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Is critical thinking in architecture any different from critical thinking in engineering or other design disciplines? I went looking, and the striking line I found is this: firms treat problem identification and critical thinking as the definitive bridge between an amateur student project and a viable real-world design. Anyone can learn the software. What practices want are graduates who can dissect complex constraints and arrive at intentional, logical solutions. That bridge has three parts, and I'll take each in turn across this series — (1) decoding context and site, (2) spatial problem solving and programmatic logic, and (3) evidencing critical thinking in the portfolio (design process).

This first episode tests a diagram you'll have seen everywhere: the Chicago Architecture Center's six design process steps, by Jen Masengarb. Define the problem, collect information, brainstorm and analyse, develop solutions and build a model, present for feedback, improve. It maps onto architecture well — collecting information is case studies and precedent; testing is drawing the scheme, because a drawing tells you the entrance is wrong (for example). But practice compresses all of it: the brief arrives last night and your boss wants a solution by noon, and he does not want to see the process. What the Stanford d.school adds is the part architecture resists most — design thinking is glue that brings teammates around a common goal. We still imagine the architect as one person deciding everything, and we silo the design thesis. Yet brainstorming needs more than one head.

© 2026 Talk Architecture, Author: Naziaty Mohd Yaacob. Image from the website of the Chicago Architecture Center's six design process steps, by Jen Masengarb

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Start from a phenomenon we all know: the dulling of the senses. Do the same thing daily and the sensation fades. Bathing in a river is the opposite — touch, smell, taste, sight and sound arriving at once, grounding and thrilling, though for some it would be overload. Then look at how most of us actually live: car park, lift, corridor, unit. Neutral by design, because the unit is speculative and has to sell to anyone. What the developer sells you instead is sensation somewhere else — the advert with a woman jogging beneath the trees, shot from above; the pool, the pocket park, the family and the elderly together outdoors.

So I want to make the case for sensory design as a set of principles in its own right, sitting alongside universal design — useful to architects and urban designers, and to UI/UX and product designers too. It matters for everyone, and particularly for people with cognitive, sensory or physical disabilities, for neurodivergent people who cannot take extreme sensations, for elderly people and for people living with dementia. I offer one principle to begin with: proximity to nature. No part of a space should sit more than six metres from daylight and planting, and at least two spaces should have direct access to nature. In a high-rise that raises real questions about soil, balconies and maintenance — but the technology has moved on since green building began in the nineties. Sensory design is more than thermal comfort and a Green Building Index score.

© 2026 Talk Architecture, Author: Naziaty Mohd Yaacob. Image 'Nurture' in acrylics on paper by Naziaty Mohd Yaacob.

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The educator’s answer to Part 1, and it comes from Porto. At FAUP — the school shaped by Fernando Távora, Álvaro Siza and Eduardo Souto de Moura — spatial intuition isn’t treated as a mystical gift but as a systematically trained muscle. Three anchors hold it: (1) freehand drawing as an analytical instrument rather than a presentation tool, forcing the slow cognitive digestion of scale and shadow that software bypasses; (2) buildings understood as extensions of landscape, where students design the voids between volumes; and (3) space tied to the physical weight of materials. Shifting a studio from image-making back to space-making is the most impactful intervention a tutor can make.

Then four exercises you could put into a syllabus tomorrow. (1) Design a bathhouse or small library or similar space through a 1:20 hand-drawn section, with floor plans banned for a fortnight and a human figure in every room. (2) Build a 30 cm box, cut apertures to a real sun path, and photograph the light inside it at 9am, noon and 4pm — no rendering allowed. Sense of materiality and texture at 1:1 scale. (3) Map an urban site by continuous freehand panorama with no photographs permitted, then carve it in foam. And (4) enforce a digital detox for the first thirty per cent of the project: cardboard and clay only, software introduced once the massing has survived a desk crit. I can imagine the department meeting this would provoke — because the FAUP Porto method asks far more of the tutor.

© 2026 Talk Architecture, Author: Naziaty Mohd Yaacob. Image: FAUP Porto's second year 1:500 model in 2015 taken by Naziaty Mohd Yaacob

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Why is there such a lack of quality in spatial design among architecture students? I’ve watched this for a decade, and the research is clear that it isn’t a shortage of talent — it’s a systemic shift in how architecture is taught and conceptualised. Five drivers: (1) the Instagrammability of architecture, where a building is judged by one two-dimensional render rather than the experience of moving through it; (2) over-reliance on digital tools, where students jump straight into Rhino or Revit before mastering anything by hand; (3) curriculum overload, where sustainability, computational design and social justice crowd out the hours once given to spatial composition; (4) theoretical dominance, where a politically charged thesis outscores volumetric quality; and (5) disconnection from physical reality.

Some of this hits me in the gut. Trendy geometries and photorealistic lighting are exactly what I was arguing against the last time I taught second year — I once banned circular forms from a project outright, and the students didn’t like it. We used to work through Francis D.K. Ching’s Form, Space and Order sketch by sketch, and you could genuinely master spatial design that way. Phenomenology, tectonic clarity, proportion: these are core competencies, not electives. They should occupy sixty per cent of a student’s week, not ten. Digital modelling belongs in production drawings, not in the thinking.

