NUS M.Arch 2: Thesis, An Overview (2020-2021) by NUS Department of Architecture

Year 5 M.ARCH II 2021/2022 MA (Arch) Thesis

M.ARCH M.ARCHTHESIS: Thesis AnOverview Overview An IMAGE CREDITS TO: EMILY LAI

M.ARCH:Design Research Thesis AR5806 ARCHITECTURAL DESIGN RESEARCH REPORT (SEMESTER 1) Modular Credits: 4

The Architectural Design Research Report is a 4000-word report with images— A4 hardcopy and PDF compendium— that would capture research, design, and presentation materials on the student’s design research. This report should build and elaborate on a body of evidence through creative practice research, using writing, images, and diagrams. The report will then synthesise these design research efforts into a full-length design research compendium that complements evidence with textural descriptions, theoretical writing and other written strategies, alongside graphic, photographic, and visual materials. Its fundamental purpose will be to enable students to develop a rigorous method and deep-dive focus in a specific area of design research. Students will be required to mount a body of evidence to demonstrate that their research has translational potential in the field of architecture through creative practice which is to be evidenced in the design thesis. Students will also be expected to exercise high-level competence in creative practice research, design thinking, representation and communication.

The following should be included in the report: 1. Title of Research 2. Research Abstract (300 words) 3. Research Approach 4. Research Context and Community of Practice 5. Research Outputs 6. Contribution to Knowledge 7. Annotated Bibliography and Review of Literature, Works, and References 8. Image/Resource Index 9. Self-Disclosure of Research 10. Ethics Approval as necessary

Learning Objectives: 1. To understand and critically manifest creative practice research methods in a directed research programme. 2. To formulate a thesis statement, abstract and approach, understood as a design question and line of inquiry. 3. To understand and take a critical position on creative practice research methods, outcomes, and evidence and to illustrate the impacts of the modes of research on the formation of an architectural proposition through written and graphic analysis. 4. To identify, position and relate individual creative practice research to a community of practice and position precedents. 5. To position individual research in the larger domain of architecture and to communicate how creative practice research advances the discipline including a bibliography. 6. To understand and take a critical position on how might the translation of creative practice research outcomes occur into architectural approaches, techniques, strategies and tactics. 7. To understand creative practice research methods and conceptual design tools, and to be able to make informed ethical judgments in architecture. 8. To understand advanced representational techniques (i.e. digital and analogue media) to communicate research, design iterations, and design techniques in architecture. 9. To understand advanced digital data, visualisations contemporary simulations in 2D, 3D, and 4D mediums to research architectural approaches in a research programme. 10. To communicate creative practice research in concise and considered written and visual mediums.

Measurable Outcomes: 1. 2. 3. 4.

Provide evidence for a clear research programme and approach. Provide evidence of a clear design thesis argument in written and representational tools. Present an understandable design methodology. Describe the existing field of design knowledge and propose how the thesis will add to the existing field. 5. Present and analyse the proposed community of practice. 6. Represent a convincing design thesis proposal through written and visual mediums in a 4000word A4 document.

M.ARCH:Design Research Thesis AR5807 1 SEMESTER ARCHITECTURAL DESIGN THESIS (SEMESTER 2) Modular Credits: 20

The Master of Architecture design thesis will span across one semester establishing the final design criteria for achieving the degree of Master of Architecture. Students will be able to select from a variety of thesis advisors, and either align their theses with their advisors’ research interests and expertise, or pursue their own self-directed thesis themes.The two modules dealing with the design research thesis have been put together to allow students to develop a high level of competence in creative practice design research; this competence would then lead to architectural outcomes in a wide range of topics.Building on the (AR5806) Architectural Design Research Report, the Architectural Design Thesis will drive the students to take a critical position of their research and hypothesis, where the progression of the exploration throughout the semester will lead to the manifestation of an architectural proposition. Students are encouraged to extend the research programme from Semester 1 through to Semester 2, translating and transforming a research topic and hypothesis into design outcomes.Deliverables include all necessary drawings, models, photos, films that represent the research and Expansion of Thesis prep report as an A4 Portrait document, illustrating and describing the research outcomes in Semester 2.

Learning Objectives: 1. To understand and critically manifest creative practice research methods in an individually directed thesis milieu. 2. To understand and take a critical position on creative practice research methods, outcomes, and evidence; and to illustrate the impacts of the modes of research on the formation of an architectural proposition. 3. To identify, position and relate individual creative practice research to a community of practice. 4. To position individual research in the larger domain of architecture and to communicate how creative practice research advances the discipline. 5. To understand and take a critical position on translation of creative practice research outcomes into architectural approaches, techniques, and strategies or tactics. 6. To design with creative practice research and conceptual tools, and to be able to make informed ethical judgments in architecture. 7. To utilise advanced representational techniques (i.e. digital and analogue media) to communicate research, design iterations, and design techniques in architecture. 8. To utilise advanced digital data, visualisations, contemporary simulations in 2D, 3D, and 4D mediums to research architectural approaches to design. 9. To utilise advanced analogue and digital tools in making. 10. To communicate creative practice ideas in concise and considered verbal, written, and performative presentations, utilising a wide range of mediums.

Measurable Outcomes: 1. Provide an innovative and rigorous design concept in response to a formulated thesis statement. 2. Provide a clear design research method and approach to the act of design. 3. Produce robust architectural representations with rigour and graduate level expertise in 2 D, 3 D, and 4 D mediums. 4. Produce analogue and digital models. 5. Communicate the thesis and its contribution to knowledge through verbal, written and physical mediums and artefacts.

