SELECTED WORK
SEAN POON SHAO AN
+65 9113 5362 seanpoon.sa@gmail.com
SEAN POON SHAO AN
SELECTED WORK
I can do all this through Him who gives me strength
SEAN POON SHAO AN
EDUCATION
2014—Present Bachelor of Arts in Architecture (Honours) National University of Singapore 2016 Architecture Exchange Programme (Semester 1) University of Strathclyde 2010—2011 Singapore Cambridge GSCE A-Levels St. Andrew’s Junior College
EXPERIENCE
2015—2016 Ridge View Residential College Teaching Assistant + Student Fellow
Facilitated tutorials for GEM1917, Understanding and Critiquing Sustainability Prepared visual materials for branding consultant for RVRC Corporate Identity rebranding
2014 RSP Architects Architecture Intern, led by Mr. Seah Chee Kien
Assisted in conceptual design research for condominium project in Bangalore Developed design for glass canopy motif for Changi Airport T2 proposal
2010—2014 Obscured.sg Creative Director
Conceived brand identity and ethos Vetted editorial layout of published material
2012—2013 Singapore Armed Forces, 2nd Singapore Infantry Battalion Personal Assistant to Commanding Officer, and Regimental Sergeant Major
AWARDS & ACHIEVEMENTS
2016 Milton Tan Best Progress Award National University of Singapore School of Design and Environment, Department of Architecture 2016 NUS Awards for Study Abroad Exchange Scholarship (NASA) National University of Singapore 2016 Architectural Alumni Fund (AAF) Prize for Distinction in Architectural Design National University of Singapore School of Design and Environment, Department of Architecture 2016 Dean’s List, Semester 1 & 2 National University of Singapore School of Design and Environment, Department of Architecture
EXHIBITIONS & PUBLICATIONS
2017 Dialogues NUS Architecture Yearbook 2016
Featuring Veiled Space and Glacial Essay excerpts, Design for Generation, Decay and Renewal and Construeing Fragments of a Community: Recollections and Projections of Kampong Kuchan
2016 NUS Architecture CityEx End of Year Exhibition, URA Building, Singapore Featuring Veiled Space and Glacial
2016 Dwellings at Gillman: Homes for Artists and Researchers Art After Dark, Gillman Barracks, Singapore Featuring The Dematerialised Threshold
2015 NUS Architecture CityEx End of Year Exhibition, URA Building, Singapore Featuring Glas[t]raum
2014 Hear Here, Paperspace The Architecture Society (NUS) Publication Essay contribution, Architecture?
COMPETENCIES
English, Mandarin, Cantonese AutoCAD, ArchiCAD, SketchUp, Adobe Photoshop, Adobe Illustrator, Adobe InDesign
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ACADEMIC PROJECTS
01 An Assemblage of Found Elements To Live and Work, Urban Housing in Glasgow 11 Veiled Space Woodblock Museum in Jalan Besar 23 Vestibules A Music Pavilion in Fort Canning 31 The Dematerialised Threshold Artist-Researcher Dwellings at Gillman Barracks 39 Glacial Proposal for a Modular Tower 43 Glas[t]raum The Room and a Street 49 SojournčŒś A Teahouse in Selegie-Prinsep
PERSONAL
53 View from Abroad A Series of Kaleidescopic Collages
AN ASSEMBLAGE OF FOUND ELEMENTS Year 3, Semester 1, 2016 Exchange Programme at the University of Strathclyde, Glasgow Under the tutelage of Ms. Isabel Deakin
Adjacent to Trongate, one of the oldest streets in Glasgow, Candleriggs is a historically-charged site that sits close to the medieval heart of the city. Its recent history is however characterised by erasure, where traditional tenements gave way to department stores, which fell into dereliction. The site presently exists as a blank slate in the city-centre, with the exception of a few conserved 19th-century sandstone warehouses. This reality of erasure and reconstruction forms the basis for this scheme, where the site is approached as a palimpsest. Old maps reveal now-gone courtyards and back-of-house alleyways—the result of the tenement typology that once marked the site— and these serve as generators for conditions ideal for a new residential quarter: genereous green open spaces. Bound by other districts of varied demographics and programmatic foci (such as arts, commerce and commercial), this scheme attempts to create a lively creative and residential quarter, as an intersection and overlapping point between these external influences.
