The document summarizes four reaction papers written by a student on readings related to architecture and urbanism. The first paper discusses Frank Lloyd Wright's views on organic architecture and his rejection of mass production. The second paper covers Jacques Derrida's ideas about deconstruction and its relationship to architecture. The third paper analyzes Juhani Pallasmaa's work on how humans experience architecture through their senses. The fourth paper examines Kenneth Frampton's concept of critical regionalism as a response to placelessness caused by universal techniques.

1. BACHELOR OF SCIENCE (HONOURS) IN ARCHITECTURE
THEORIES OF ARCHITECTURE AND URBANISM (ARC61303/ARC2224)
SYNOPSIS: REACTION PAPER (AUGUST 2016) [10 MARKS]
NAME: TEO CHEN YI ID: 0320618
LECTURER: MR. NAZMI TUTORIAL TIME: 2-4PM
SYNOPSIS NO: 1 READER TITLE: IN THE CAUSE OF ARCHITECTURE
AUTHOR: FRANK LLOYD WRIGHT
According to Frank Lloyd Wright, he is influenced by his great teacher Louis Henry Sullivan during his
early thinking on the nature of organic architecture and formulated few propositions of organic integrity.
These ideals were formulated to industrial ideals which then lost of its own individuality as the people
only care about the trend which turns out it has no organization. His intention of creating an American
architecture with the organic integrity through the ideal of Democracy where buildings with individual
characteristics but do not interrupt the organic whole. With this idea, he had developed the Prairie style
architecture with different expression based on roof design. He claimed that the architecture of the idea
is conceived in three dimensional as organic entities where elevations are formed from a preconceived
ground plan. During the industrialization era, machinery is highly fancied by the architects in mass
production as it saves time and labour. However, he could not accept with the mass production of
insanely repetition of forms everywhere instead he advocate and established a new American
architecture collaborating with machinery by expressing the nature of the new industrial materials. He
believes that an architect should have his own individuality that will form the concept of different projects
determining the character of the details. Thus, architects should have well developed techniques and not
rely on draftsman where the artistic vision will be lost during the translation process from the architect.
He also predicted future buildings should be expressed with fewer lines and forms, more articulate with
less labour, more plastic and fluent although more coherent and organic. In conclusion, Frank Lloyd
Wright is an outspoken person who is not afraid to express his disagreement on the mass production of
identical form of buildings. He had produced many masterpiece throughout his career however the
buildings he designed even though it remains the principle of his design intention but still appears to be a
building with its individual characteristics.
WORD COUNT 324
Key points (2.5)
Appropriateness of
Terminologies (2.5)
Clarity in Opinions and
Reactions (2.5)
Logical Progression (2.5)
DATE: TOTAL MARK & GRADE
ASSSESSED BY:

2. BACHELOR OF SCIENCE (HONOURS) IN ARCHITECTURE
THEORIES OF ARCHITECTURE AND URBANISM (ARC61303/ARC2224)
SYNOPSIS: REACTION PAPER (AUGUST 2016) [10 MARKS]
NAME: TEO CHEN YI ID: 0320618
LECTURER: MR. NAZMI TUTORIAL TIME: 2PM-4PM
SYNOPSIS NO: 2 READER TITLE: ARCHITECTURE WHERE DESIGN CAN LIVE
AUTHOR: JACQUES DERRIDA INTERVIEWED BY EVA MEYER
In the interview of Jacques Derrida and Eva Meyer, according to Jacques Derrida, de-construction
resembles architectural metaphor which destroy, analyses and dissolve. De-construction is not only a
technique of constructing but something upon the authority of the architectural metaphor which result
in constituting its own architectural rhetoric. The architectural thinking of de-construction is an attempt
to visualize the establishment of the authority of the architectural series in philosophy. Then, in order
to link the thinking with an architectural event with language, spatialisation in terms of path should be
created where buildings should be located on a path at a crossroad where arrival and departure are
both possible. If the language could not control the paths towards and within a building, it only signifies
that language is entangled in these structure, “on the way”. According to Heidegger, the way is a
technique or procedure to gain control of the path and make it workable. However, it represents failure
or limitation imposed on a universal language. On the other hand, modernism distinguished itself by a
criticism. The original attempt of modernism and postmodernism architecture refers to the “Origin of
the work of art” which refers to “RiB” (rip-break-up drawings). A complete new rapport is then emerged
between surface, drawing, space and architecture. Post modernism take the failure of de-construction
into account. If modernism distinguishes itself by striving for absolute domination, then postmodernism
might be the realization or the experience of its end. Should there be thinking about architecture is not
a matter of space but an experience, a sense more ancient than space that is spatialisation of time.
There is a formless desire for another form, desire for new location, arcades, corridors etc. The
community must accept the commitment so architectural thinking takes place and a new relationship
of individual and community between original and reproduction is emerging. In conclusion, architecture
must create places where desire can explain itself, recognize itself and live for as long as it could.
WORD COUNT
327
Key points (2.5)
Appropriateness of
Terminologies (2.5)
Clarity in Opinions and
Reactions (2.5)
Logical Progression (2.5)
DATE: 24/10/16
TOTAL MARK & GRADE
ASSSESSED BY:

