THEORIES OF ARCHITECTURE AND URBANISM PART B PHUA JING SERN

1. SCHOOL OF ARCHITECTURE, BUILDING AND DESIGN
Bachelor of Science (Honours) in Architecture
THEORIES OF ARCHITECTURE AND URBANISM (ARC2224) (ARC61303)
PROJECT PART B
NAME: PHUA JING SERN
ID: 0314572
LECTURER: MS. IDA MARLINA MAZLAN

2. Site Introduction
Positioned around the south of Klang, our chosen site, also famously known as Klang’s
Little India, sits just along Jalan Tengku Kelana and is bordered by the prominent
Klang River and the Jalan Jambatan Kota highway. The area began its town
development in the 19th century where it was a place of business for chettiars (Indian
money lenders) and textile exporters. Before then, Klang’s Little India began with a
humbling number of just five shops, but as the town began to grow exponentially, so
does its business competition. As to date, Klang’s Little India has now grown to a
whopping number as many as a hundred shops. It is also claimed that it is known as
the biggest ‘Little India’ town compared to Pulau Pinang’s and Kuala Lumpur’s.
As the name has already hinted, Indians can be seen as the majority race in this
chosen area. Colourful saris and accessories such as bangles and necklaces, textiles,
stainless steel pots, and of course, Indian’s delicious delicacies can be easily found
across the whole length of Jalan Tengku Kelana. Additionally, during the annual event
of Deepavali, the street would be drastically converted into a vivid display of fancy
lightshows and upbeat songs to celebrate the event of “Festival of Light”. Throughout
this period, most shop owners would gather their resources together to decorate the
street and the walkways of their shops, the street are even prepared and decorated
weeks before the actually festival. During the festival, the atmosphere would be greatly
electrifying and traffic will be clogged up due to the thousands of people making their
way to make their purchases and be a part of its yearly celebration.

3. Analysis and Synthesis of Personal Cognitive Mapping
In Kevin Lynch's ‘The Image of the City’ which was published in 1960, he introduces
and announces his findings to the public a brand new and different way of thinking and
perceiving towards urban arrangement of a city. He disregard the old-fashioned idea
of understanding a city through professional maps and plans, and focuses on the
people themselves in the city who are actually using and perceiving their physical
environment. In layman’s terms, Lynch claims that people who are living or working in
urban area have a better understanding on how to orient and navigate themselves by
the means of mental maps; from high-profile physical buildings, to spots which invites
many gatherings.
After a five-year long of researching and refining his project, Kevin Lynch finally came
out and firmly stood on the core concept of the ‘legibility’ of the built environment,
which practically means the extent to which the cityscape can be ‘read’ and how does
parts of the cityscape be organized into a distinguishable and coherent pattern for
users to move through the city with ease, as each of the individuals have their own
mental maps of the city. As he mentions “there seems to be a public image of any
given city which is the overlap of many individual images, or perhaps there is a series
of public images, each held by some significant number of citizens.” (Lynch, p.46).
Kevin Lynch proposed that these mental maps consists of five elements:
(1) Paths: Route along which people move throughout the city
(2) Edges: Boundaries and breaks in continuity
(3) Districts: Areas characterized by common characteristics
(4) Nodes: Strategic focus points for orientation like squares and junctions
(5) Landmarks: External points of orientation, usually an easily identifiable physical
object in the urban landscape.
Influenced by Kevin Lynch’s claims, we students studied his theory of his book titled
‘The Image of the City’ and chose Klang’s Little India as our chosen site study to
practice and further understand his statements. A cognitive map of Klang’s Little India
is included in this report by me individually, drawn entirely through memory and
personal impression of my site visit.

4. Before the site visitation, we students gathered together and roughly discuss regarding
the expectation of the site which include Kevin Lynch’s five key elements through
Google Maps and websites on introducing the area. The outcome is rather shallow yet
we were anticipated as many of its elements require us students to be physically
present to further determine and conclude our findings. For example, one of the
prominent landmark which is mentioned in many sites and easily identifiable is the
Masjid India Klang, a huge local mosque located in the heart of the town.
During the day of site visitation of Klang’s Little India, we entered the site through the
northern part of Jalan Tengku Kelana, a vehicular path which directly pierce towards
Little India. As we drove over the famous Klang River, I can easily identify this as one
of the noticeable edges of Little India, as not only it is visually prominent, but also
continuous in form and impenetrable to cross movement by walking. Additionally, from
afar, the prominent landmark of Masjid India Klang can be also easily seen with its
outstanding colour and height difference compared to its surrounding shop lot
buildings. Another one of the discussed nodes is also viewable while driving on the
bridge is the famous ‘under the bridge’ Bak Kut Teh, which conveniently, has a
pedestrian bridge that leads to the restaurant.
The pedestrian bridges that leads to the restaurant and the prominent Masjid India Klang viewed on the Jalan Tengku
Kelana Bridge crossing the Klang River.

