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Preface
I have been privileged with diverse experiences, firstly as a team leader in the BCA-organised International Building Design Competition 2020 (themed “Sustainable and Intelligent City”) where my team emerged as a Merit award recipient and secondly, as an intern in Eco-ID Architects, SOG|design and Quen Architects where I was privileged with the opportunity to partake in the design process of local residential and refurbishment projects to highend residential, resort master planning and nature park visitor centre projects in Vietnam, Venezuela and Kazakhstan respectively. Architecture aside, as Founder and President of The Youth Choir (TYC), I have led my choir through various concerts and competitions, the most recent being the Voices of Singapore Festival 2020, for which TYC was invited to perform as a guest choir. As a designer, I believe that Architecture is neither about solving nor creating problems but rather, the revelation of problems and the questioning of their inherent assumptions. This portfolio showcases a series of curated works from 2017 - 2021 that reveal issues and question assumptions pertaining to principles, phenomena, programmes and spaces, ranging from academic projects, competition entries, past internship works to freelance projects.
Law Kai Xiang NUS Architecture M.Arch. Year 5
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Content
Academic Projects Resurrecting Architectural Ghosts An Anticipation of Collective Memory
Void Deck 3.0
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A Response to the Inevitability of Place-unmaking Pipeline Overhaul A Critique towards Conventional Systems
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Spectatorship Redefined
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Negotiating Boundaries
Competition Entry Terra @ Orchard Link (Merit Award)
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Internship Works Ayusai Visitor Centre (Completed Project)
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BCA International Building Design Competition 2020 (Team Leader)
Oversaw the Design Process under the Architect’s Guidance Orchard Rendezvous Hotel Façade Revitalisation Oversaw the Design Process under the Architect’s Guidance
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Freelance Projects Songs of Hope and Yearning
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Across the Vast Eternal Sky
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Poster design for a Quartet Recital
Poster design for The Youth Choir (TYC)
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Academic Projects
Selected works from 2017 - 2021 Resurrecting Architectural Ghosts Void Deck 3.0 Pipeline Overhaul Spectatorship Redefined
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Resurrecting Architectural Ghosts An Anticipation of Collective Memory
NUS Year 5 Thesis Advisor: Thomas Kong Kwok Hoong
Since independence, the enduring mantra of “unsentimental pragmatism” has been that all can be sacrificed in the name of growth and progress. Despite seeing a restructuring of the authority’s priorities in the late 1980s, Singapore at large, still places a premium on commodification and progress in the built environment today, privileging development over preservation of heritage. Recognising that society is made up of a diversity of people with distinct idiosyncrasies and building carcasses can only say so much, the thesis serves as a counterpoint to traditional processes of building conservation. It calls for a rethinking of the value system that drives the notion of authenticity as one more social than architectural, and strives to achieve that by introducing a new kind of archival framework and space through the alternative lens of the invisible histories, micronarratives. The Archive of Architectural Ghosts aims to transcend the normative idea of a static card box filled with black and white documents. It is instead envisioned as one that is much more humanistic, where the ethos lies in the ideology of a decentralized curation of narrative mediators that exist and act upon each other within a network. Each experience at the archive involves the coming together of narrative mediators, re-animated and put into parallel conversations, as visitors wander through the archive. All design, agency and intentionality come from the uses we make of the archive, rather than what it contains; an aspiration to spur memories, produce new meanings, build relationships, renew relationships and re-member us as a community.
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Void Deck 3.0
A Response to the Inevitability of Place-unmaking NUS Year 4 Semester 1 Studio tutor: Simone Shu-Yeng Chung
As we embrace the advent of technological insurgence, there is a foreseeable yet unavoidable future that stands before us – the Fourth Industrial Revolution. The Digital Revolution, characterised by the phenomenology of blurring both the physical and virtual realms (Schwab, 2016), has an unprecedented impact on the built environment, and sociological behaviours withal. With the onslaught of technology, the sense of place in the built environment, in response to the potential threat technology begets, has taken on new importance (Ruggeri, 2011). This research based; experimentally driven thesis underscores the imminent paradigm shift in the modus operandi of humanistic interaction and our mechanism of spatial representation and perception, when exposed to the influences of the virtual realm. Scoping this phenomenology with respect to the local context of the void deck typology, it highlights the key evolutions undergone by the void deck typology, evaluating its relevance in today’s context with the inevitability of virtuality. Lastly, as an attestation to the notion of “phygitalisation” – virtuality overlaid unto a physical construct – this thesis outlines the capacities of neoteric mixed reality (MR) technologies, exploring its capabilities in the facilitation of virtual placemaking in void decks. Placemaking, a multi-faceted design approach set in motion by Canadian American urbanist Jane Jacobs, suggests an approach to creating public spaces that fosters a sense of belonging and well-being within the community. To understand this approach first requires an understanding of what constitutes a place to begin with. As defined by Mark Augé, a place refers to “locations in which individuals with distinct identities form human relationships, spaces of identities, languages, references, emotions and memories”. In contrary, a non-place refers to what that is not a place – “spaces absent of identity, human relationships, history, emotions and memories and spaces of solitary individuality” (Augé, 1995). While the design of public spaces have largely been successful in adopting placemaking strategies that involve three-way involvements between the government, the development industry and the community (Hes, 2019), its antithetical phenomenon, place-unmaking - a circumstance often overseen and snubbed upon - has become increasingly threatening to the value of our existing public spaces, especially with the insurgence of technology. While we bathe in our past successes of elevating non-places into places, we should more importantly, be wary of the potential risks these spaces face in being deposed and gradually eroded from places back into non-places.
