Theories of Asian Architecture
This module 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 and globalisation.
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Project Showcase
Project 1: Reading the Contexts of Traditional Streets
For this project, we were to to demonstrate understanding of place contexts and how they construct the place identity and socio-cultural meanings through discussing the relationship between architecture and its social, cultural, and intellectual context within the Asian region.
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We were to capture our analysis of 1 selected street in a sketch journal and write a summary.
Project 1.5: Infographic
This project required us to produce an infographic poster to demonstrate understanding of historical development of Asian vernacular and traditional architecture in specific areas.
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We were to approach traditional or vernacular architecture using the content scope from our lectures and select one type of architecture from the following:
Traditional Chinese architecture
Traditional Indian architecture
Vernacular Malay architecture
Vernacular architecture of Southeast Asia
Our infographic framework was to include an overview of design thinking/ influence of cosmology, history, society and culture on the architectural production and development, as well as one theme from either building typology, spatial layout conception and structures, materials and construction.
Project 2: Research in Asian Architecture
The project was research driven and required students to work in groups of 7/8 people in order to research and discuss significant issues to generate a critical understanding of tradition, modernity and globalisation in the Asian architectural contexts. Students were required to present their findings in the form of a research poster and seminar presentation.
Video Presentation Link
Reflection
Theories of Asian Architecture was an online-based module and it was quite convenient to be accessed as all the learning and tutorial sessions were done on Microsoft Teams.
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Personally, this module challenged me in unique ways. As an international student, I got an intricate look into the Architecture of a culture that I do not fully understand as it is not my own. This meant that several of the concepts that I came across throughout the entire module were new to me. I had to immerse myself into cultures that I was unfamiliar with, whose languages I knew not, which made things like research even harder because I did not really know where to begin looking or what even exactly to look for.
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I am thankful though, that I have several local friends who I could pick up on concepts from and explanations of words and expressions that made no sense to me. I will say though that struggling to understand Asian Architecture by immersing myself into different Asian cultures was an experience I would not take back. There is a sort of satisfaction that comes with trudging on in the face of something new and difficult in an effort to understand it and subsequently widening your scope of knowledge. I am thankful to Mr. Nicholas, my tutor, who addressed all concerns I had and provided his invaluable insights. Finally, I am thankful to Ms. Shahrianne and Mr. Koh, the module coordinator, for always engaging in meaningful discourse during and also outside of lecture recap sessions.
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