3. BACHELOR OF SCIENCE (HONOURS) IN ARCHITECTURE
THEORIES OF ARCHITECTURE AND URBANISM (ARC61303/ARC2224)
SYNOPSIS: REACTION PAPER (AUGUST 2016) [10 MARKS]
NAME: TEO CHEN YI ID: 0320618
LECTURER: MR. NAZMI TUTORIAL TIME: 2-4PM
SYNOPSIS NO: 3 READER TITLE: THE EYE OF THE SKIN
AUTHOR: JUHANI PALLASMAA
According to Merleau-Ponty, human body is the centre of the experiential world where the sensory
experiences are integrated through the body. Psychoanalytic theory introduced notion of body
image and body schema as the centre of integration and the percept of body and image is then
turned into a continuous existential experience. The body image is basically from haptic and
orienting experiences in the early life and visual images are developed later on. According to
Bachelard ‘The polophony of the senses’ where eyes collaborate with body and other senses.
One’s senses of reality is strengthened and articulated by this constant interaction. All the senses
can be considered as the extension of the sense of touch. In the view of Rene Spitz, oral cavity
acts as primeval bridge from inner reception to external perception. Even the gaze of vision implies
an unconscious touch. Vision is actually a revealing of touch as an unconscious of vision which
determines the agreeableness or unpleasantness of the experience. Architecture as an extension
of nature provides ground of perception and horizon of experiencing and also gives a conceptual
and material structure to societal institutions. In architecture, touch is a multi-sensory. The qualities
of space, scale and matter are measured equally by eye, ear, nose, skin, tongue, skeleton and
muscle. Architecture strengthens existential experience and involves several realms of sensory
experience which interact and fuse into each other. In the view of Berkeley, touch acts as an assist
for vision to sense solidity, resistance and protrusion. Thus, touch is able to give sensation of
spatial depth. Gothe’s idea is that a work of art must be ‘life-enhancing’. According to Bernard
Berenson, imagine a genuine physical encounter through ‘ideated sensation’ which means tactile
values and the stimulation of it is ‘life-enhancing’. Architecture is experienced as fully embodied
materials and spiritual presence. Thus, a good architecture offers shapes and surface moulded for
pleasurable touch of eyes. Besides, images give rises to memory, imagination and dream. In
Okakura’s description, the present and absent, the near and distant, the sensed and imagined fuse
together. The body is enriched by both memory and dream, past and future. The senses mediate
information and also igniting imagination and articulate sensory thought. Each form of arts
elaborates metaphysical and existential thought through sensor engagement. In conclusion, art of
architecture is not only about projection of human body but also the existential experience and
experience of movement through spaces where how user experience in a specific space through
the senses of our body and also how the architect define the meaning of senses.

4. WORD COUNT 426
Key points (2.5)
Appropriateness of
Terminologies (2.5)
Clarity in Opinions and
Reactions (2.5)
Logical Progression (2.5)
DATE: TOTAL MARK & GRADE
ASSSESSED BY:

5. BACHELOR OF SCIENCE (HONOURS) IN ARCHITECTURE
THEORIES OF ARCHITECTURE AND URBANISM (ARC61303/ARC2224)
SYNOPSIS: REACTION PAPER (AUGUST 2016) [10 MARKS]
NAME: TEO CHEN YI ID: 0320618
LECTURER: MR.NAZMI TUTORIAL TIME: 2-4PM
SYNOPSIS NO: 4 READER TITLE: “TOWARDS A CRITICAL REGIONALISM”
AUTHOR: KENNETH FRAMPTON
Arriere-garde is equally situated between “Enlightenment myth of progress” and the reactionary return
to vernacular forms. According to Frampton, this will generate a resistant, identity-giving culture which
has a restrained option to universal technique. It is then strategized that critical regionalism is a “bridge
over which any humanistic architecture of the future must pass”. Critical regionalism mediates the
spectrum of universal civilization and the particular places. It is situated between and beholding, the
recognition of both world culture and universal civilization. This recognition must mediate the world
culture by deconstructing the overall spectrum of world culture and the universal civilization through
synthetic contradiction. Critical Regionalism cannot simply base on the original form of a specific region
where it should be emerged with the thought of the time. In my opinion, what Frampton meant about
the critical regionalism is based on replacing the reality with information economically for instance the
economy of the building technique whether it is widely used in the industrial. If so universal is achieved
whereas peculiar buildings did not achieve universal in nature. Thus, I agree that by deconstructing the
alien form of buildings and limit the economy of technology production could achieve universal in
nature.
The Megalopolis replaces the place bound urban form and degenerate urban design into a theoretical
subject. The universal techniques generate placelessness. According to Heidegger, the
phenomenological essence of a space depends upon the concrete, which can only take place in clearly
bounded domain. With this, it could create architecture of resistance towards Megalopolis. In the point
of view of Hannah Arendt, when the bounded domain is in its public mode, it is “the space of human
appearance” that exited in the society to gain its power. The potential interchange and action of a
“polis” is created by the density of people living together. Critical regionalism is the maintenance of an
expressive density and resonance in architecture of resistance and the provision of place-form is
equally essential to critical practice as much as resistant architecture where it depends on a clearly
defined domain. In my opinion, megalopolis which was defined as clustered network of cities seems to
be an overdeveloped urban which will cause chaos in design as it is not arranged regularly and
systematically. Thus a clearly define domain is crucial in urban design as it could avoid the formation of
Megalopolis.
WORD COUNT 391
Key points (2.5)
Appropriateness of
Terminologies (2.5)
Clarity in Opinions and
Reactions (2.5)
Logical Progression (2.5)
DATE: TOTAL MARK & GRADE
ASSSESSED BY: