CONFLUENCE

Year five Semester one

Studio Leader: ASSOC. PROF. Fung John Chye (Ar.)

Site: Pasir Ris Central

The Mindfulness Conundrum

The brief

A hallmark of the 21st century is the omnipresence of information, which overloads and disrupts our mind in an unceasing flux. This pervasive intrusion of the digital exerts an adverse impact on our physical, mental and cognitive health. Humanity needs an attention revolution and a re-enchantment with phenomenological experiences that promote health and wellness.

Future Urban Neighbourhoods [F.U.N.] 4.0 continues the earlier explorations of architecture and urbanscapes to mitigate the immense challenges of realworld conditions in order to imagine viable futures in 2050 and beyond through scenarios of sustainable human communities, wellness, urban solutions, and deep technologies.

The Mindfulness Conundrum begins with an investigation of mindfulness through meditation in spaces of the urban commons, to unpack the sacred in the ordinary. The studio unpacks imagination of future environments at urban and architectural scales. Students examine the multifarious challenges under the broad umbrella of future urbanism.

Embodying and Encouraging Mindfulness

A mindful environment is one with a harmonious balance of senses; too much of it would be overwhelming and distracting, but too little of it would be unstimulating and more vulnerable to fluctuations and changes. These factors help to ground people and allow them to relate to the environment or activity that they are partaking in.

Our proposal aims to provide a range of environmental conditions that provide opportunities for mindfulness throughout the site, as opposed to the current distribution in site where experiences are concentrated in a particular areas.

Through user and sensory studies, we identified potential areas for expansion and the further integration of amenities and residential in a existing water body in Pasir Ris Park, Sungei Tampines.

The central water body would be used to provide opportunities to engage multiple senses is different ways. A central water body comes with various environments; streams would offer a quieter environment and the central lake would offer a louder and cooler environment. This strategy was constructed from the conducted user and sensory studies, which indicated that water bodies can be significant in determining our experience of space.

The masterplan featuring the new Sungei Tampines and its different characters, as influenced by neighbouring water bodies

The Meaning of Mindfulness

A mindful environment is one with a harmonious balance of senses; too much of it would be overwhelming and distracting, but too little of it would be unstimulating and more vulnerable to fluctuations and changes. These factors help to ground people and allow them to relate to the environment or activity that they are partaking in.

This section looks at the more detailed design of the hawker cenre and sports center that sits in the heart of the masterplan. It replaces the old Pasir Ris Hawker Center and ActiveSG, and utilises the adjacent main water body and streams to create rich and diverse dining and active spaces.

A large variety of spaces had also been considered; using the framework developed by the group’s research, each space has been designed to emulate a certain healing and conducive environment for the specific activity. For example, due to the acoustically vibrant nature of the hawker centre, waterfalls and moving water had been incorporated into the design to compensate for loud changes in the soundscape. In the overall design, a closeness to nature, through the calming effect of slow-moving streams and the integration of hardscapes and softscapes, have been maintained throughout.

Plans and sections of the hawker center and sports center, and its surrounding naturalistic environments promoting diverse experiences of mindfulness.

The Curation of Water Bodies and Nature

Scale, visual stimuli and a connection with nature is used to create varying environments characteristic or beneficial to their respective programmes. For example, programs that are louder and see a larger population align better to the the condition offered by the central lake that can provide breeze, mist and is relatively loud compared to streams

Channels which are faster moving can be appropriate for programs that are more active and can benefit from a more rhythmic character in sounds generated, Ponds that retain water during high rain fall and drain during Low rainfall and offer different tactile environments for programs dependent on tactility such as playground.

Meanwhile, residential zones have streams integrated that can provide subtle auditory cues in way finding. These streams run through the centre of each block and leads back to the main residential water body. Each residential cluster also features a main residential water body that is shielded from the public eye with vegetation and the cover of surrounding residential blocks. This water body is primarily used for communal water gardens and gardening, with the smaller offsprouting streams meandering to provide a more intimate environment within the sub-programme inserted at the each bend of the stream Green spaces were also introduced to complement the water bodies and are important for programs that thrive in open spaces.