Heidegger's thinking on ARCHITECTURE

Martin Heidegger is a famous philosopher who was born in German. He has a unique perspective on architecture in his philosophies. As a architecture student, I can’t say that I understand the whole essay given but I m trying my best to understand it. Honestly, if I were to give how many percent I understood, I would give myself 10%. However, the reason why I think it should be I am not that level yet...when will I be?

Based on the assignment brief, I am required to have a personal trip to a spiritual place to develop the analyzing job for the essay. And I chose the temple which is located in Taman Yulek, Cheras, called Ci De Miao（慈德庙). The public also call it as Wong Lou Sin Si （黄老仙师）.

From what Heidegger says, a temple should have at least a God, or else it won’t be called as temple. It will be other things else. Generally, the reason why the temple is built is the people want to give appreciation to the God through worship, because the people believe that God will give help to them if they face any dilemma. So that, as gratitude, they build the temple to worship the God. It is just the belief, man believes the God so that they build the temple. Indirectly, there is a existence of Chinese tradition. For Chinese, reciprocity is an important and good tradition that has to be passed along to the future generation. I believe it goes the same too for other races.

Man and nature are always closely related. It is just the same like the question between chicken and egg. Which one exists first? There is no proper answer for this. What can be explained is both of them complement each other, dispensable. In other way of saying, human can’t live without nature and nature can’t exist without human. The same principle applies to architecture field. Buildings have to complement with environment and the surroundings. It is not a good design if one of them doesn’t coordinate to another.

In architecture field, place and space play important roles in designing. Both of them are also complement to each other too. A place should have space and space can create a place. According to Heidegger, place is created by connection of different spaces. I am not sure whether it is right but I agree what he said. Connection of different spaces not only creates place, it even creates more interesting design of place in the sense of creativity.

Incense burner

Dwelling means a place to stay. In the Heidegger’s thinking, a building is a constructed object to dwell people. It means a place to stay in. But first of all, the basic requirement for a dwelling is it should be comfortable to live in. It is useless if the outlook of the building looks awesome but the interior part looks bad. Comfortable is the most basic requirement for a dwelling. Besides comfort factor, it is a challenge to have unlimited creativity in a limited space (inner part of dwelling). For my opinion, architecture needs to concern both the outlook and interior part because both of them are playing the important role for the whole building. For example, one will look the outlook of the building, and then one will go in the building to experience the interior. Exterior and interior have to be positive all the way, neither can be negative.

To communicate, we need to have language, either verbal or body language, we need one of it. It goes the same in architecture. “Man dwells between work and word” Heidegger said. It is absolutely true. At the initial part of design process, word brings out work whereas at the final stage, work results word. I had been emphasizing on the word “complement” for few times. Undeniable, this word suits the condition here too. After a good work produced, good expression of word is needed to be presentable.

As a conclusion, COMPLEMENTARY is a key that exist in the topics of architecture field. Nothing can go too much and nothing can be so less in architecture. Coordination is the main issue in COMPLEMENTARY too.All the things need to be in proper ratio to make it a good design.

Understanding on PLACE

When I heard that it is an 11-page-article, first came into my mind was, I could finish it in few hours time. But after I viewed it on my laptop, I found out that, even the first paragraph of words, I don’t even really understand. Oo..gosh..really makes me mad..somehow I still read it a few times to realize the idioms “practice makes perfect”, hope that I read more times will gain more understandings..how naïve I am..huh?

Actually I didn’t post the critic on blog, the main reason is I don’t really understand what is the article trying to say? It is just like kind of philosophy which can’t be easily get understood. Until today in the lesson of Theories of Architecture, I got to know some…trying to understand while lecturer explaining. It was true that sometimes I was lack of O₂…but I really get something in today’s lesson.

From what I understand through the article, the concept of place and of space is a system of spaces which is an adaptation to a given environment. This is the conclusion from Piaget,”...the universe is built up into an aggregate of permanent objects connected by causal relations that are independent of the subject and are placed in objective space and time.”

Today’s lecture showed me a clearer understand on the article which is shown in the formula below:

Existential space + Egocentric space = Place

Existential space consists of associations, memories, meanings and representation where as egocentric space has the issue of self-centered.

Nowadays, the world now is in egocentric space, becoming more self-centered which we are not willing to see this happen. But somehow, this is the fact, happening in the moment. Self-centered often exists in mobilized world which is full of technologies that claimed to be provide convenience to human. For example, FACEBOOK is the most popular term among the world. It is true that it brings convenience to human that each other can contact or for those old friends can keep in touch after a long of period. But somehow, it is lack of humane. During olden days, people used to send greeting by cards and face to face greet, but now? The people just sms or leave some “cold” expression of greeting words in FACEBOOK. Is this the way that people live? The world will be much less human touch.

For existential space, it can be defined as a place that appears the interaction between human beings which is full of humane from time to time. Among human beings, we have to communicate to each other, interact with each other to live a warm society. A real place needs the existence of popularity which is the interaction of human that is being focused since olden days. During some festivals, people visiting each others to celebrate. This is the proper way for people to live in a place. In Chinese, there is a phrase called “人间有情”, translated into English, it should be Heart of Gold. The community has a great need of Heart of Gold instead of those ruthless technologies that being developed till unlimited. For example, recently the mural wall of Pudu Jail is demolished yesterday. Although it is just a wall of a jail, from the outlook, it looks ruthless and crucial, however people are feeling sentimental because it is full of humanities and culture from 1895-2010. This is the humane that I meant.

The two spaces, existential space and egocentric space, these two things may have some contradiction in between, but somehow, it gives complementary to each other to create a PLACE. Neither one of them are not available to have a good place. With each passing day, the world now is keep on improving in technologies, at the same time, we can’t miss out the interaction between human in the community.

