Parametric Urbanism: Singapore 2013 Urban Design Workshop

PARAMETRIC URBANISM Pa

rk

Brent D. Ryan Andres Sevtsuk Spring 2013

We would like to thank the SUTD-MIT International Design Center for its generous support that made this workshop possible.

We very are grateful for the support of a number of partners that participated in the workshop, hosted us during the visit and shared their knowledge about urban design and planning in Singapore: Singapore UniverSity of technology and deSign

Chan Heng Chee (Chairman of the Center for Innovative Cities) Thomas Schroepher (Architecture and Sustainable Design) Queenie Kou Sow Kuen (Hostel manager) Andrew Ang (Facilities manager) Onur Ekmekci (City Form Lab) Reza Amindarbari (City Form Lab)

Urban redevelopment aUthority

Fun Siew Leng (Group Director, Urban Planning and Design) Yap Lay Bee (Director Urban Planning) Lee Cliff (Director Physical Planning) Mei Chou (Director Urban Design)

hoUSing development board

Chong Fook Loong (Director of Research and Planning Group) Koon Yin He Jiawei Clara Tay Yew Nguan

eth fUtUre citieS laboratory

Kees Christiaanse (Chair of Urban Design) Edda Ostertag (Researcher)

center for liveable citieS

Hee Limin (CLC, Director of Research)

image creditS

Bugis (front cover), SUTD City Form Lab, 2013; Punggol (rear outside cover), SUTD City Form Lab, 2013; Cambridge, MA (rear inside cover), Andres Sevtsuk, 2010.

InvestIgatIng ParametrIc UrbanIsm

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Past Parameters

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ParametrIc ProjectIons Ideas for Singapore Sites

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ProPosals

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Bugis 1

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Bugis 2

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Brent Ryan and Andres Sevtsuk

The Design Literature

inveStigating parametric UrbaniSm Brent Ryan and Andres Sevtsuk

Today’s architects and urbanists increasingly design and understand the form of buildings and cities through the lens of the parameter. Broadly defined as a variable within a system whose change affects other aspects of that system, parameters, or “parametricism”, are controlling or inspiring the design of everything from façade details to large-scale developments. Some architects have even proclaimed parametricism to be the future means by which all architectural and urban design will be executed. Underlying this somewhat bombastic and as yet undemonstrated proclamation is the fundamental change that computation has brought to architectural design in the past twenty or so years.

While the underlying digital revolution is real and permanent, whether parametricism is merely a form of digital fetishism or the future of architectural design remains to be seen.

City form, too, is composed of parameters at many scales, ranging from individual building features to elements like infrastructure and settlement patterns. In fact, one can imagine urban design less as the generation of city districts de novo than as the modification of existing urban elements in a purposeful manner. In this sense urban planning is even more parametric; planning has long shaped the city through carefully defined codes and rules. Each of these codes addresses particular parts of the city, whether building heights, densities, or land use. In this sense architecture’s recent parametric shift is only acknowledging a reality that planning has long known; the city is a collection of measurable elements, and the act of city design is in reality the act of adjusting these elements toward a new ideal.

Parametric urbanism is of great interest for reasons that are both technical and theoretical. Technically, the parameter offers the opportunity for the computer to analyze urban data and perhaps discover new relationships between the form of the city and its performance. This ability in turn tempts the theoretically inclined urban design to question whether parametric urbanism might not be the key to revealing new urban form ideals, or perhaps even of identifying an ideal form for the city itself. Given that the search for ideal city form is almost as old as the city itself, parametricism’s combination of technical and theoretical potentials makes it a rewarding area of investigation for the ambitious urbanist.

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Workshop group visiting Punggol New Town, January 2013.

From L: Reza Amindarbari ; Prof. Andres Sevtsuk; Andres Bernal; Prof. Brent Ryan; Colleen McHugh; Bernard Harkless; Midori Mizuhara; Francisco Humeres; Alison Sheppard; Talia Kaufmann; Jocelyn Drummond; Anna Muessig; Akanksha Raina; Dicle Uzunyayla.

The Spring 2013 Urban Design Ideals and Action seminar, taught by Professor Brent D. Ryan since 2010 at MIT, provided the forum for investigating parametric urbanism, while the island nation and city of Singapore provided the site. A January 2013 workshop organized and sponsored in partnership with Professor Andres Sevtsuk of the Singapore University of Technology and Design permitted a group of 11 MIT graduate students in urban design and planning to visit Singapore and generate preliminary design proposals based on parametric variables for two Singapore neighborhoods, Bugis and Punggol (see page 05). As the world’s only independent city-state, Singapore is a particularly design and technology-oriented nation where urban design and planning are paramount elements in shaping the future. Singapore’s commitment to progressive urbanism makes it a particularly appropriate site for parametric investigations, and it is the investigators’ hopes that the Spring 2013 workshop will be only the first of series of such investigations into the future of urban design.

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paSt parameterS The Design Literature

Parametric Urbanism approached the design of Singapore neighborhoods Punggol and Bugis through multiple theoretical lenses, derived from a diverse literature in what could be called quantitative urban design. This bibliography, assembled by Profs. Ryan and Sevtsuk for the purposes of the course, reached a first peak in the 1970s congruent with the coincidental rise of computational power and the decline in High Modern architectural and urban thought. Today (2013), this literature again seems to be gaining momentum, a rise doubtless attributable to the current coincidence of intense urbanization, a new interest in large-scale urban design, and the arrival on the desktop of powerful computational visualization tools.

In addition to the particular temporal character of the quantitative urban design literature, two other features are also salient. First, the literature is almost entirely authored by architects. This is somewhat surprising given that planning, rather than architecture, has a much longer history of treating city-shaping through a parametric lens. At the same time, planning has proven noticeably reticent in generating new formal theories of shaping the city; histories of planning up to the present day attribute almost all of these theories to architects, whether they be modernists like Le Corbusier or neotraditionalists like Andrés Duany. Planning has limited its theorizing to procedural, social, or economic concerns.

A second peculiarity of the literature noted by participants in Parametric Urbanism is the authorial division between what the seminar called “mathematicians” and “historians”. This division was descriptive less of actual professional differences than of the methods by which authors arrived at their derivation of parameters. Mathematicians began with a quantitative foundation, only gradually assembling their algorithms to make them relevant to the urban scale. Their tools were strictly quantitative, and only secondarily relevant or meaningful to the act of design. Historians acted in a much more intuitive way, deriving fundamental urbanistic principles from long experience engaged in the act of designing the city. Their principles were by nature qualitative and only secondarily operationalizable as quantitative variables or explicit rules.