5. After crossing the bridge and into the main roads of Klang’s Little India, things started
to change in terms of sight and navigation. For starters, the prominent and easily
viewable Masjid India Klang which I once through was immediately unviewable from
ground level due to the fact that surrounding buildings blocked up its architectural
features. The only viewable parts of the Mosque was its protruding columns, which
still require a little eye adjusting to spot it through the street’s vivid adverting
signboards and decorative ornaments. Would I say this is one of the prominent
landmark of our site? Yes, but just barely. As mentioned by Kevin Lynch, landmarks
should act as point reference to the observer while navigating around the site, and
being on ground level, the Mosque just barely yet applicably acted its role.
Furthermore, the back of the Masjid India Klang also has a path that leads to an area
of having multiple religious buildings as well, namely the St. Barnabas Church, the
Methodist Tamil Klang Church, the Klang Chinese Methodist Church, the Gurdwara
Sahib Klang Sikh Temple and the Sri Nagara Thendayuthapani Hindu Temple. Based
on Kevin Lynch concept of district, it can be concluded that this particular area is a
religious district due to the fact that these buildings share a common characteristics of
function in a concentrated area.
The Masjid India Klang landmark only visible by its protruding columns

6. Moving on, as we dive deeper into its streets, the nodes of the site can be witnessed
and identified by the increasing number of walking pedestrian. As mentioned in Kevin
Lynch’s “The Image of the City”, he states that characteristics spatial qualities were
able to strengthen the image of particular path. For our case, the straight road and
rows of vivid shops in both left and right shows a powerful image that states Jalan
Tengku Kelana as its main path of the town, being the spinal cord and binding Little
India together as the central route. In response, linear nodes can be found within this
area as there was a high volume of walking pedestrians intersecting the zone. Besides
that, this zone can also be labelled as part of the shopping district of our chosen site,
as the area is obviously surrounded by rows and rows of shops. Speaking of nodes,
there is one particular node only known by locals just behind the main Jalan Tengku
Kelana path. Located in a back alley lies a small row of hawker stalls which locally
famous for selling delicious Cendol. Local would walk past the tight alley and find
themselves numerous choices of snacks before heading the main road.
Going further down towards the end of Jalan Tengku Kelana leads to another
landmark which I found it quite prominent and was not expected until witnessed it
personally, which is the Lax Boutique Hotel. The building is spotted being fully
coloured black with a striking orange patterned façade, standing independently with
no surrounding building attached to it. The contrasting image of the building compared
to its other structures shows an easily identifiable and welcoming landmark for those
The Lax Boutique Hotel and its striking landmark features

7. who are entering Klang’s Little India through the other end. Moreover, behind the Lax
Boutique Hotel lies a bus station. In response to existing site context, hawker stalls
can be found around that area due to its constant arrival of tourists and occupants,
thus creating another node point for the locals to have a quick snack around this
particular and modern landmark.
Another landmark which was only found by being physically on site is the old Klang’s
KTM Station. Although the building is not as tall and as visually striking as the previous
two landmarks of Masjid India Klang and the Lax Boutique Hotel, the KTM station has
its own way of being an eye catching landmark by having the path being strategically
placed directly towards it as people walk and drive on Jalan Stesen. Moreover, it is
also considered as part of a historical landmark as well, it being one of the oldest
structure as it was originally built in 1890 and still in service till date. And as the people
go towards Jalan Besar from the KTM station lies the famous ‘under the bridge’ Bak
Kut Teh which was previously mentioned as one of the nodes as it attracts many
outsiders into this area.
Klang KTM Station seen in a visually catching perspective along Jalan Stesen

8. Conclusion
“To become completely lost is perhaps a rather rare experience for most people in the
modern city” (Lynch, p.4), yet under controlled circumstances, “there is some value in
mystification, labyrinth, or surprise in the environment.” (Lynch, p.5). As mentioned
above in the introduction section, Kevin Lynch was eventually proven right about
disregarding the old-fashioned idea of understanding a city through professional maps
and plans, and focuses on the people themselves in the city who are actually using
and perceiving their physical environment. One prime example is the Masjid India
Klang mentioned earlier. On paper, it is labelled as a prominent landmark of the site;
on site, and the Mosque just barely passed the trial.
As I was perceiving the chosen site as an outside observer while utilizing Kevin
Lynch’s technique of using the five key elements of mental mapping: Paths, Edges,
District, Nodes and Landmarks, all five elements were exceedingly helpful and Klang’s
Little India shows a significancy of displaying each of every part of the elements very
well. The edges are clearly shown by the Klang River, nodes can be spotted along the
shopping area of Jalan Tengku Kelana, paths are easily identified by its importance
and convenience, districts are strategically placed within its respective area, and
landmarks are visually prominent, well most of it.
In conclusion, it could be said that in the mental image development practice, visual
stimulation and education is the basis for reshaping our built environment, and vice
versa. This is in fact the main condition for which a critical audience can be formed
and therefore for which urbanity can be analysed, manipulated and developed to
greater heights. Although Kevin Lynch’s concept may ironically considered outdated
by current urban planners, Lynch does fully put into practice of a situation which had
been lingered among architects and planners for years: an attention and complete
recognition of the citizen’s role, that not only lives a town – stating his own needs-, but
also perceives it – providing useful images for planner to work on. Additionally, he
emphasizes the importance of visual communication in the urban space, which invites
and binds individuals, personal experience and urban designers together in order for
them to communicate on a common thread, pushing the innovation of city lifestyle.

9. References
 Lynch, K. (1960). The Image of the City. Cambridge, Mass.: MIT Press
 Lynch, K. (1981). A theory of good city form. Cambridge, Mass.: MIT Press
 Review: Kevin Lynch – The Image of the City. (2009, May 8). Retrieved 5th of
June 2016, from http://themobilecity.nl/2009/05/08/review-kevin-lynch-the-
image-of-the-city/
 Understanding Neighborhoods through Mental Mapping: An Application of
Kevin Lynch's Theory Using Universal Design for Learning Principles. (n.d.).
Retrieved 5th of June 2016, from
http://www.sjsu.edu/cfd/docs/enactAIM_hilary/
 Tourism Selangor – Little India, Klang. (n.d.). Retrieved 5th of June 2016, from
http://www.tourismselangor.my/destinations/little-india/
 Malaysia Vacation Guide: Klang Little India. (n.d.). Retrieved 5th of June 2016,
from http://www.malaysiavacationguide.com/little-india.html