ASIAN ARCHITECTURE
The subject explores the history of South, Southeast and East Asian architecture as a whole within a systematic treatment of architectural design and construction, building science and technology, garden design and city planning through three key themes: sustainability, tradition and modernity & globalisation. These themes will guide the organisation of weekly lecture and projects, which will proceed from the establishment of a basic theoretical apparatus to the examination of specific cases. Students will develop understanding on Asian architecture and urbanism and interpret Asian architectural language through research poster and oral presentation.
Project 1: Research in Asian Architecture
Task:
In a group of 5-6 students, we are required to select a topic that we wished to conduct a research question on. The project is research driven that requires student to research and discuss significant issues to generate a critical understanding of tradition, modernity and globalization in the Asian architectural contexts. These issues are discussed in lectures and pre-recorded lectures to facilitate students’ group discussion in class. Students are required to present their findings in the form of a research poster and seminar presentation.
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The topic that our group chose was the effect of different climatic conditions of courtyard element of Chinese vernacular siheyuan in Beijing and Chaozhou.
Boards
Slides
Project 2: Contextual Architecture
Task:
For this project, students are required to select a building in Asia and analyse how the selected architectural design responded to its contexts. Findings from the study is presented in the form of A2 presentation visual.
The building that I chose is the Fan Zeng Art Gallery by Original Design Studio in China.
Reflection
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From this semester, I have learnt about importance of the programme of a building. In this case, the community leisure center; We should not have the mindset that more is better, as we try to stuff in as many activities into a single building, without the consideration of spatial experience and poetics. A space should not be just a square with thick lines around it, allocated on the plan of our proposal, instead there should be thought put into the size of the space for allocated number of users with a design of spatial experience.
