Exploring the Architectural Excellence: Design Philosophy of Architect Razin Mahmood

Architectural philosophy can be defined as a set of ideas, theories or concepts that governed the work of architecture with architects incessantly seek to create new concepts or thoughts in defining architecture. It is completely debatable to postulate that architectural excellence has indebted itself to architectural philosophy, but evidently, many eminent architects across the history and geography upheld philosophy as their main design apparatus. Contrastingly, there are problems recognized as in the bracket of architecture and philosophy where architects in Malaysia are treated as patrons’ and decision makers’ architectural ‘prostitute’. On the other hand, there is a lack of publications and documentation done that encompasses Malaysia architectural scene. The main concern of this research is to review how local architects develop their philosophy since there are really no studies made by past scholars that systematically scrutinize, compile and document in depth the philosophy of Malaysian contemporary architects and the mechanism involved in developing architectural philosophy. With this in mind, Architect Razin Mahmood, an award-winning Johor Bahru-based architect has been selected as main case study, with interview and documentation as main research tactics. By extrapolating the variables found in eminent architect’s philosophical development as a theoretical starting point, local architect is interviewed accordingly. Subsequently, the data gained is analyzed and reviewed as a model of architect philosophical development. At the end of this paper, we learned that architect develops philosophies progressively, with a typified matrix of personality and is inspired by their surroundings.