorelines, walls, railroad cuts, or edges of development, or they can be less well-defined edges that the individual perceives as a barrier. Klang River is considered as the strongest edge of the city, it does not allow people to pass though and it obviously separates the city from the other side of Klang. This defined the edge of the North side. Jalan Jambatan Kota highway is one of the main paths that located at the West side of Little India. It is a strong edge that is impenetrate to cross movement and it defined the West side edge. Moreover, Kompleks Mahkamah Klang and Stadium Padang are visibly vary from the other building or site due to their huge size. They are big in scale thus exposes entire Metropolis to view and are visually prominent to observer. This defined the East side edge. Other than that, Taman Bandar Diraja Kalng is an edge at the South of Little India, it has continuous in form because of the huge amount of trees and it is also impenetrable to cross movement.
- 6. 6 Based on Lynch’s ideas, Districts are "medium-to-large sections of the city". The individual often enters into or passes through these districts. According to Lynch, most people use the concept of districts to define the broader structure of their city. The main district in Little India is Commercial area that located at the area along the upper Jalan Tengku Kelana; it serves as a central hub. It consists of most of the commercial needs and is almost connected to every other district. Besides that, the Religious area in Little India is very unique in a sense that there are temples, churches and Masjid located together harmoniously. They are connected due to the common interest and function. As an observer, I can know that district in Little India has not arranged in a strong grid system. It consider as a complex district as it contains variety of district in such small-scale city. According to Kevin Lynch, Nodes are points within the city, strategically located, into which the individual enters, and which is often the main focal point to which she or he is traveling to or from. There are often junctions or a crossing or converging of paths. Firstly, one of the famous nodes in Little India is Restoran Seng Huat Bak Kut Teh that located at Jalan Besar, I even heard of it before having the site visit. It is well known of its Bah Kut Teh for many years, it attracts many locals and tourist around Malaysia. It is the first thought that people think of before arrive to Klang. This Restaurant is a strong node that dense of mainly Chinese and Indian. Besides, located at Jalan Stesen 1, which is nearby to the Seng Huat Restaurant, there is another node, The Cendol Stall. It sits at the back alley and is a small point that next to a parking lot. It exposed to the street with its strategic location and gather people that need a sense of cold in their mouth. It attacts many people during lunchtime and evening. Furthermore, the third most significant node for me as an observer is the Hawker Stall sits along the Jalan Taliar Streets. There are varieties of stalls selling foods and drinks at the side of the walkway, it is a famous spot for people to take their lunch and branch. It considered as strategic foci that people can easily enter and is located at a junction that attracts people attentions very well.
- 7. 7 Landmarks are also a point-reference that similar to nodes. However, unlike nodes, which the individual enters during his or her travels, landmarks remain external features to the individual. They are often physical structures such as a building, sign, or geographic features. Through out the site visit, the building that I perceived the most is the Balai Bomba that located at Jalan Gedung Raja Abdullah. It sits at the right hand side of the main entrance, and the color of it is fresh red that has a strong contrast with the background. It is the building that observer might see before enter or exit Little India. It locations is highly exposed to the people. Besides that, the huge Masjid India Klang are the second landmarks that observer perceive. It is unique and pointed as a landmark for the people around it to show directions. It can be identifying easily and has a strong cultural and historical background. Thirdly, the famous Saree shop, Chennai Silk, is also one of the renowned landmarks. Chennai Silk is well known for women clothing many years ago, it sits on a strategic locations and has multiple shops that combined together become one huge lot. It attracts many customers of old and new. Figure 2 Balai Bomba & Masjid as Landmarks
- 8. 8 3.0 CONCLUSION Kevin Lynch has stated that a highly imageable city would invite the eyes and ears for greater attention and it is the basic first step in stepping towards the expression of inner meaning. After all, we can understand that these 5 elements cannot exist individually; they must act together as a whole to reveal an integrated city image. It is a total orchestration of these elements, which combine together as a vivid and dense image. Districts can be constructed by nodes, defined by edges, penetrated by paths and dominated by landmarks. Such combinations may reinforce one another, resonate so that they enhance each other’s power, or they may affect themselves. This book, Image of a city is about its importance, its variety and how citizens react to it. Lynch summarized the basic elements of the image and showed an approach of how to improve it. Besides, this is also a milestone work, which provides us a new perspective to read the cities we live in. From here on, subjective views of citizens and their opinions are introduced into urban design. In a nutshell, after the site visit, I can conclude that most of the nodes and landmarks are located along the main road beside the Chennai Silk which a bit away. I feel that Little India is an interesting place that full of Malaysian culture and good foods. With Lynch’s theory, I have enhanced my observation skills and the experience on site. However, there are still a lot more elements to improve on site.
- 9. 9 4.0 REFERENCE Cannifee, E. (2006, January 17). ARCHITECTURE URBANISM. Retrieved 16th of November 2015, from http://architectureandurbanism.blogspot.my/2011/01/kevin-lynch-image-of-city- 1960.htm Downs, R., & Stea, D. (1973). Image and environment; cognitive mapping and spatial behavior. Chicago: Aldine Pub. Kevin Lynch (1960). The Image of the City. Kitchin, R. (2000). Cognitive mapping: Past, present, and future. London: Routledge. Review: Kevin Lynch – The Image of the City. (2009, May glasses emoticon. Retrieved 16th of November 2015, from http://themobilecity.nl/2009/05/08/review-kevin-lynch-theimage-of-the-city/ Tolman E. C. (1948). Cognitive maps in rats and men. Psychological Review, 55, 189-208.