Project 2 essay

1. THEORIES OF ARCHITECTURE & URBANISM
[ARC2224]
PROJECT: THEORIZING ARCHITECTURE
PART 2: ANALYSIS DIAGRAM & ESSAY
Name : TEO KEAN HUI
Student ID : 0310165
Tutor : Pn. Nor Hayati

2. 2
Table of Content
Introduction
 Introduction to Bangsar 3
 Introduction to Architect 4
Factors
 Economic and sustainability 5
 Users and social 6
 Scale and proportion 7
Conclusion 8
Reference 9

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Introduction
Introduction to Bangsar
Bangsar is a suburban area in Kuala Lumpur with mixing of both commercial
and residential address in Klang Valley. 4 kilometres southwest away from Kuala
Lumpur city centre and it’s about 10 minute drive from there. Bangsar is administered
by the local governing authority Dewan Bandaraya Kuala Lumpur. Long before,
Bangsar was a rubber estate, the name Bangsar was derives from Bunge, a Belgian,
and Grisar, a Frenchman. There are also different source the saying the name
Bangsar was actually the combination of the last names of Edouard Bunge and Alfred
Grisar, the Frenchmen who were members of London based Kuala Lumpur Rubber
Co. Ltd. The first area that developed to be the housing area is the Bangsar Park back
in year 1969. Followed by Bangsar Baru with houses and business community
developed by Eng Lian Enterprise in year 1974. 20 years later from then, high-end
properties and upscale restaurants invaded Bangsar and made Bangsar a happening
neighbourhood.
Area chosen to study is in micro level of Bangsar is a crossroad with SJK (T) Bangsar,
shop lots, and a bungalow at four sides. The reason choosing in micro level but not an
individual building to study its because the architect Leon Krier less emphasizing on
the design of one building but the overall urban planning and how to achieve the
perfect urban that it supposed to be.

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Leon Krier Architecture Theorist
Leon Krier, an architect, urban planner and urban theorist. He’s known as the
intellectual godfather of the New Urbanism. Leon Krier is most famous with his
development of Poundbury, an urban extension to Dorchester, UK and also extension
of Guatemala City in Cayala. He is one of the first and most prominent critics of
modernist architecture who promote New Classical Architecture. Besides, Leon Krier
also taught architecture and urbanism at the Royal College of Arts in London as well
as at Princeton, Yale and Notre Dame. His theory to achieve a perfect urban planning
is more emphasizing on the size and scale of public buildings and private buildings
where building that serve public will be bigger in size but of course follow the proportion
of building between two to five storeys. Besides on the scale and proportion, Leon
Krier also concern about the social issues to avoid poor and overdeveloped urban
planning which causing slums, pollution and traffic jams. Leon Krier also concern
about the sustainable issue where he strongly disagree with building fully operated
depending on huge amount of fossil fuel because he was thinking that huge amount
of fossil fuel not only cost a lot which affect the economic but also will cause pollution
to the environment. Scale and proportion also strongly emphasize by Leon Krier, for
him the size does matters because it can affect the people’s view to identify the
purpose of a building.

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Factors
 Economic and sustainability
In Bangsar micro level of analysis, most of the buildings there such as the shops
and office buildings are high in energy consumption, mechanical ventilation such as
air conditioner are often used to cool down the building hence the electric bill costly as
the building survive based mostly on fossil fuel. Referring to Leon Krier’s theory, a
buildings that are unable to self-sustain and most depending on fossil fuel are strongly
disagree because they are not ecology, not sustainable and of course costly. For
example what if the building encounter insufficient electricity in future for long term,
the building will turn out to be unable to operate, unusable and then will lost its function
then get abandon by people eventually. Passive design such as utilizing stack
ventilation, cross ventilation, glazing, material choice with low embodied energy and
low carbon footprint will be most suitable to achieve sustainability. Although some of
the advance ecology material and building technology cost a lot when you use them
but they serve in long term that are able to save the operating cost and further costing
of the building in future. There aren’t ecologically defensible justification for the
erection of utilitarian skyscrapers; they are built for speculation, short-term gain or out
of pretentiousness. Pitched roof should widely introduce because they’re able to
absorb lesser heat with the smaller exposure area to the sun compared to the flat roof.
The school and bungalow are using pitched roof as passive design strategies as what
has been observed on site. Building with bigger volume and high ceiling which help to
absorb and release heat faster compared to the lower once. Material that absorb and
release heat fast should be use for construction so that the building won’t store heat
after day time, the material that transmit heat slowly will still remain hot after the sun