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Each participant in Parametric Urbanism read and presented two of the works in the course bibliography. These in-class presentations provided a detailed exposition of urbanistic principles and provided a foundation for discussion of the fundamentals as well as differences in parametric urban ideals. Subsquently, individuals, or teams of individuals, selected one of the works in the bibliography as a foundation for further investigation of urban design possibilities for Punggol or Bugis. The ‘foundational text’ for each project is noted on the appropriate project page.

alexander, christopher. A Pattern Language. Oxford University Press, 1977. alexander, christopher. The Nature of Order: An essay on the art of building and the nature of the universe. Volumes One through Four. Berkeley, CA: Center for Environmental Structure, 2004. doxiadis, c.a. Anthropopolis: City for Human Development.

W. W. North and Company, 1975. habraken, John. The Structure of the Ordinary: Form and Control in the Built Environment. MIT Press, 2000. hillier, bill. Space is the Machine. Cambridge University Press, 1996.

Hillier, Bill and Juliette Hanson. The Social Logic of Space.

Cambridge University Press, 1984. interboro partners. The Arsenal of Exclusion & Inclusion.

Actar, 2013. http://arsenalofexclusion.blogspot.com/.

Koolhaas, rem. Delirious New York. Oxford University Press, 1977. lehnerer, alex. Grand Urban Rules. 010 Publishers, 2009. lynch, Kevin. Good City Form. MIT Press, 1981. maas, Winy, and mvrdv. Space Fighter: The evolutionary city (game:). Actar, 2007. march, lionel, and Steadman, philip. The Geometry of Environment: An introduction to spatial organization in design. MIT Press, 1974 Martin, Leslie. “The Grid as Generator.” In Urban Space and Structures, edited by Leslie Martin and Lionel March.

Cambridge University Press, 1972. moudon, anne vernez. Built for Change: Neighborhood Architecture in San Francisco. MIT Press, 1986. panerai, philippe, et. al. Urban Forms: The death and life of the urban block. (originally Formes Urbaines de l’Ilot a la barre,1997). Architectural Press, 2004. pont, meta berghauser, and per haupt. Spacematrix: Space, Density, and Urban Form. NAi Publishers, 2010. portugali, Juval . Self-Organization and the City. Springer, 2000.

Schumacher, patrik. The Autopoesis of Architecture: A new agenda for architecture, Volume 2. Wiley, 2012.

Sola morales, manuel . Ten Lessons on Barcelona/Diez Lecciones Sobre Barcelona. Collegi d’Arquitectes de Catalunya, 2008.

Sorkin, michael. Local Code: The Constitution of a City at 42 Degrees North Latitude. Princeton Architectural Press, 1996.

Stichting Architecten Research. The methodical formulation of agreements concerning the direct dwelling environment.

S.A.R., 1973.

WorKac. 49 Cities. Storefront Books, 2009.

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parametric proJectionS Ideas for Singapore Sites

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Two sites – Bugis and Punggol – were chosen to ground the investigations of the workshop in concrete realities of Singapore’s city fabric. Bugis, located in the island state’s downtown, is a historic district composed of highly diverse buildings and streets. It is home to thousands of small shops, eateries, varied service providers and a few larger malls. On the eastern edge of Bugis lies Kampong Glam – an old Malay neighborhood of low-rise shop houses, the Sultan’s Mosque and numerous Malay and Arab businesses. The western side of Bugis has a gridiron street network that dates back to the Raffles plan of 1823. The area has been largely redeveloped since the 1960s with deep floor plate commercial buildings and a few mixed-use HDB blocks, including Waterloo Center, Rochor Center, Bras Basah Complex and Albert Center. We coined these latter types condenser blocks due to their unique mixture of hundreds of small businesses on a multi-story podium, with thousands of residents and public roof gardens above. Between the low rise shop houses of Kampong Glam and the large modern blocks on the west, a visible stretch of urban fabric has been demolished to make way for the newly envisioned north-south Ophir thoroughfare. The center point of our study area, the Bugis MRT station, along with numerous bus stops scattered around the site, make Bugis one of the most accessible districts in Singapore. Tens of thousands of visitors attend the various specialty shops, eateries, art centers, and malls of Bugis every day.

Punggol, our second investigation site, is a high-density residential suburb in the north east of Singapore. As one of the newest Housing Development Board (HDB) sites, Punggol is a state-of-the-art HDB new town that already houses over 50,000 inhabitants. Sixteen-story high apartment blocks conceal multi-story car parks in the middle of each block, with ample roof gardens on the garages and myriad well-designed recreational areas between the buildings. Almost all apartment blocks are lifted on pilotis, creating vast un-programmed void decks below the buildings. Punggol feels dense but also green.

Population density is high – around 30,000 people per square kilometer – whereas commercial development is low and concentrated in planned structures around transit stations.

Due to a network of man-made canals, ample green areas, and a high-tech elevated transit system, Punggol has been coined an ‘eco town’ and a model for other HDB estates to follow.

In two surveys during the fall of 2012, researchers from the City Form Lab mapped three layers of information in a tenminute walking radius around the Bugis MRT station and the Meridian LRT station in Punggol. The maps document 1) the

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ground floor structures of all load-bearing walls in buildings, 2) the distribution of all economic establishments in the areas (marked by their doors and described by a series of attributes) and 3) the outdoor and indoor pedestrian circulation networks that are accessible to the public. Combined, these data layers were chosen to embody complementary morphological attributes that allow the sites to be studied in great detail.

The data was digitized in GIS, making it possibly to analyse and uncover the structuring principals of the sites using computational tools. The data enabled us to describe how the environments are structured, how their activities, places and public spaces connect to each other along a network of pedestrian paths, and to analyse the mix of economic establishments encountered at different locations and on different routes.

The two sites offer contrasting but equally necessary examples of contemporary Singaporean city fabric. Whereas Bugis fulfills a largely commercial need for visitors from all over Singapore, Punggol exemplifies an answer to the challenge of housing a rapidly growing population efficiently and comfortably. Bugis is economically and visually complex – its small privately owned parcels have been shaped by thousands of inhabitants and businesses over time. Punggol is new and planned, a naturally “parametric” fabric, designed intentionally with tested block types, good public space ratios, planned amenities and calculated accessibility levels to schools, transit stations and stores. Most land in Punggol is managed by HDB, with a few sites leased to private developers for condos. Its holistically planned nature and coordinated construction make Punggol more of a “project” than a multi-actor environment that has shaped over time. The contrasting nature of urban forms in Bugis and Punggol, and the processes that govern these forms, allowed the workshop to explore parameters of good city form in both centrally controlled and distributed decision-making environments with equal rigor.

The students were asked to first study the sites in great detail and to try to identify parameters that best capture the qualities of both areas. It was important that these parameters not be chosen based on convenience – things that are easy to measure – but rather based on human considerations, capturing the most important experiential qualities of the sites.

Having settled on the key parameters, the students were then asked to reflect on how these parameters could be intelligently manipulated so as to improve the performance of the sites in the future.