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above four collages investigating atmosphere, history and materiality at each corner of site below left—present site, overlaid with lost courtyard spaces (in white) right—a masterplanned site, emphasising generous green courtyards and gardens and a tangible palimpsest
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housing for creatives compact, double-volume spaces with generous light and communal lounges
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housing for families an emphasis on double-volume living spaces anchoring private spaces
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above—living areas that overlook greenery below—lush courtyards and sky-gardens to unwind within
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above—compact insertions within artists’ lofts meet life’s essential needs below—generous communal lounges; spaces for ideas to exchange
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VEILED SPACE Year 2, Semester 2, 2016 Under the tutelage of Dr. Lilian Chee
Veiled Space is woodblock museum, located in the Jalan Besar precinct, that showcases selected works by the artist Lim Mu Hue. The project began with an abstraction of Lim’s social tableaux, by presenting them in a sequence that amplifies the rich socio-political messages captured within these scenes of everyday life, and analysing the intricately created spatial qualities within each vignette. Approached the project’s site through a similar socio-cultural lens, analogous scenes of the working-class emerged in Jalan Besar’s back-lanes, demonstrated through their manipulations of the back-lane’s spatial qualities. It was through the process of documenting these inflections, in a manner inspired by Lim’s use of planar forms and chiaroscuro, that the museum’s formal and spatial gestures developed from. Thus, a dominant, but porous veil emerges; a network of screens that translate the amorphous nature of the back-lanes, through varying porosity and depth. It subversively separates yet blurs public gallery spaces and semi-private workshop spaces. It creates a continuous circulation, that seeks to capture the spatial experiences suggested in the woodblocks, while consciously pivoting the museum’s visitors towards Jalan Besar’s back alleys.
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weaving betwen a gossamer-like veil, a pivot towards the back-lane, an evocation of Lim’s spatial depictions
left—a conceptual landscape of 1960s Chinatown creates a sequence of events tying selected woodblock prints together right—woodblocks arranged to create a sequence of events, spatial conditions within these prints form new conditions when amalgamated
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derived atmospheres an architecture of folded planes, and light
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a site of colonised and borrowed space a contestation of territory through permanent and temporal means
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the back-lane’s veil—creating atmospheres and unexpected spatial possibilities
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above—a pivot towards the back-lane below—the back-lane, extended inwards and upwards 21
the artists’ workshop—a spectacle, shielded yet revealed
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VESTIBULES Year 2, Semester 1, 2015 Under the tutelage of Mr. Roland Sharpe Flores
Envisioned as a space for music performances, Vestibules is a device that attempts to activate an underutilised lawn within Fort Canning Park by mimicking adjacent thresholds and portals that draw people into the neighbouring green spaces. It is an art-driven landmark that creates new symmetry and thresholds within a region of Fort Canning Park, by grafting itself into a network of existing thresholds leading into the site. This intent shapes the pivotal gesture of the pavilion – its three tiers gradually rotate; Vestibules bridges two distinct axes together. Born out of a translation of the percussion piece Xochipilli, the pavilion is an assembly of three distinct spaces that users meander through. The piece can be understood as a tripartite composition, where segments share the same underlying rhythm, while being mediated by interstitial transitions grounded in silence. Processional in nature, the piece shapes the journey of Vestibules; one transits from darkness to light, heightening an awareness of the negotiation of levels, while simultaneously alluding to the pavilion’s musical inspiration.
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a tripartite negotiatior between built and natural, between light and dark, openess and enclosure
music translated into visual compositions, into light and shadow, into architectural language
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a proocession through chiascuro-inflected spaces, a transition from darkness to light
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unifying new and old thresholds
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extrapolating formal geometries and historical thresholds, activating an underutilised quadrant of site
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THE DEMATERIALISED THRESHOLD Year 2, Semester 1, 2015 Under the tutelage of Ms. Wu Xinyan
Sited within the colonial core of Gillman Barracks, The Dematerialised Threshold is a synthetic insertion that recognizes and celebrates its locale’s fragmented fabric through the act of clarifying these segments (that of its colonial core, versus scattered additions to its south), while housing both intimate and public programmes within a particularly porous structure. Programmatically, the space serves as the workplace, exhibition space, and residence of two personalities — a cultural anthropologist, and a textile artist. The former focuses on creating understanding of societal groups through classification and taxidermically grouping them, the latter creates art through stitching fabrics and a myriad of other mediums together. Through a processional circulation along a continuous polishedaluminium promenade, the scheme attempts to create a structure that sympathizes with the site’s original condition, through a deconstructed rendition of existing colonial proportions and geometries, yet also encouraging visitors to appreciate the site from a perspective not usually encountered - that of the valley separating Gillman Barracks from its external context.
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a continuous polished-aluminium promenade, mediating between terrain, programme, privacies and history
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multiple pathways and experiences, one shared destination, unified through art
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textile-artist studio valley-facing, away from prying eyes 37
an implicit hierarchy of structures, colonial vs. post-colonial a network of planned and serendipitous circulation routes
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GLACIAL Year 2, Semester 2, 2016 Group Project, under the tutelage of Mr. Florian Schätz
Three-dimensional printing brings about the promise of creating complex forms that would otherwise be unrealisable through conventional building techniques. This understanding guides the design of Glacial, a tower that explores to fulfil this promise through the creation of a crinkled, sinuous self-supporting facade. Such a scheme holds the promise of being constructed on-site, with appropriate 3D printing technologies. Through an iterative process of determining a module, a hyperbolic paraboloid geometry was obtained. Yet owing to the current limitations of 3D printing, the scheme is composed of an assemblage of various modules—essentially the tower is a kit of parts, that when further broken down, holds the potential of easy transportation. Le Corbusier’s Dom-ino structural system (left), while undeniably influential, is a product of a past era, one of in-situ construction. The new democratised economy promises a decentralised system— modern architecture too must cater to that. It must also cater to an image and symbol driven society, while remaining true to its functional roots. Glacial, born of a rational system and structure, and serendipitously revealing an elegant form, hopefully achieves that.
