Chap.1 Translating Cognitii into Architectural Formation – Cognitii Ideation in Product Contextualization to Urban Architecture

Rahinah Ibrahim & Maszura Abdul Ghafar

COGnitii 2021 is by the Class of 2021 Bachelor of Science in Architecture who had taken up ARC4902 Topical Studies under the instruction of Professor Ts. Dr. Rahinah Ibrahim. While the course intent was to nurture and expand the observable cues from the environment into written text, the class efforts saw an incredible build-up of critical writing competency among young architectural students. It would just be wasteful if the prosodic rationales emerging from the students’ critical reading-analysis-synthesis-translation efforts were not shared to the public.

Both authors were inspired from the Teaching & Learning Workshop in Port Dickson, Negri Sembilan in August 2020 to turn their class assignments into mindful showcases of ideas that could inject humanness in tackling familiar built environment in architectural ideation process. The first author is the Coordinator for ARC4902 Topical Studies while the second author is the Coordinator for ARC3016 Architectural Design Studio. The studio project aims to rejuvenate the current commercial sector economic resilience in Malaysian townships particularly Kajang and Shah Alam.

Impacted by global trends and the Covid-19 pandemic, the studio project seeks to change the role of commercial buildings and how they play in contextual people’s lives. This foretells that commercial buildings are the new public spaces in urban areas that cater contextual commercial sustainability, safe locality, and neighbourhood vitality. Ultimately, a community could live, shop and work all within walking distance. Using diverse clientele from sporting to service brands such as Dyson, Adidas, Google, Cotton On, etc., the studio projects endeavour to achieve ultimate contextual shopping experiences beyond traditional physical consumerism.

From the all too familiar township information, the assignments got more adventurous by having the students evaluating and synthesizing potential ideas into feasible conceptual philosophies. The goals were to extract and embellish selected aesthetical and functional characterizations from a township, to the project site, and to the clientele that could be conveyed in high impact visual representations for beholding the pride of the public. In these efforts, COGnitii 2021 would like to convey its appreciation to the studio lecturers and practitioner in ARC3016, Dr Nor Azlina Abu Bakar, Ar. Mohd Azli Mohamad Jamil, Ar. Nik Fazlysham Nik Mat and Ar. Mohamed Yuzairee Mohamed Yusof.

The class efforts are supported by cognitive behavioural psychological theory^[1] referring to mainly about our mental processes—such as our thoughts and interpretations of life events—would explain how the thoughts, feelings, and behaviour of a person interact with each other. In turned, these thoughts would lead to some particular emotions, which in turn lead to specific behavioural responses. In a language study, Cognitii[2] has long been the embodied meaning or meanings from the perspective of a person who interacts with element or elements in the built environment.

Throughout a novice’s architectural education, the pedagogy to notice, rationalizing, and forming meaning of the built environment are major learning experiences all students must undergo. Understanding the practice of noticing and rationalizing in order to establish meanings will eventually lead students toward translating these meanings into architectural representations that we call architecture, eventually. Cognitii is also an architectural phenomenon, but the architectural language is not carried in any letters combination—but, of lines, colours, forms, shapes, etc.—that would elicit similar emotive perception by a person who interacts with our designed architecture that have been put together in resonances of pattens and rhythms to tell its own cognitii definition.

[1] Kalodner, C. R. (2011). Cognitive-behavioral theories. In D. Capuzzi & D. R. Gross (Eds.), Counseling and psychotherapy (p. 193–213). American Counseling Association.

[2] Catherine Doughty. 1999. Cognitive underpinnings of focus on form. Georgetown: Georgetown University.