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BUGIS 1

Literature: PortugaLi and HiLLier/Hanson JoCeLYn druMMond+ taLia KauFMann

We chose to examine Bugis in the context of Juval Portugali’s Self-Organization and the City and Bill Hillier and Julienne Hanson’s Social Logic of Space. We felt that these two works responded to some of the observations we made while we were in Singapore. We analyzed and understood Bugis as a neighborhood of shopping centers and our work focused on trying to measure aspects of the built environment that contributed to the varying levels of foot traffic in each center.

We were also interested in the way in which pedestrians travel to and among shopping centers since we noticed that movement was concentrated in the mid-block pedestrian paths and inside buildings like Bugis Street, rather than on the main arterial roads.

In Singapore, we measured four parameters of the built environment that we thought contributed to the volume of shoppers in each shopping center, or what we considered their level of “success”. The first was the level of enclosure which included visibility of the sky and air. The second was the number of entrances or the physical accessibility. The third was the density of businesses per floor area as a measure of intensity. And the fourth was a measurement of facade stimulation ranging from a blank wall to a completely open storefront. Based on these measurements we created an overall map of the neighborhood and projected how changes in each of these parameters would generate new levels of intensity. We also followed a series of shoppers and created a “shopper’s path” that took us from Sim Lim Square, through the mid-block pedestrian paths, through Bugis Street, and into Bugis Junction.

In order to understand the functioning of the shopping centers and the relationships between them we chose to examine Juval Portugali’s Self-Organization and the City in the context of Bugis. Our goal was to understand how so many shopping centers coexist and work well in such a small area while trying to predict what the next shopping center would look like. We started by developing a code for future shopping centers by isolating parameters that contribute to their success over time. In his book, Portugali defines self-organization as the phenomenon by which a system self-organizes its internal structure independent of external causes - a fundamental

Parameters for space

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Existing typologies on site

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property of open and complex systems. Through this lens, we perceived Bugis as a heavily planned neighborhood, while self-organization exists in the URA’s process of testing out new shopping center typologies in order to examine which one succeeds. In order to understand the evolution of Bugis as a self-organizing system rapidly going from a state of stability to instability and chaos and back again, we typified the different shopping center typologies. This analysis helped us to distill the dominant path of “generative” orders versus the “enslaved” orders of shopping centers.

Our analysis found that Bugis Junction and the Singaporean “condensers” (Bugis Street and Sim Lim Square) are the current dominant typologies competing amongst themselves, and we set out to understand their characteristics and replicate their success in the new corridor of Bugis. The parameters we looked at were: the number of retail floors in each shopping center; the density of businesses per square meter; the number of entrances per floor area; the mix of public versus private ownership of land; and the business mix of each shopping center. Throughout the analysis we compared the three dominant typologies to three enslaved ones: Shaw Towers, Bras Basah Complex and Bugis+. The final result was a set of recommendations for the new shopping centers that could potentially serve as an aid for the URA when developing new guidelines for future shopping centers.

The second theory we chose to look at in the context of Bugis was Hillier’s work, due to the importance of the pedestrian network in the neighborhood. We were interested in understanding more closely the “shopper’s path” that we observed in Singapore. In The Social Logic of Space and other articles, Hillier discusses network analysis and the concepts of integration and choice in a network. Integration is a measurement of how close each segment of a network is to all other segments in the network. Choice is a measurement of how many distance-minimizing paths pass through each segment.

Given the importance of the shopper’s path, choice was the more appropriate measurement for our analysis.

The corresponding measurement in Andres Sevtsuk’s Urban Network Analysis tool was “betweenness.” Using the tool, we generated a map of the levels of betweenness for all segments of the network. Shortest paths were determined by the fewest number of turns. The resulting map was particularly interesting because it supported our initial observations. The

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Reccomendations for new shopping centers based on parameters BUGIS / 11

“shopper’s path” that we identified had some of the highest levels of betweenness, indicating that many of the shortest paths in the network pass through this area. The importance of pedestrian paths through blocks, in between shopping centers, and through buildings was further emphasized and was thus applied to our plans for the future development of the vacant blocks.

Based on our Portugali and Hillier analyses, we proposed a plan for the design of the vacant blocks in the new Bugis corridor. The pedestrian network is strong in certain areas but lacks connections along certain corridors, particularly between Bugis Junction and Arab Street. The first proposed step is to enhance this connection by creating a pedestrian path through the middle of the block in which the Raffles Hospital is currently located. This pedestrian path will pass through the hospital’s lobby on the first floor, creating a direct path from Bugis Junction to the Landmark Center. The second leg of the pedestrian network will span from the Raffles Hospital block to the adjacent block to the northwest, dividing this block in two like the Albert Center and Fu Shou Lu Complex area.

With these new pedestrian connections, three typologies of shopping centers will be tested (Bugis Junction, Bugis Street, and Sim Lim Square) to see which one is more dominant.

Phase Two of the new design will be based on the success of the three tested typologies, and the dominant one(s) will be replicated on the site of the demolished Rochor Center. This block will also include an enhanced pedestrian connection across the highway and river toward the technology center on Jln Besar (what we call Sim Lim II) as a way to attract shoppers from the MRT Station. Currently, a radius of four turns from the MRT station restricts network closeness, but the establishment of “attractors”, or attractive shopping centers, helps to break these boundaries and contribute to the success of the centers on the outer edges of the neighborhood. Finally, Phase Three will involve the development of the remaining vacant parcels.

There are interesting things to consider in the context of Portugali, Hillier, and our analysis and design of Bugis.

In terms of the self-organization of Bugis, future research might include controlling for certain parameters to see which other parameters change over time and what the societal and technological advances are that affect bifurcations and result in dominant typologies. It is also interesting to consider whether the URA embraces bifurcations over time or whether it cracks down on them and tries to control them. For the Methodology of Planning and Design BUGIS /12

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[2] [1] Number of shopping centers per floor area [2] Planning reccomendations for new shopping centers BUGIS / 13

network analysis it will be important to understand the limitations of the UNA tool and what parameters are not taken into account, especially the limitations of Hillier’s measurements of integration and choice.

More generally, this analysis of Bugis should be considered within the broader context of shopping districts throughout Singapore in order to establish a more nuanced understanding of the kind of shoppers that the URA is trying to attract to Bugis. Finally, an overarching question is how to measure “success” in these shopping centers and to what extent these parameters are measurable.