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Flowchart
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Small Level Events
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Block Level Events
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Inter-Block Level Events
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Pipeline Overhaul
A Critique towards Conventional Systems NUS Year 3 Semester 2 Studio tutor: Shinya Okuda
Project Pipeline Overhaul emanates from a critique towards the existing system governing the functionality of aqua therapy. Customarily, this system comprises three main integrants - the primer, pipeline and vessel. What this project seeks to examine and challenge is the relevance of the vessel to this system in question. Apart from its inherent ability to retain water, the vessel is no more than a circulatory barrier between treatment spaces, creating unnecessary pulling out of and reimmersion back into treatment spaces. As an impetus to redefine the system, this critique follows up with a proposal to eliminate the vessel from this system, retaining only the primer and pipeline. This induces a fundamental reworking of the nature of treatment; no longer an immersion within water, but instead adopting a language of pipework that engenders an experience with perpetual flow of water. Located at the Foothills of Fort Canning Park, project Pipeline Overhaul serves as an exponent to the principle of active recovery - recovery that is performed concurrently with exercise, rather than one that comes as an afterthought. This is executed through a synthesis of existing onsite bootcamp programmes together with aqua therapy treatments. Extracting and hybridising programmatic parameters from bootcamps and conventional aqua therapy treatments, a design framework is generated to translate a rudimentary pipeline into one that functions not solely as a medium to channel water, but also as surface (human scale) and structure (architectural scale). Relative positioning of spaces with respect to the primer are informed by the priming conditions required of the spaces, while circulation comes in the form of circuits connecting spaces for static and dynamic exercises, punctured at regular intervals to cater to user-groups of varying levels of bootcamp proficiencies.
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Critique
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Proposition
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Specifications
Active Recovery
The Boot Camp Experience
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Synthesis
Design Framework
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Massing Derivation
Site Plan
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User Experience
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Approach & Circulation
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Cascades
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Spectatorship Redefined Negotiating Boundaries
Hanyang University ERICA Year 3 Semester 1 Studio tutor: Daesong Lee
Drone racing began in Australia in late 2013 and early 2014 with a number of amateur pilots getting together for semi-organised races in Brisbane and Melbourne. Over the recent years, it has become a professional E-sport that engages participants from all around the world. While we see the latest technologies such as the First-Person-View (FPV) experience implemented to enhance the overall game experience for racers, the experience of spectatorship is still in its rudimentary stage - undeveloped and premature. Spectatorship in conventional drone races are similar to that of an F1 race, wherein consists a clearly demarcated barrier to separate the spectators from the race track. While it is acceptable in context of a F1 race, the same cannot be said for a drone race, due to scale differences between a F1 car and a drone. Given its size, a drone can hardly be seen from where the spectators are seated. This is the key factor that deters people from spectating a drone race. Project Spectatorship Redefined seeks to negotiate these barriers through the redesign of drone racing obstacles. Conventionally, these obstacles are no more than props scattered on a field, taking on varying forms such as gantries, hoops, posts and rings. While they fulfill their primary role of serving as hurdles and checkpoints within a race circuit, the relative positioning of obstacles still lack any principle of organisation, making the overall planning of circuit a haphazard process. Through studying the traditional obstacles and drone trajectories, this project proposes a new series of obstacle typologies which are governed by a unified language and ruleset. While the ruleset serves to inform how modulation and expansion of a module can be executed, it also informs how the drone circuit - the amalgamation of obstacles - may react to disconformities and irregularities due to the space constraints evident on site at Yeonnam-dong. Extracting and hybridising governing parameters required for both drones and spectators, a design framework is generated to translate a rudimentary drone racing facility into one that functions not solely as a a drone circuit, but also as a spectating platform as well as structure. A drone racing facility that acts as a parasite to both the existing landscape and commercial roofscapes of Yeonnam-dong, project Spectatorship Redefined offers an alternative spectacle to drone racing and commercial spaces by reinterpreting traditional drone racing obstacles as “infratecture”.
