Hi I'm currently in the process of preparing a statement of purpose for TU Delft Urbanism Program application. Below is the outline provided by TU Delft:
- 1000-1500 words
- motivation
- interest in specializations, which and why
- hypothetical thesis project, maximum 3 hypothetical thesis topics
- brief summary (max 250 words) of final assignment in Bachelor Degree, inc. credits earned, grade, and full workload
Aligned with the outline stated, I created my SoP with the following structure:
1. Motivation - brief summary of all the points I intended to convey
2. Passion - looking back to the basic reasoning of why I choose the field
3. Presumption - my working experience and its relevancy to the Urbanism Program
4. Purpose - why Delft, how all linked to my thesis topic, and my ultimate purpose
The struggle I had are how to link between topics in my essay structure and whether the first part (summary) is necessary for this kind of essay. Please kindly advice.
Thanks!
Below are the essay:
Arts of Deduction: The Pursuit of Designing for People
"You see but you don't observe, the distinction is clear, Watson."
A simple - fictional yet realistic quote that provoked my passion in observing people's behavior. Simple observations of what people do, how they do it, why they do it, how the surrounding affected their behaviors, and then end it with a simple deduction. This kind of process is the reason why I like observing people. Throughout my life so far, I have been trying to find a way to fulfill my curiosity in understanding people's behavior. My journey started in a semi-military school with its uniquely 'regulated behavior', then school of architecture where I learnt the basic of shaping built environment for people, and finally to professional experience where I found the closest field for me to pursue my passion, urban design and planning.
Aligned with my passion, I was heavily impressed and attracted to urban design and planning related study about public life. Jacob's 'sidewalk ballet', Hall's 'hidden dimension', and Gehl's 'cities for people' are some of the works that I found relevant to my presumption on what cities should still consider in the future. Future cities that are created by the people, by being planned collaboratively; shaped for the people, not for vehicles; and inspired by the people, by leveraging contextuality. My presumption can be clearly justified by Gehl's statement when asked whether his knowledge on (European) cities will be relevant for the future, "Yes, because I see no signs that Homo sapiens will not be Homo sapiens in the future".
Following up on my presumption, my ultimate purpose is to make use of my full knowledge to contribute to better future Indonesian cities. This purpose is not just merely for my love to Indonesia but also because of the potential that I see from current Indonesian cities, complex cities with diverse cultural backgrounds that should be leverage upon. City of Bandung, as one of the city that is currently on a major transitional period made a breakthrough by positioning the people as the main factor in the city vision. Aligned with current Indonesia's government policy to decentralize city development, I see the potential of making Bandung's way of governing cities as a good prototype to be used with proper adaption for other cities in Indonesia.
Being fully aware of my own passion, presumption, and purpose, I was intrigued to observe and appreciate my own journey. The whole process which come to a deduction why Urbanism program in TU Delft will be the best fit for my future and why I am fit with TU Delft academic culture.
. . . .
My passion of understanding people's behavior in relation to their surroundings started in arguably the most controlled-behavior society - military society. Living three years full-time in a strictly organized and planned society instead made me interested with the relatively obscured human behavior. This interest started to become my real passion when I was pursuing my undergraduate degree in architecture. Although most of my academic experiences could not fulfill my curiosity, subjects related to public space study helped me fulfilled the gap.
The process of pursuing my passion culminated in my Final Design Studio when I took a semi-military school as the main design objective. I channeled my passion in people's behavior, my past experience as a student, and my architectural design knowledge to excel this project. The project's site is located in Bandung, West Java, Indonesia, with the area of ą14 ha. The design scopes of this project are campus masterplan and dormitory facility architecture design. The process started with comprehensive observations: project positioning, visioning, benchmarking, typology studies, and most importantly understanding the 'military-regulated' people's behavior. To achieve the objective, I used a Campus Design framework (Dober, 1992) as in school system implementation through placemaking and school image interpretation through placemarking. Based on my understanding of the observation, analysis, and design related issues, the main design principle was appointed as to embrace people's behavior uniqueness through people oriented design with the main concept of "integration of discipline and creativity in transitional spaces".