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[1] Planning a new corridor in Bugis BUGIS / 14

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BUGIS 2 Literature: March FraNciScO huMereS

Certainly Jane Jacobs’ “The Death and Life of Great American Cities” constitutes a landmark –if not the most important milestone- for contemporary urban theory; it is regarded as such by both followers and critics. However, despite the widespread popularity of this work among architects, planners and urbanists, the way in which Jacobs’s last chapter, titled “The Kind of Problem a City Is” has been largely overlooked compared to the normative guidelines exposed throughout the book (such as Jacobs’s famous “eyes on the street”), is striking. The neglect of this key chapter probably resides in its exposure of a core struggle underlying the contemporary disciplinary crisis of design in regards to city making. Cities are problems of “Organized Complexity”, and as such they cannot be simplified and thereby handled by the mind of a single or even a few designers. As indicated by Jacobs, few designers are able to come with terms with this issue –in a form of disciplinary trauma- instead avoiding it through big plans and schemes instead of facing it by trying to build and consolidate an empirical body of knowledge. Others have identified the same problem in a wide array of design applications, from the “ill-defined-problems” discussed by Christopher Jones, Gordon Pask and Nicholas Negroponte in the architecture and software fields, to the “Wicked Problems” notion introduced

by West Churchman (and expanded by Rittel and Weber) in the Operations Research and Management context. The diagnostic is clear: Design deals with human systems, and unlike physical phenomena, they cannot be conceptually reduced.

My experiment, shown here, was thought of as a means for studying the limitations of simplifying urban phenomena.

The procedure exposed by Lionel March in “Architecture and Mathematics since 1960” has been replicated, and compared to current empirical data to which certainly March did not have access to during the 60’s and 70’s. March’s methodology is of special interest as it resembles some seminal models from economics, a field that like design deals with complex social phenomena (and has largely resisted acknowledging them as such as well). Like the core models of classical economics such as supply and demand, rent, or monopolistic markets, March proposed a model for the impact of urban morphologies based on mathematical truisms (they are true of their own mechanism), heavily reliant on assumptions about the external variables that could affect its outcome. This procedure

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[2] [1] Parameter A : road network layout [2] Parameter B :massing distribution : volume inequality BUGIS / 16

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emulates what Nissim Taleb, one of the most prominent critics of classical economics, calls “sterilized laboratory conditions”a reliance on endogenous properties rather than a testing with empirical external conditions.

The idea behind of the experiment is not to discredit March’s model. It is evident that he did not claim to represent accurately urban phenomena and he did not have access to vast amounts of empirical data that we have available today. His intention was, as many of the authors studied by this workshop, to produce a systematic methodology open to scrutiny:in other words, the “Democratization of Design” through the systematizing of its procedures. However, with the tools now available, a deep examination of these simplistic models is again needed, as contemporary economists, statisticians and social scientists have exposed the unrealistic assumptions of classical economic models. In the same fashion, this effort is worthwhile in urban studies due to the implicit threat brought by mathematical models: As Christopher Alexander warned, design must not be confused with optimization. The fascination produced by complex (but simplistic) mathematical models (which can attract many designers disappointed with the “intuitive” mindset predominant in the design mainstream) can easily lead to a literal and coarse aggregation of “quantifiable” variables, isolating the optimization model from the real context.

In the context of this workshop, I tried a short exercise with March’s model. Drawing from a “Froebelian” game, a grid of 16x16 blocks was rearranged in different configurations but maintaining the same built mass (represented by built tridimensional units). Two parameters were tweaked to produce these configurations: Grid Layout and Building Massing. Grid Layout ranged from streets of one lane, to the thicker streets of three lanes (which reduced or enlarged the block footprint). Building massing was generated by modifying the parameter of the “Beta” statistical distribution (from 1, all the built units are evenly distributed through the blocks, to infinite, where few extremely tall buildings concentrate most of the units, leaving plenty of open space). From these configurations, an “Optimization Space” was produced from two variables of special interest for March: Traffic and Skyviews. The first is represented by the impact of the block on its surrounding streets (the number of built units per block were counted, and its impact distributed evenly among all the road space surrounding the block), while the second one is represented by the ratio of the height of a building to the surrounding space (concentric rings of “interrupted” skyviews

emanate from each built footprint). From both variables and for each configuration, the difference between the extreme values (lowest and highest) was calculated (as March’s interest was to reduce these inequalities, and thus inefficiencies, on space), summing them in the “Optimization Space” (higher value indicated worst performance). Three of these configurations were compared with empirical data from the Place Pulse Project of the MIT Media Lab, where urban images are rated in qualities such as “uniqueness” or “safety” by online votes of millions of visitors. This empirical comparison is far from being proposed as an authoritative evaluation of March’s model; It is rather proposed as means for encouraging in the reader further empirical testing of mathematical truisms he could find regarding urban phenomena. Given the limited amount of configurations “tested” here, many of the conclusions are left to the reader. However, the results do suggest that an optimization model ad eternum (where many form parameters and optimization variables could be added, up to infinite), probably would not produce a considerable improvement in the performance compared to the empirical perception of urban space. This exercise suggests a pathway to inspect not only March’s assumptions, but also many similar simplifications that are at the core of current zoning and planning regulations.

Traffic and skyviews

Optimization Space : From iteration of all combinations

BUGIS / 18

BUGIS /

BUGIS 3 LITERATURE: BATTY ANNA MUESSIG

Fractal Urbanism, Michael Batty’s thesis on parametric urbanism, proposes that the geometric logic of fractals has the ability not only to describe the form of cities, but also to predict their future growth. In applying Batty’s theories to the Bugis District in Singapore, urban design theorists have an opportunity to consider both the future urban development of that district according to fractal logic, and also to challenge the utility of mathematical parametric models.Michael Batty, in his 1994 book Fractal Urbanism (with Paul Longley), attempts to apply the still-new theories of fractal geometry to the complexities of cities. His goal is to provide an organizing theory of urban growth that offers an alternative model to what he sees as the hegemonic top-down modernist theories of urban planning. If fractal logic can truly describe urban growth, he states in his book, the role of planners is dramatically undermined. He believes that urban form is created by cellular automata, the small-scale individual actions of individuals, and that attempts to alter this emergent form are futile. He writes, “This new science makes us much more aware of the limits of planning. It is likely to lead to a view that as we learn more about the functioning of such complex systems, we will interfere less but in more appropriate ways.” (The Size, Scale and Shape of Cities, Batty, 2008) The lesson for urbanism is that planners should create fewer, more targeted interventions.

In his book, Batty provides a comprehensive overview of fractal logic and its application to urban modeling. A fractal is a self-similar shape whose form repeats on every level in a hierarchy. Fractals were ‘discovered’ by Benoit Mandelbrot, who believed he had discovered the ‘geometry of nature’ or ‘chaos.’ For this reason, it is a theory well suited to Bugis, often described as a complex, chaotic place. Fractal forms are based on an initiator (a starting point), a generator (a ‘motif’ that repeats on every scale), and a cascade (which describes how much more complex the form becomes at smaller and smaller scales). The geometries that Batty explores are urban boundaries, edges, and land use, although he acknowledges other types of fractals including the self-similar nature of a shopping district.