© 2026 Talk Architecture, Author: Naziaty Mohd Yaacob. Image: Overlay on F.D.K.Ching 's book page by Naziaty Mohd Yaacob

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**Senior-friendly housing in Malaysia needs to move beyond multigenerational units to support true ageing in place.** The episode challenges the assumption that most elderly parents will live with adult children and highlights the full care spectrum—from independent to assisted living and nursing care—calling for affordable, evidence-based designs, home retrofits, and policies that serve middle- and lower-income groups rather than marketing trends alone. Developers should exceed basic Malaysian standards by adopting universal design that benefits seniors, families with children, expectant mothers, and persons with disabilities.

Singapore provides useful models through inclusive projects such as the Punggol Regional Library and HDB community care apartments featuring accessible layouts, grab bars, and adaptable spaces. Independent living also depends on barrier-free homes, seamless mobility, and accessible public transport, malls, and community facilities. With an ageing population projected for 2040, Malaysia must apply universal design across homes, neighbourhoods, and public spaces so seniors can remain active and included in society.

© 2026 Talk Architecture, Author: Naziaty Mohd Yaacob. Image: Naziaty Mohd Yaacob

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We explore accessibility for seniors in Malaysian housing, drawing from a May 2026 Edge Malaysia article on "designing and retrofitting senior-friendly environments". As Malaysia heads toward becoming an aged society by 2045, developers are promoting aging-in-place homes, multigenerational units, and wellness-linked living options, guided by human-centered design principles, MS 1184:2014 standards, and PLANMalaysia guidelines that prioritize safety, dignity, mobility, and outdoor therapeutic spaces.

As an introduction to the topic, we offer a critique, questioning assumptions that most elderly parents will live with adult children and highlighting the complex spectrum of care—from independent living to assisted and nursing needs. There need to have a call for greater attention to affordability, retrofitting older homes, government policies, and support for middle- and lower-income groups, urging a more empathetic, evidence-based approach rather than marketing-driven solutions alone.

© 2026 Talk Architecture, Author: Naziaty Mohd Yaacob. Image: Naziaty Mohd Yaacob

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Further exploration on the conversations on the enduring value of manual sketching / hand drawing in contemporary architectural practice, drawing on insightful responses from a decade-old Quora discussion. The small chat describes how hand sketching is far more than a technique—it is a mode of thought that fosters deep understanding of relationships between elements, encourages intuitive design process, based on the seamless link between mind, eye, and hand, as emphasized by commentators like Luis Diaz and Forrest Murphy.

In addition, it is proven as a practical advantages for quickly generating ideas, communicating concepts, and developing critical design skills, contrasting it with the limitations of CAD and BIM for exploratory thinking. Amid the rise of digital tools and AI, arguably hand drawing / sketches remains essential for better designers and more thoughtful architecture, urging its renewed place in education and practice rather than letting it fade into nostalgia.

© 2026 Talk Architecture, Author: Naziaty Mohd Yaacob. Image: Getty Images. (n.d.). Architect hand-drafting structural floor plans on blueprint paper [Photograph]. Retrieved from Google AI Assistant.

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Part 1 - Continuing the conversation on manual sketching in practice. Whatever you do in architecture school, you are preparing for a fast-paced industry where deadlines serve financial goals — and where sketching has quietly become an undervalued skill. What gets lost with it is the architect: the intuition, the authorship, the sense of a building made by someone rather than generated by software. Grant Harris of HB Architecture puts it well across two recent pieces. Drawing, he says, is not about presentation. It is a way of thinking, of testing, of discovering relationships before they are fixed.

Then there is Juhani Pallasmaa's The Thinking Hand, which sharpens the point considerably. A mature designer drawing is not looking at the lines — they are occupying the structure those lines represent, touching its surfaces, sensing its materials. That intimacy is what a computer struggles to simulate. It clarified something I used to say to students long before digital tools arrived: you're not a graphic designer, you're an architect. If you are not inside the space while you draw it, you are producing illustration, not architecture. And Glenn Murcutt's line holds the whole thing together: my role is not that of a creator, but of a discoverer.

© 2026 Talk Architecture, Author: Naziaty Mohd Yaacob. Image: Still from Aminuddin Zakaria's Instagram.

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Principals aren't encouraging young architects to sketch any more. What firms hire for is Revit proficiency; sketching has been demoted to a personal plus, useful to the graduate but not asked for by the organisation. So I put the question to a former student of mine, Aminuddin Zakaria — a design architect and BIM lead working on civic and institutional projects at Arkiskape Sdn Bhd — and his answer was blunt. He sees very few graduates sketching in practice, and even experienced architects skipping straight to production. That, he says, is how we end up with such generic architecture, always justified by time and cost.

His own view is the opposite: he still sketches, right through to construction stage, because it explains faster, goes deeper and solves problems quicker than any software. CAD and Revit are tools for contract documentation. Anyone designing at concept stage without sketches ends up slow, rigid, and with no authentic intent. AI belongs in the workflow — it automates, simulates, frees up time to experiment — but it shouldn't replace this stage. We aren't using the tool we were given. And a rigid solution makes for a stilted conversation: with engineers, with fabricators, with anyone you need to work a joint out with in a room.

© 2026 Talk Architecture, Author: Naziaty Mohd Yaacob. Image: Still from Aminuddin Zakaria's Instagram.

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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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