This project acted as an individual final design studio compulsory for graduation with 8 credit hours out of 144 total credit hours for undergraduate level. There are three scheduled major design reviews in the total duration of 6 months with one main and two supporting supervisors for every student. I completed all the reviews (in the form of sets of preliminary architecture drawings and models for every review), final report, and research paper with the final grade of A (excellent).
Other than formal academic experiences, I filled my time with many extra-curriculum activities - architecture and community related activities, which fortunately led me to a deduction of how small architecture is in relation to the built environment that will affect people's behavior. From what I have personally observed, high range of people's behaviors that are worth analyzing happened in public realms, which comprise of more than architecture. This deduction further led me to pursue my passion in fields that deal with formation of public realms, urban planning and design.
. . . .
Following up my undergraduate degree deduction, I began learning about urban studies by working as an urban planner/designer in Singapore. Summary of the things that I learnt in my two-year experiences are some of the urban planning/design considerations concerning 3 aspects, namely; scale - from the scale of a house to regional scale; scope - from architecture to urban planning; and stakeholder - from public to private. These three points led me to a deduction that people's behavior in relation to their surroundings especially in quality of life enhancement can be achieved in many different scale, scope, and stakeholder. However, I presume that my understanding on the 'in between areas' of them were extremely important for the next steps of my journey.
Urbanism programs in Technological University of Delft became apparent as the next step for me to pursue my dream because of three main reasons: first, the nature of the program - hybrid of planning, landscape, and architecture of the city, fit perfectly with my deduction of the suitable scopes in Indonesian future cities development. Second, 'People, Movement, and Public Space' subject really piqued my curiosity on how the eminent public life studies - Jacob, Hall and Gehl to name a few of my favorite theorist, being implemented in real life. Lastly, the choice of possible specialization and thesis topic - Complex Cities: Happy Cities aligned with my purpose to study the current development trend of Indonesian cities.
My intention to take Complex Cities as my thesis topic associated to one of my dreams to contribute to future Indonesian cities development. As the current government's policy: asymmetry decentralization, the development growth will be spread outside the current developed cities. Therefore, the need for better city planning and design responding to the already complex existing context and system are inevitable.
With diverse cultural backgrounds of Indonesian cities, ideal urban planning and design theories needed to be contextualized appropriately. City of Bandung, with its Mayor Ridwan Kamil (architect and urbanist), stood out as one of the Indonesian cities that successfully integrated its local culture as the main strength of the city vision. The vision prioritized to create comfortable cities for people to live with simple yet doable solutions rather than a gimmick vision with sophisticated but impractical solutions. This method of prioritizing people's state of happiness is in my presumption should be implemented in other cities in Indonesia. I sincerely believe that people should be the main factor taken into consideration for any city development.
Happy Cities as thesis sub-topic fit perfectly with my deduction on how future Indonesian cities should be planned and designed. As the case in City of Bandung, Happy Cities as a concept was interpreted into city vision, implemented in city physical forms, and responded by the society. This flow of process is interesting to be analyzed to further come to a deduction on how the vision actually works in real life. Success stories of other cities in Indonesia and other part of the world will also be analyzed in the effort to create a comprehensive framework on how to plan and design certain cities with high consideration of the local culture as the main strength.
. . . .
Looking back to what I have done to pursuit my passion, continuing my study in TU Delft Urbanism program will be a suitable addition to take me one step closer to pursuit my biggest dream: to make use of my full knowledge, skill, and effort on simply creating places for people. Places from people, by people and for people. In order to achieve that, I believe that I still need to learn relentlessly so many things from people who are expert in it, who are passionate in it, and of course from people who has the same dream as me.
Cheers!
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