In Fractal Urbanism, Batty uses fractal logic to model urban forms. However, he acknowledges that his “cities” look unrealistic. The problem with fractal and other mathematical

[1]

[2]

[3]

[1] A Fractal [2] The rule : The Koch island [3] An example : Koch forest

BUGIS / 20

models is that their outputs are only as good as their inputs.

Cities are infinitely complex entities and the formulae used to describe them must reflect this complexity.

Although Batty’s research goal to determine the proper fractal method for determining the growth of cities is thwarted by the limitations of fractal research at the time of his writing, he acknowledges that his own process begins with inductive pattern recognition. He takes inputs and tweaks them until the fractal looks realistic. I applied a similar inductive method to Bugis.

I identified ten fractals within Bugis within three different categories: Meaning, Activity, and Form. Meaning fractals included Condensers and Books. Activity Fractals included Paths and Shops. Formal fractals included the rectangles of shophouses, the circuit board square shape of the southern area of Bugis, as well as the formal repetitions of curves and spirals.

In the end, I focused on one ‘master fractal,’ the increasing complexity and scale of shopping centers over time. Starting with the shophouse form, which hosts one shop in a small space, shopping progresses through time to the condenser which has more retail outlets in a bigger space, and finally the modern mall which has even more retailers in an even smaller space.

This fractal, if extrapolated into the rectangular space of Bugis, would predict greater complexity of shopping experiences in bigger buildings, thereby making the honeycomb-like fractal of the shopping experience in Bugis even bigger and even more complex.

In the end, this process revealed the utility and limitations of fractal models to describe the complexity of cities. Fractal models, and, by extrapolation, all mathematical models, are useful as descriptive tools, to lend a formula to a hunch.

However, in the end, in this exercise they did not prove helpful as a design tool. Fractal models are useful because they reveal order in chaos. But to create a fractal that describes a real place, one must create a set of rules that encompass all possible urban inputs, which is too complex for this researcher, and even for Batty himself, to do. Batty writes, “How this is achieved is almost akin to the secret of life itself and the fractal codes which are embodied in the growth process might be likened to those composing DNA and RNA” (Batty, 267). Batty recognized the limitations of fractal models to predict and describe real places, and says that to uncover a fractal that accurately describes a real city is the ultimate goal of fractal parametric urbanism.

BUGIS / 21

SINGAPORE

CBD

BUGIS

URBAN FRACTAL the condenser

SINGAPORE

CBD

BUGIS

BRAS BASAH FRACTAL BOOK theCENTER book

BOOK

BRAS BASAH FRACTAL the book

BOOK STORE

OK STORE

CONDENSER

COURTYARD

BOOK CENTER

BOOK [1]

URBAN FRACTAL the condenser

SIM LIM NEIGHBORHOOD FRACTAL the circuit board

Urban fractal : The Condenser

SINGAPORESIM LIM CENTER

CBD INTERIOR

CIRCUIT BOARD

BUGIS

INTERIOR

CIRCUIT BOARD

SIM LIM NEIGHBORHOOD FRACTAL the circuit board

SIM LIM CENTER

SHOPPING EVOLUTION FRACTAL Building Size, Block Size, Establishments

TIME

BRAS BASAH FRACTAL the book

BOOK CENTER

BOOK STORE

BOOK

SIM LIM CENTER

BRAS BASAH FRACTAL the book

BOOK STORE

[2]

SIM LIM NEIGHBORHOOD FRACTAL the circuit board SimLim neighbourhood fractal : The Circuit Board

BOOK CENTER

INTER

BOOK

SIM LIM NEIGHBORHOOD FRACTAL the circuit board

MALL

CONDENSER

SIM LIM CENTER

INT

SHOPHOUSE

1

223 (rochor)

BOOK STORE

BRAS BASAH FRACTAL NUMBER OF ESTABLISHMENTS the book

SHOPPING EVOLUTION FRACTAL Size,: Building Block Size, Establishments SHOPPINGfractal EVOLUTION FRACTAL ShoppingBuilding evolution size, Block size, Establishments

267 (bugis junction)

Building Size, Block Size, Establishments

BOOK CENTER BRAS BASAH FRACTAL the book

TIME

[3]

SHOPPING EVOLUTION FRACTAL

BUGIS / 22

BUGIS /

BUGIS 4

Literature: Habraken akanksHa raina

Bugis is one of the most intriguing public spaces in Singapore. Its spatial configuration seems to have a deliberate multiplicity that makes it a vibrant and thriving mix.

Characterized by a strong sense of place, Bugis has a remarkable complexity and harmony amongst its building typologies. The built environment represents an organism rather than an artifact that changes and grows, but still sustains qualities that transcend time.

To understand a seemingly chaotic yet cohesive space, I used a theory of John Habraken from The Structure of the Ordinary which believes that space is a self organizing entity and states that ‘To understand something as complex as our built environment we must seek what is common in its many manifestations and constant in its transformations. As with all studies of physical phenomena, patterns of change reveal the laws it is subject to. At the same time, change is caused by our interventions. Therefore, by learning to see environment in terms of change, we also learn to understand the ways in which we organize ourselves as agents acting upon it.’(Habraken 1998) This self evolving method of organization seems to permeate the physical settings of Bugis and has therefore been taken up as an approach of studying the evolution and description of Bugis. Furthermore, studying the evolution of Bugis, I saw that the many multiple insertions in the built fabric over time have resonated with the idea that the Built environment is an autonomous issue that cannot be created, only contributed to. Therefore these principles of understanding complexity serve as my basis of analyzing Bugis.

This durability and transcendence of the built environment is only possible because there is continuous change. Continuous renewal and replacement of individual cells preserves the built environment, giving it the ability to persist. All transformation denotes control. This is the operational relationship between humans and the built environment. Any physical order therefore is defined by control and ownership.

Thus, an analysis of the dominance of form and behavior, which is best explained by the control through hierarchies, is necessary to understand the site and its transformations. My strategy is to learn from Bugis’s evolution, and identification of trends that would help predict the future.

Parent Child relationships mapped in Bugis buildings : Habraken BUGIS / 24

[1]

[2]

[3]

+

[1] Degrees of parent child relationship : hierarchy vs complexity [2] Degrees of parent child relationship : hierarchy vs complexity : codified [3] Mapping of current complexity + hierarchies on site [4] Emergent pattern 2010-2020

[4]

BUGIS / 25

2000-2010

1990-2000

1980-1990

1970-1980

before 1900

analyzed on site

In the context of Bugis, I have worked with the premise that the buildings are public space and have studied their typologies. The process of parametricizing the concept of hierarchies of a place was a method of operationalizing the concept of degrees of publicness of Bugis. Each space is described as a controlled entity with a definite owner, who occupies and modulates the space he or she inhabits. Any increase in the number of controllers of space would mean an increase in the complexity and variety provided and an increase in depth would add degrees of private/public space and many transition zones. The crossing of the threshold from one territorial zone to another would require passing through a door, which Habraken described as the element that provides access to the space.