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a skin of hyperbolic paraboloid modules, a crinkled, sinuous self-supporting facade
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GLAS[T]RAUM Year 1, Semester 2, 2015 Under the tutelage of Mr. Raymond Hoe
In one there is a great roller coaster with its steep humps, the carousel with its chain spokes, the Ferris wheel of spinning cages, the death-ride with the crouching motorcyclists, the big top with the clump of trapezes hanging in the middle. The other half-city is of stone and marble and cement, with the bank, the factories, the palaces, the slaughterhouse, the school, and all the rest. One of the half-cities is permanent, the other is temporary, and when the period of its sojourn is over, they uproot it, dismantle it, and take it off, transplanting it to the vacant lots of another half-city. —Sophronia, as described by Marco Polo to Kublai Khan The second of two design responses to the city of Sophronia in Italo Calvino’s seminal text, Invisible Cities, Glas[t]raum is a story-telling station that is sited within that city, where it rests between an imagined parallel division that defines the two-half cities within Sophronia. Here, the past is rendered eternal in tales shared during momentary rendezvous between Marco Polo and Kublai Khan, the apotheosis of a journey that involves entering through one half-city, and terminating through contemplation over a view of the other half-city. Architecturally, the story-telling station borrows heavily from the Miesian language of planes, and El Lissitzky’s Proun paintings. Mies’approach to architecture is distilled to its intentions—of free-standing elements floating within an ordered grid, while El Lissitzky inspires the subversion of this grid. Thus, both tension and mediation between flux and stasis, evident in both the city of Sophronia, and the patron-friend relationship between Marco Polo and Kublai Khan, are simultaneously expressed.
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a spectacle to behold “two half cities”, “one.. is permanent, the other is temporary”, “transplanting [the temporary one] to the vacant lots of another half-city”
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one enters from one half-city, pausing to see its reflection in a pool, and is immediately pivoted towards the second half-city upon entry—now disconnected from the other cruciform columns subtly denote the subversion of the grid denoting both a shift in programme and landscape
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SOJOURN茶 Year 1, Semester 2, 2015 Under the tutelage of Mr. Raymond Hoe
The first of two design responses based on a reading of the city of Sophronia in Italo Calvino’s seminal text, Invisible Cities, Sojourn 茶 is a tea-room sited within the Selegie-Prinsep district, a site defined by flux and vitality. It oscillates between a quiet stillness in the day, and pulsates with an irresistible vitality by night, with a buzz of activity around casual eateries, bistros and bars. Sophronia’s state of flux was read in tandem with Rem Koolhaas’ interpretion of Manhattanism in Delirious New York, where a “mosaic of episodes” becomes an individual unit of space that holds a particular memory or genius loci, crossing and flowing into each other. This gives form to an approach to the site, that considers its urban fabric as a mosaic of memories and psychogeographical phenomena that flow between a city’s invisible grid-lines. Designed as a sleekly-machined structure to facilitate the appreciation of the ebb and flow of the city, it houses cocooned space is elevated above the urbanscape, made possible through delicate metal framework, affording visitors to the tea room a space to be simultaneously integrated and detached to the surrounding urbanscape. Through a careful selection of translucent materials, and anchored around a tree on a traffic island, the passage of time is subtly felt within the structure. In the day, the gentle sway of leaves creates constantly changing shadow patterns, and in the night, the faint glow of the city’s coloured lights dance on a blurred canvas. Here is a space to meditate on the surrounding transience over tea.
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an ascent away from the city, with pauses in-between, for moments of rest and contemplation the tearoom—a dance of light and shadows from the tree above, a blurred canvas of the external nightscape’s glowing ambers
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VIEW FROM ABROAD
Glasgow, a city torn up by the undercurrent of change. I spent a semester in the city of Glasgow, as part of my exchange programme at the University of Strathclyde. During which, I felt the need to document my time spent in that city, as well as the various regional trips that I would be making, to have something to look back on. The source of inspiration for this came about after I encountered Marion Gardyne’s series ARTchitecture at Glasgow’s Tron Theatre, which featured architectural landmarks in the city distilled into kaleidoscopic abstractions of themselves. They are immediately foreign as they are familiar. I am myself particularly fond of collaging, as a process in developing my architecture; the technique was first introduced to me in my first year of architecture school by a somewhat eccentric unit tutor. Our first series of collages involved distilling a city from Italo Calvino’s Invisible Cities, as creative fodder to fuel a narrative for an otherwise pedestrian brief of designing a small abode/pavilion. It is a creative technique that has stuck with me ever since. Collectively, these brought to mind Guy Debord’s iconic map of Paris, and gave me direction on a method to experience and document my time in Glasgow (and beyond).
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