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Proposition
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Parametric Ruleset: Modulation & Expansion
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Competition Entry
Selected works from 2017 - 2021 Terra @ Orchard Link
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Internship Works
Selected works from 2017 - 2021 Ayusai Visitor Centre (Completed Project) Orchard Rendezvous Hotel Façade Revitalisation
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SITE CONTEXT AND DESIGN INSPIRATION
AYUSAI VISITOR CENTRE - THE GATEWAY TO THE 1. SUPPORT OFFICE AND RESEARCH FACILITY (FUTURE PHASE)
2. SERVICE ACCESS 3. MAIN VISITOR CENTRE (MAIN PAVILION) 4. CAFE F&B (EAST PAVILION)
5. THE ARENA SQUARE 6. SCULPTURE PARK 7. FOOD TRUCK PARK 8. FEEDER ROAD ACCESS FROM ALMATY 9. VISITOR CARPARK FACILITY
AYUSAI VISITOR CENTRE, ALMA-ARASAN, ALMATY 76
Mood Images are open sourced to convey the spirit of the concept and mood intent only. They are not our projects and we do not own t
WILDERNESS 10. HIKING TRAIL 11. EXHIBITION GALLERY (WEST PAVILION) 12. WATER & ICE WALL 13. LANDSCAPE PLAZA (CHERRY BLOSSOM TREES) 14. BICYCLE & HIKING RENTAL KIOSK 15. TOILET FACILITY 16. ARRIVAL & DROPOFF ZONE
N WORK STAGE: PRELIMINARY CONCEPTUAL DESIGN
DATE: 24 FEB 2020
the copyright. Images are third party copyrighted and shall strictly not be replicated for any other purpose or publication.
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ARCHITECTURAL CONCEPT
FLOOR PLAN ILLUSTRATION 1. SUPPORT OFFICE AND RESEARCH FACILITY (FUTURE PHASE)
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2. SERVICE ACCESS 3. MAIN VISITOR CENTRE (MAIN PAVILION)
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4. CAFE F&B (EAST PAVILION)
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5. THE ARENA SQUARE
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6. SCULPTURE PARK 7. FOOD TRUCK PARK 8. FEEDER ROAD ACCESS FROM ALMATY 9. VISITOR CARPARK FACILITY
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AYUSAI VISITOR CENTRE, ALMA-ARASAN, ALMATY 78
Mood Images are open sourced to convey the spirit of the concept and mood intent only. They are not our projects and we do not own t
10. SOUTH TERRACE & GARDEN, TOILET 11. EXHIBITION GALLERY (WEST PAVILION)
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12. WATER & ICE WALL 11
13. LANDSCAPE PLAZA (CHERRY BLOSSOM TREES)
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14. BICYCLE & HIKING RENTAL KIOSK
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15. TOILET FACILITY
16. ARRIVAL & DROPOFF ZONE
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N WORK STAGE: PRELIMINARY CONCEPTUAL DESIGN
DATE: 24 FEB 2020
the copyright. Images are third party copyrighted and shall strictly not be replicated for any other purpose or publication.
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ARCHITECTURAL CONCEPT
CROSS SECTION ILLUSTRATION
SUPPORT OFFICE + RESEARCH (FUTURE PHASE )
SOUTH TERRACE
AYUSAI VISITOR CENTRE, ALMA-ARASAN, ALMATY 80
VISITOR CENTR (MAIN PAVILIO
RE ON)
THE ARENA
SCULPTURE PARK + LANDSCAPE PLAZA
WORK STAGE: PRELIMINARY CONCEPTUAL DESIGN
ARRIVAL + DROP-OFF
DATE: 24 FEB 2020 81
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Photographs of Completed Works by Turanga Group LLP & eco-id Architects
Photographs of Completed Works by Turanga Group LLP & eco-id Architects
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Photographs of Completed Works by Turanga Group LLP & eco-id Architects
Photographs of Completed Works by Turanga Group LLP & eco-id Architects
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Photograph of Completed Works by https://www.instagram.com/p/CMMRKSVjQ6x/
Photograph of Completed Works by https://www.instagram.com/p/CMMRKSVjQ6x/
Photograph of Completed Works by https://www.instagram.com/p/CKqXX0hly0y/
Photograph of Completed Works by https://www.instagram.com/p/CKqXX0hly0y/
Photographs of Completed Works by https://www.instagram.com/p/CK0QoThH5iX/
Photographs of Completed Works by https://www.instagram.com/p/CKwb4QinGe1/?utm_source=ig_web_copy_link
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Freelance Projects
Selected works from 2017 - 2021 Songs of Hope and Yearning Across the Vast Eternal Sky
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