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Remember the second-year student whose lecturers kept saying "I don't like your plan, change it"? They said: in second year we studied the masters, understood the philosophy of their buildings, and applied it to our projects — borrowing viewpoints. But we can't always borrow other people's viewpoints. Copy and paste design. So how do we build a strong foundation of our own viewpoint, and our own critical thinking, through the design studio years?

The student also asked about critical thinking. Here is where it actually lives: in the act of massaging a plan. It is an art. You need the skill to imagine the space from your plan — proportion, scale — and when you start massaging it, you see: this doesn't work. The relationship between this space and that space doesn't work. And you keep building, layer on layer of corrections.

One part is the "aesthetics system" where you can refer to precedents of how architects approach with their use of materials and construction, and how that influences vice-versa the space, volume and details.

© 2026 Talk Architecture, Author: Naziaty Mohd Yaacob.

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