In reality, these complex physical layouts of boundaries and controls might be superseded by more totalitarian controls in real life, which are also simplistic, according to Habraken’s theory. However, temporary assertions can also validate the owner of the space (one who changes and modulates it, and not the actual ownership of it). Thus, the space might have multiple and different degrees of hierarchies, despite a singular titleholder in real life. Urban forms are many times reflective of these levels of control, as they also permeate real space. For the scope of this exercise, I have relied mainly on the perceptual ownership.

This research framework helped define the degrees of hierarchies and complexity in the horizontal and vertical frames of reference. There are two types of identifications that are involved once the degrees have been defined in the planes.

One, the space of orders in the urban fabric, its contrast of highly complex and public spaces vs. less complex and more private spaces. The second is the evolutionary order that dates the typologies and can be used to predict trends in the future hierarchical form in the region. These two systems combined would locate and define the hierarchical and complex relationships that will evolve in Bugis.

The final proposal was a natural outcome that was predicted from a study of the evolutionary pattern of the hierarchies. The proposals were divided into insertions and transformations, describing the new typologies and incremental changes that can be anticipated in the urban fabric. This process exposes the threat that lies in interventions that lack an understanding of the publicness of Bugis and risk converting it into a complete monolith of single experience.

Gates that define hierarchy

BUGIS / 26

projectS / 42

PUNGGOL 1

Literature: Habraken aLison sHeppard + andres bernaL + bernard HarkLess

PATTERN OF DETERMINING USER PARTICIPATION John Habraken

Upon arrival in Singapore, the class was confronted with REGIONAL PLAN two contrasting urban typologies through which theCITY site analysis was to be focused. These two neighborhoods were URBAN SYSTEMS PLAN Bugis and Punggol. Observation in Singapore immediately DISTRICT revealed an intriguing contrast between a generally monotonous physical environment ZONNING PLANand numerous instances of small-scale adaptations within this rigid framework.

NEIGHBORHOOD Despite the structure and similarity of much of the physical URBAN TISSUE PLAN environment, site visits and documentation revealed another BUILDING level of the urban form in which people were customizing, SUPPORTover PLAN the public spaces within adapting, and taking ownership DWELLING the hallways outside of their units. In many cases, residents treat these spaces like an extension of their own homes, INFILL PLAN although they are officially completely public spaces.ROOM This dichotomy is particularly interesting from an urban planning FURNITURE PLAN and design lens, as it creates a unique opportunity for the FURNITURE planner or designer to think about how they might intervene to allow these two areas to better align. The question that PATTERN OF DETERMINING USER PARTICIPATION arose for us was: How might different residential cluster John Habraken typologies be physically modified to accommodate these PLAN varying observed scales REGIONAL of customization?

Is it possible for CITYthe the scale of customization observed to be increased(from building to cluster) to allow opportunities for residents to feel URBAN SYSTEMS PLAN a greater sense of ownership in their community?

DISTRICT The theoretical lens of John Habraken was a natural PLAN choice through which toZONNING analyze this phenomenon further.

NEIGHBORHOOD In The Structure of the Ordinary, as well in as other works, Habraken writes aboutURBAN theTISSUE importance of control and PLAN territorial ownership in urban life at a variety of scales.

His BUILDING major contribution to architecture and planning theory SUPPORT PLAN was directly related to his critical analysis of the role of the DWELLING designer. Many of his works emphasize that individuals should INFILL PLAN have the ability to contribute to the interior designs of their apartments. This belief begins to question the hierarchical ROOM relationship between the designer and individual. He defines FURNITURE PLAN three orders that underlie the forms that we observe and FURNITURE interpret: form, place, and understanding. These three orders are intrinsically related, but the second order - place - relates most specifically to the issues of territory and control that are so visibly important in Punggol. His focus on the way in which levels of territorial depth and control impact urban life and

SINGAPORE’S PATTERN OF USER PARTICIPATION

URA SINGAPORE’S PLAN URA/HDB TOWN PLAN PUNGGOL NEIGHBORHOOD PLAN NEIGHBORHOOD CLUSTER PLAN CLUSTER BUILDING PLAN BUILDING FLOOR PLAN LEVEL CORRIDOR PLAN NOOK UNIT PLAN UNIT FURNITURE PLANN FURNITURE

SINGAPORE’S PATTERN OF USER PARTICIPATION[1]

URA SINGAPORE’S PLAN URA/HDB TOWN PLAN PUNGGOL NEIGHBORHOOD PLAN NEIGHBORHOOD CLUSTER PLAN CLUSTER BUILDING PLAN BUILDING FLOOR PLAN LEVEL CORRIDOR PLAN NOOK UNIT PLAN UNIT FURNITURE PLAN FURNITURE

[2] [1] Pattern of user participation in Singapore [2] Proposed pattern of user participation in Singapore PUNGGOL / 28

INTENSITY OF CUSTOMIZATION

TYPE OF USE 23 UN ITS

63 Existing conditions in Punggol units

CLUSTER CLUSTER CUSTOMIZED CUSTOMIZED CUSTOMIZED CLUSTER PUBLIC SPACE PUBLIC SPACE PUBLIC SPACE PUBLIC SPACE SPACE SPACE

31%

16% NONE

MEDIUM

39% LOW

HIGH

51 UN ITS

ITS N U

BUILD ING 11

UNITS 3 6 /1 4 A UNITS 26

14%

GROUND-FLOOR OPEN SPACE

ROOFTOP GARDENS

CENTRAL COURTYARDS

GROUND-FLOOR OPEN SPACE

ROOFTOP GARDENS

CENTRAL COURTYARDS

LOW

~7050 sq meters

~ 5700 sq meters

~ 4950 sq

~7050 sq meters

~ 5700 sq meters

~ 4950 sq

HIGH

LOW

HIGH

LOW

H

HIGH

LOW

HIGH

LOW

H

Existing conditions in Punggol units

PUNGGOL / 29LOW

4%

LOUNGE

12% NONE

NONE LOW

13%

RELIGIOUS

29%

ONE-SIDED

TWO-SIDED

DECORATIVE

39%

GARDENING

66% STORAGE

MEDIUM HIGH

S

= APPROXIMATELY 17,700 SQ METERS OF PUBLIC SPACE

S ~ 4950 sq meters

~ 4950 sq meters

HIGH

HIGH

L-SHAPED

PILE Customizable space in Punggol

= 100% OF THE GROUND =AREA. APPROXIMATELY 17,700 SQ METERS OF PUBLIC SPACE = 5.83 SQ METERS/PERSON ONLY =WITHIN 100% OF GROUND THETHE CLUSTER AREA. = 5.83 SQ METERS/PERSON ONLY WITHIN THE CLUSTER OVERALL, LOW TO MEDIUM PERCENTAGES OF THIS SPACE ARE CUSTOMIZED BY RESIDENTS OVERALL, LOW TO MEDIUM PERCENTAGES OF THIS SPACE ARE CUSTOMIZED BY RESIDENTS

The theory to define the degree of hierarchy

PUNGGOL / 30

[1]

Increasing territorial depth at block level PUNGGOL / 31

[2]

[3]

urban form is particularly relevant to the existing conditions in Punggol and also suggests recommendations and proposals for how changed territorial depth and control boundaries could improve the urban environment. The public realm of Punggol is also what makes Habraken’s theory a relevant method of analysis. The public space of Punggol is different than many other types of residential typologies. Public space in the residential typologies of Punggol is defined as any space within the building up to an apartment’s front door. This is significant as it serves as a framework to understand how different levels of control and customization could be applied to existing conditions.