Reference:https://oa.doria.fi/bitstream/handle/10024/2804/032.html

REVIEW of Minority Report

The film shows the theme obviously about the prophecy and the reality in the future, when someone can predict the future through several of methods to prevent crime. It can’t be defined as a good thing but this is a subjective judgment and sometimes may not be really accurate. There are millions of things in the world that relates to “fate”, but what is actually “fate”? There are many different answers from everyone. In the end, the person who created the destiny or fate was destined to be, might be seen as a little dust in the universe and we will never explore a reasonable conclusion. Perhaps, as the film reveals the helplessness at the last, as will happen to those so-called "Destiny", is just a theory someone use loopholes to create a system out of a trap it, it will take necessity to be occurred and to inform us one of most ironic paradox.

Secondly, the color blue-black exists throughout the full-length of movie. It express the feeling of cold, technology and unreal atmosphere that full-filled with the viewer's brain. Under the director Steven Spielberg's control, whether fixed or flying scenes shows the best effecting he movie, and each have grasped the most out of color effects. The whole drama only has a the few color shots, which are the police officers assigned to the thoughts of the son and the family, and his wife's house in the warm images. Just because of rare, it makes the movie characters on the quiet family life longing like molten steel pouring down like infused into our hearts. Relatively images, the music of color in the film are better; the movie soundtrack includes the classical symphony to modern electronic music. In the visual deprivation on the use of music, the way of rendering story will be strengthen.

In addition, the film is full of cars, mobile phones, computers and other products of the advertisement, I know that shows the high technologies but it gives me boredom. However, the entire film gives the feeling of a very technology, especially those characters controls the computer slides. Those slides controlling using specific gloves in those scenes are really impressive that I really wish to see one day in the future in the real world..

What I get inspired from this movie is human now is to rely on technology and makes people lost their independence, somehow lost an important thing, the real nature. It is true that the world needs technology to improve ourselves, but at the same time, we can’t lost our nature. Nature and technology need to be balanced as well as to live a better normal life.

As an architecture student, I am not willing to see the existing of the world and environment in the film which only appears the ruthless of human without the warmness of human. Only the harmony environment will be balanced and can lead the architecture to be a good design which includes the high-technologies and warmth of human.

REFERENCE

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Minority_Report_(film)

http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0181689/

ME, myself

First and foremost, I would like to introduce myself. Everybody calls my nicknames rather than my real name. From primary, my nickname was KING KONG and HANG KING KONG(brother of Hang Tuah). During secondary life, I had several nicknames which are “white chicken”(in chinese), “Peking duck”(in chinese) and etc. I got a lot of these nicknames. Even now in university, some people are calling me “sifu”, which I am not that clear and understand the reason of this nickname. Anyway, my real name is Kong Kin Hang in the age of 21, which is a typical aquarius example.

Since I graduated from secondary school, I started to blog. The first blog I had is considered as a birthday present from myself at the age of 19. I blog because I want to express myself in such a way for venting. Blogging is one of the ways for me to vent. It goes the same like what our former PM, Dr. Mahathir said:“ Blog is to UNBLOCK.” Besides, having sports is another way for me to vent too, the best sports I have is badminton. Every smashing is a vent from me. I started playing badminton since I was standard 4, even now I am still playing. However, I won’t deny that I can play quite well for badminton, but nowadays my condition is going down, stamina down, speed down, everything down, which make me sad. Therefore, I decided to restore my state of standard this year. I join the badminton club in UCSI, I called out my former patners to play together to hope that can regain that ability of playing.

Once upon a time, I was thinking of can I be a national badminton player? I really dreamed it before, but due to my hectic secondary life, I gave up my dream. And then I started my drawing life. It is true that I can draw since I was in kindergarden. In my memory, I still remember that the person who inspire me to draw is a Malay boy who can draw Ultraman very well. That time I was having school in 2 kindergarden, one is Islamic kindergarden and another is common kindergarden. The malay boy is from the Islamic kindergarden. During that time, I have no friends, always sitting there and don’t know how to communicate with others. But since I saw what he always drew, then I start drawing also. The image I always drew is a pair of bride and groom standing in the front of the Father in the church. I drew a lot. Soon I made my friends with others through drawing. At the same time, I won the drawing contest in both kindergarden which I can prove my drawing skills. And my ambition during that time is to become an artist.

I kept on drawing from primary too, I didn’t give up my talent but I tried to improve it by looking more on those people’s art work in Central Market and I tried to learn by ownself. Soon in secondary school, when I gave up my dream to become a badminton player, I chose to draw again. This time is draw comics. Hong Kong comics is the my favourite, although the storyline is not good, I like the way they render the image, combine manual rendering and computer rendering which presents a excellent outcome. Haha. That time my ambition changed to comics artist. However, during the last 2 years in my secondary school, I had some bad experience. My dad passed away suddenly at the year of 2005 which I was just form 4. So, I am thinking of studying something that can bring my family to live a better life in the future. So I chose architecture as my course. I want to be an ARCHITECT! Honestly, I choose this course because I like drawing and modeling and in the future, the salary will be able to allow my family to live a good life.

And now I m studying architecture now, I know how hard n how suffer n even how torture it is. But somehow, I will overcome it because I believe no pain, no gain. If u want something, you have to pay for it. Every semester I try my best to be the best, but somehow will get critics, but I won’t give up, I will still try my best to be the best because I have the ability to achieve what I want. That’s me! My vitality is very high! The more I lose, the more I will pay my effort in. I would never ever give up my dream to be a famous architect! I won’t!