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goes down. By following and utilizing the factor above able to save cost and also
achieve sustainability and cause less harm to the environment.
 Users and Social
Social issue are existed due to vertical sprawl and overdeveloped cities, many
architects and urban planner are ignoring this and less concern about this issue. Even
though the site doesn’t have the issue of overdevelopment but traffic jams issue still
often happened on site especially in the morning, noon and evening where work time,
school time come together. The cause of the traffic jams are mainly the parents or
driver pickup and drop-off their children who are students to SJK (T) Bangsar and of
course the business at shop over there. Pollution can happen because of large amount
of toxic gases such as carbon monoxide has been produced by many cars and
motorcycles when they’re waiting and passing around there actually affect those who
live nearby. Mention by Leon Krier that an efficient urban planning can minimize the
jams and pollution using strategies such as efficient zoning and circulation. The
chosen site has actually fulfil the theory by Leon Krier because the buildings are not
zoned base on the type of building but they actually in within that bring convenient to
the local resident. Besides that, public buildings and private buildings are to be within
walking distance less than 80 acres so that the use of public transport can be minimize
and walk to different destination generalize healthy lifestyle is more convenient. Even
though the site has fulfil the requirement of having the mix of public buildings and
private buildings, due to the site chosen consist of more public buildings than the
residential so that should be reasonable that the traffic jam still happen in that area.
To improve this situation, public building such as shops can be reduce and replace

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with residential. Besides having more residential building, carpool activity should be
practice to reduce the amount of vehicles moving around there which help to save cost
as well as reduce traffic jam.
 Scale and proportion
In Leon Krier’s theory, he did mention about the preferably building height for
an ideal urban planning is best within two to five storeys. For example, even the Eiffel
Tower has only three floors. The Capitol in Washington, Nôtre-Dame de Paris, the
Forbidden City in Beijing and even the Seven Wonders of the World respected these
limits. The buildings at micro scale are actually fulfil the criteria of the theory with two
and four storeys shop lots, two storeys bungalow and a four storeys school. Neither
the public building nor the private building doesn’t stands out, their building proportion
are just right for the ideal urban planning but just that the school is bigger in scale
because it serve consider as public building because they own by government and
provide free educational services to the children. This site doesn’t deal with issue of
there aren’t any symbolism, iconic building which make it difficult to identify the location
of Town Centre when it looks just like a big warehouse like what had been said they
can easily identify the SJK (T) Bangsar as the school because it is bigger in scale
compared to the other building around it. Leon Krier also mention about different
design and scale of building serve different purpose but not same design in different
scale to different amount of people and its purpose like what modern design do. The
reason of all these is to avoid over population because building exceed 5 storeys can
accommodate more people and this might get involve with the social issue with crimes
happening, traffic jams and even slums.

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Conclusion
As a conclusion, throughout this study I’ve understand that in Leon Krier’s
theories on how an urban planning is supposed to be including the buildings
sustainability, building design, scale, proportion, users and its function. The buildings
sustainability talks about how a building to be operated and can it sustain by itself or
the costing of building and operating for a building. Besides, Leon Krier really picking
on the building heights and proportion “The universal limitation of building heights to
between two and five stories would both protect historic centers threatened with
overdevelopment and at the same time encourage the redevelopment of the suburbs.
Instead of inflating the cost of buildings in the center, such a limitation would contribute
to an increase in property values in those areas that remain arbitrarily undervalued."
(Leon Krier, 2015). All these thinking and theories making Leon Krier a leader of New
Urbanism movement to rescue the civic life, landscape and townscape. I personally
agree with what has been said by Leon Krier on how the building design, scale and
storeys because sky scrapers has been built massively throughout the world which is
not what Leon Krier would like to see but it’s better to have lesser sky scrapers as it is
part of the futuristic and technology thing or can be done by zoning them together and
far from public buildings a good example will be the Puterajaya. If Bangsar was built
referring to Leon Krier’s theory, Bangsar will be an area with less traffic jam and energy
saving urban area.

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Reference
Pensacola. (2015, March 20). Pensacola NewsJournal. Retrieved from
www.pnj.com/story/opinion/2015/03/20/viewpoint-leon-krier-will-discuss-theory-best-
cities/25101201/
Leon Krier's lesson in architecture | Emergent Urbanism. (n.d.). Retrieved from
http://emergenturbanism.com/2009/12/29/leon-kriers-lesson-in-
architecturehttps://paperarch.wordpress.com/leon-krier-uncompromising-anti-
modernist/
Paper Arch. (2012, August 7). Léon Krier, Uncompromising Anti-Modernist | paper
architecture. Retrieved from https://paperarch.wordpress.com/leon-krier-
uncompromising-anti-modernist/
Premio Rafael Manzano. (2013, October 12). Leon Krier: The Architectural Tuning of
Settlements[Video file]. Retrieved from
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iCRqcFvdn8o
Krier, L., Thadani, D. A., & Hetzel, P. J. (2009). The architecture of community.
Washington, DC: Island Press.