When we carried out analysis of the levels of territorial depth in Punggol using Habraken’s examples in The Structure of the Ordinary as precedents, the initial hypothesis was that the desired and “permitted” levels of ownership and customization did not correctly align. Using Habraken’s methods to diagram and analyze the observations found in our fieldwork, it became clear that the level of formal customization was very low, but the level of observed customization was much higher, especially at the corridor and buildings scales. In accordance with Habraken’s theory, people desired a level of ownership beyond just their individual units. In a case such as Punggol, this extended to the hallway level, which were treated almost like streets would be in a typical residential development.

For instance, at the building scale there are theoretically only two degrees of control: the unit and everything else. Our observations, however, revealed people taking control of many more levels of space, such as corridors, nooks, and stairwells.

The degree to which this takeover of space exists varies greatly, but was observed in the majority of scenarios. Beyond this scale, however, very little customization was observed. Even at the cluster level, where there was some level of customization, an analysis based on Habraken revealed an overall lack of territorial depth.

This observed mismatch points to an opportunity for proposals or interventions in which the desired levels of control and ownership are encouraged by governing bodies. These proposals take a variety of forms, but generally involve small changes or interventions that can lead to significant alterations of territorial depth. Larger scale proposals responding to this need could include new building designs that allow for a greater formal degree of customization, but intermediary alterations to existing structures can also have a similar effect.

One way in which Habraken proposes increases in territorial depth is through the creation of gateways. In

Existing degrees of customization through scales PUNGGOL / 32

A PUBLIC

A

D SEMI PUBLIC

USTER SCALE C

C SEMI PRIVATE

rent Condition

CLUSTER SCALE

Territorial Depth Increase

B PRIVATE

CLUSTER SCALE

A PUBLIC

D

D SEMI PUBLIC

D SEMI PUBLIC

A

Territorial Depth Increase

C SEMI PRIVATE

Territorial Depth Increase

C

B PRIVATE

C SEMI PRIVATE

B

CLUSTER SCALE

A PUBLIC

A

A

C SEM

B PRIV

B

B PRIVATE

A PUB

D SEM

B

B

A PUBLIC

A

D SEMIAddition PUBLIC of boundary at clus

Addition of gateways at building level creates semiprivate space.

ter scale and gateway at

C SEMIbuilding PRIVATE scale creates 2 addi-

tional levels of privacy.

B PRIVATE

B

A D

A PUBLIC

A

D SEMI PUBLIC

D

C SEMI PRIVATE A PUBLIC

A

USTER SCALE R SCALE

D SEMI PUBLIC

D

torial Depth Increase Depth Increase C

B

C SEMI PRIVATE

A

A PUBLIC A PUBLIC D SEMI PUBLIC D SEMI PUBLIC C SEMI PRIVATE C SEMI PRIVATE B PRIVATE B PRIVATE

Territorial Depth Increase

B PRIVATE

A

D

D CC

B

D

C SEMI PRIVATE

CLUSTERBSCALE PRIVATE

A PUBLIC D SEMI PUBLIC C SEMI PRIVATE

Territorial Depth Increase Territorial Depth Increase

B PRIVATE

B B

A

B B

A PUBLI A PUBLIC D SEMI P D SEMI PUBLIC C SEMI P C SEMI PRIVATE B PRIVA B PRIVATE

Territorial Depth Increase A

D

D C C B

A PUBLIC D SEMI PUBLIC

B PRIVATE

PUNGGOL / 33

CLUSTER SCALE CLUSTER SCALE D

B

D SEMI PUBLIC

B

C SEMI PRIVATE

B B

Increasing territorial depth at the site level

B PRIVATE A

A PUBLIC

Addition of boundary at cluster scale and gateway at building scale creates 2 additional levels of privacy.

A

Depth Increase

D

B

undaries outside of ldings create semi-public ces for residents of each lding.

R SCALE

A

D SEMI PUBLIC C SEMI PRIVATE

B PRIVATE CLUSTER SCALE

B

A PUBLIC

CLUSTER SCALE

Territorial Depth Increase

A D

A PUBLIC D SEMI PUBLIC C SEMI PRIVATE

C B

B PRIVATE

Habraken’s theory, gateways are points through which different levels of control or ownership are defined. Although Habrakan gateways sometimes take the form of a physical gate, this is not always the case, and this is not necessarily the best option for Punggol. Physical, symbolic, or implied gateways can all have impacts on individuals’ feeling of control over the surrounding environment. By creating gateways at different levels within the community, more variation could be created.

For instance, the creation of gateways at the corridor level might only further the type of customization already observed, but their creation at the building level could allow for new, specialized uses within the currently unoccupied void decks of the buildings. Similarly, gateways at the cluster level could encourage residents to take a more proactive and personal role in shaping the space outside of their buildings. This could increase opportunities for shared community spaces such as community gardens, recreation areas, or amenities that explicitly respond to residents’ needs.

Community spaces encouraged by ownership PUNGGOL / 34

Remediation pipeline, recovery wells, grid.

PROJECTS PUNGGOL / 41 /

PUNGGOL 2

Literature: Lehnerer MiDOri MiZuhara+ DiCLe uZunYaYLa+ COLLeen MChuGh

Every detail in Punggol is deliberately designed. As one of Singapore’s fastest developing new town districts, it serves as a unique platform for conceptually testing ideas about parametric urban design. Punggol’s fabric is made up of a series of modular components at a variety of scales and the design of these parts are continuously being improved upon though design iterations by the Housing and Development Board (HDB). In a place with no historical reference or site context, Punggol exists in a vacuum and its urban morphology is a result of self-referential lessons learned from its own performance.

While new iterations to the model ideally reflect needs of the residents, recent models have been slow to adapt.

Currently in Punggol, there is a high demand for more public and commercial amenities, which has been reflected in the recent election of the opposition Workers Party (WP). As the only district to elect the opposition party in Singapore, this indicates a significant level of discontent with the current public realm. In Punggol, the quality of the public realm is especially important, because everything outside of the housing unit is considered “public” and highly occupied due to the warm climate.

It is clear that as Singapore’s population continues to rise, the demand for a quality, user-driven urban form will become important in order to maintain a comfortable lifestyle in a high density urban environment. This project aims to create strategic parameters to enhance the public realm with an emphasis on adding and enhancing amenities. By creating these parameters, new developments can be tailored to better reflect resident’s needs.

In our initial site observations and resident interviews, we found that large areas of the public realm were underutilized due to the lack of environmental comfort, and there was a large demand for more amenities in highly used areas.

Public Realm Footprint: There are high levels of manicured green park space in Punggol developments such as central common greens used by an entire housing cluster, interior greens used by adjacent buildings and elevated greens on the roof of parking structures. Once we observed the levels of use in these three spaces, it was clear that that shade was the determining factor in how much a space was used, and that

[1]

[2] [1] Hierarchy of parameters [2] Public spaces in Punggol

PUNGGOL / 36

Interaction between amenities and public realm PUNGGOL / 37

areas with shade cover from adjacent trees and buildings were more crowded.

Current Amenities: There is a high level of concentration of amenities (LRT stations, shops, daycares), and the distance between them is great. Considering that residents usually walk from housing cluster to cluster, there are currently a disproportionate number of amenities at the stations and a very low distribution of amenities within the housing clusters.

According to residents, there is a high demand for more small scale retail and educational facilities closer to their residences and in relation to outdoor amenities such as playgrounds. Most of the residents in Punggol are young families and outdoor playgrounds are places with high levels of use, so this seems like an ideal place for an increased level of ancillary amenities.

Pedestrian Flow: Due to the largely open ground floor plan of the housing towers, pedestrian paths flow fluidly in and out of buildings. When measuring the shortest paths from homes (elevator cores) to amenities (playgrounds, markets, etc..) however, we observed that the shortest, most direct path that most people take is not always the most environmentally confortable one. To improve residents’ comfort level, more attention should be paid to shading the actual paths residents take, rather than the originally paved ones. These shorter paths should always be kept free of obstructions and shaded to provide maximum comfort.

We first approached this project as a renovation of Punggol itself. We tested how the first floor structure could be adapted to add more amenities in its largely unused open floor plan. In moving forward with this project, we realized that it was better suited as an investigation of strategies for a new development model that better distributes amenities.

We borrowed from Alex Lehnerer’s book, Grand Urban Rules, to create our own design research methodology.

Lehnerer’s text is a catalog of city codes and rules. From this, we distilled certain parameters relevant to Punggol, tested them on the site, and looked to how those tests might inform ideal urban design codes in Singapore housing developments like Punggol.

Initially, the team distilled the following parameters: shadow cover, building height, and pathway type. We were interested in both how they interacted with each other, and how our design priorities would inform a hierarchy of parameters.

First we measured outdoor comfort in terms of direct sun hours, and found that those public greens with the most current amenities are not always the most environmentally

List of rules : Lehnerer PUNGGOL / 38

Shade analysis and resulting height modifications PUNGGOL / 39

comfortable. Similarly, those shortest pathways most used to get to those amenities also do not get the most shade.

We then tested building heights in relation to shade. In order to increase environmental comfort and shade hours for ground level amenities, the team tested the raising of building heights around the public greens. To keep an approximate total of 3900 units, heights were lowered on corners facing major boulevards, creating more visual differentiation.

We then looked to the pedestrian pathway and defined three types (L,M,S) based on the intensity of use of the shortest paths that we measured earlier. The team explored design parameters for path types, including distance between trees, the width of the path, the permeability of the storefronts along a path, storefront widths, and program mix. We hypothesized certain measures for these parameter that might be ideal for each street type. Future research might calculate these measures more precisely.

The team came to two principal conclusions about how HDB might improve the housing development model in the future. First, buildings should be higher around public spaces to ensure more environmental comfort for ground level amenities. Secon, identify and enhance different pathway types to promote connectivity between clusters.

Active zones giving identity to open space PUNGGOL / 40

Parameters and their combination types PUNGGOL / 41

[1]

START POINTS (ELEVATORS) UNCOVERED OUTDOOR WALKWAYS COVERED / OUTDOOR WALKWAYS INDOOR WALKWAYS

START POINTS (ELEVATORS) [1] Parameter : outdoor comfort

UNCOVERED OUTDOOR WALKWAYS

[2]

[2] Adding ammenities and simulating pedestrian flows

COVERED / OUTDOOR WALKWAYS INDOOR WALKWAYS

PUNGGOL / 42

CiTY FoRm LAB

BRENT RYAN (Professor)

ANDRES SVETSUK (Professor)

The City Form Lab at the Singapore University of Technology & Design in collaboration with the School of Architecture & Planning at MIT focuses on empirical studies of urban form. Its research is focused on developing new software tools for researching the urban built environment; using cutting-edge spatial analysis and statistical methods to investigate how the physical pattern of urban infrastructure affects the social, environmental and economic quality of existing city environments; and developing creative design and policy solutions for contemporary urban challenges. By bringing together multi-diciplinary urban research expertise and excellence in design, the lab develops context sensitive and timely insight about the role of urban design in affecting the quality of life in 21st century cities. More information about the lab can be found at http://cityform.mit.edu

Brent D. Ryan is Associate Professor of Urban Design and Public Policy in MIT’s Department of Urban Studies and Planning.

His research focuses on the aesthetics and policies of contemporary urban design, particularly in postindustrial cities and neighborhoods. His book Design After Decline: How America rebuilds shrinking cities, was selected by Planetizen as one of its ten best urban planning books of 2012.

Since 1994, Ryan has practiced urban design and planning in New York City, Boston, and Chicago. From 2007 to 2009 he was Assistant Professor of Urban Planning at the Harvard Graduate School of Design, and from 2002 to 2007 he was co-director of the City Design Center and Assistant Professor of Urban Planning and Policy at the University of Illinois at Chicago. Ryan holds a B.S. in biology from Yale University, a M. Arch. from Columbia University, and a Ph.D. in urban design and planning from MIT.

Andres Sevtsuk is an Assistant Professor in Architecture and Planning at the Singapore University of technology and Design. Andres leads the City Form Lab at SUTD, which investigates urban form and its influence on the social, economic and environmental performance of cities using state of the art spatial analysis tools. Before joining SUTD in 2011, he taught as a lecturer in Architecture and Urban Studies & Planning at MIT. He studied at L’École d’Architecture de la Ville & des Territoires (BArch) and MIT (SMArchS, Ph.D) and has worked as an architect, urban designer, consultant and researcher in Europe, United States and now in Singapore.

Andres has published a number of articles and book chapters and presented his work at various international events, including TEDx and the Venice Architecture Biennale.

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