M.ARCH II DESIGN THESIS FACULTY DESIGN THESIS ADVISORS: François Blanciak

Richard Ho

Associate Professor; PhD, M Arch (University of Tokyo), DPLG (École Nationale Supérieure d’Architecture de Grenoble); Registered Architect, France

Professor in Practice; B Arch (National University of Singapore); MSIA, Registered Architect, Singapore

Hans Brouwer

Adjunct Senior Lecturer; Dip Specialists in Restauro dei Monumenti (Université de Genève), M Arch, BA Arch Studies (National University of Singapore)

Adjunct Associate Professor; B Arch (University of Southern California); MSIA, Registered Architect, Singapore

Cheah Kok Ming Vice Dean (Academic),Associate Professor; B Arch, BA Arch Studies (National University of Singapore); Registered Architect, Singapore

Lilian Chee Associate Professor; PhD, MSc Arch History (University College London), B Arch, BA Arch Studies (National University of Singapore)

Cho Im Sik Associate Professor; PhD (The Graduate School of Seoul National University, Korea), M Arch (The Berlage Institute, Rotterdam, The Netherlands), B Sc (Seoul National University)

Simone Chung Assistant Professor; PhD, M Phil (University of Cambridge), MSc (University College London), AA Dip, BSc (University College London); ARB, RIBA Part 3, Registered Architect, UK

Ho Weng Hin

Patrick Janssen Associate Professor; PhD (Hong Kong Polytechnic University), MSc (Cog Sci Int Comp) (Westminister University), AA Dip

Khoo Peng Beng Adjunct Associate Professor; B Arch (National University of Singapore); RIBA, MSIA, Registered Architect, Singapore

Nirmal Kishnani Associate Professor, MSc ISD Programme Director; PhD (Curtin University of Technology), MSc (Env Psych) (University of Surrey), BA Arch (National University of Singapore)

Thomas Kong Associate Professor; M Arch (Cranbrook Academy of Art), B Arch (National University of Singapore); Assoc. AIA, Registered Architect, Singapore

Erik G. L’Heureux

Fung John Chye

Dean’s Chair Associate Professor, Vice Dean, M Arch Programme Director; M Arch (Princeton University), BA Arch (Washington University in St. Louis); FAIA, LEED AP BD+C, NCARB, Registered Architect, USA (New York and Rhode Island)

Associate Professor in Practice; B Arch (National University of Singapore); Registered Architect, Singapore

Joseph Lim

Florian Heinzelmann

Associate Professor; PhD (Heriot-Watt University), MSc (University of Strathclyde), B Arch (National University of Singapore); MSIA, Registered Architect, Singapore

Associate Professor in Practice; PhD (Eindhoven University of Technology), M Arch (Berlage Institute), Dipl-Ing (Munich University of Applied Sciences); Registered Architect, the Netherlands

Ho Puay Peng Professor, Head of Department; PhD (University of London), M Arch, Dip Arch (University of Edinburgh); RIBA

Victoria Jane Marshall

Rudi Stouffs

Visiting Senior Fellow; PhD (National University of Singapore), MLA, Cert Urban Design (University of Pennsylvania), BLA (University of New South Wales), AAG

Dean’s Chair Associate Professor; PhD, MSc (Arch Comp Design) (Carnegie Mellon University), MSc (ArchEng), Ir-Arch (Vrije Universiteit Brussel)

Neo Sei Hwa

Tan Beng Kiang

Adjunct Associate Professor; B Arch (National University of Singapore), BA Arch Studies (National University of Singapore); MSIA, Registered Architect, Singapore

Associate Professor; DDes (Harvard University), M Arch (University of California, Los Angeles), B Arch (National University of Singapore); MSIA, Registered Architect, Singapore

Shinya Okuda Associate Professor; M Eng, B Eng (Kyoto Institute of Technology); Registered Architect, Japan and the Netherlands

Ong Ker-Shing

Teh Joo Heng Adjunct Associate Professor; SMArchS (Massachusetts Institute of Technology), B Arch (National University of Singapore); MSIA, Registered Architect, Singapore

Associate Professor in Practice, BA Arch Programme Director; M Arch, MLA (Harvard University); MSIA, Registered Architect and SILA, Registered Landscape Architect, Singapore

Tiah Nan Chyuan

Tsuto Sakamoto

Johannes Widodo

Associate Professor, M Arch Associate Programme Director; MSc (Columbia University), M Eng (Waseda University), B Eng (Tokyo University of Science)

Associate Professor; PhD (University of Tokyo), M Arch Eng (Katholieke Universiteit Leuven), Ir (Parahyangan Catholic University); IAI

Swinal Samant

Wong Chong Thai, Bobby

Senior Lecturer; PhD and PGCHE (The University of Nottingham), M Arch (The University of Sheffield), Dip Arch (Institute of Environmental Design)

Adjunct Associate Professor; Dip Arch (Aberdeen), MDesS (Harvard); MSIA, Registered Architect Singapore

Peter Sim Adjunct Assistant Professor; B Arch, BA Arch (National University of Singapore); ARB, Registered Architect, UK

Adjunct Assistant Professor; M Arch (Columbia University), BA Arch Studies (National University of Singapore); Green Mark AP, MSIA, Registered Architect, Singapore

Ruzica Bozovic Stamenovic

Yuan Chao

Associate Professor, Deputy Head (Administration and Finance); ScD, MSc (University of Belgrade, Serbia), Spec Arch, Dip Eng Arch (University of Belgrade, Serbia); Registered Architect, Serbia

Assistant Professor (Presidential Young Professor); PhD Architecture (Chinese University of Hong Kong), MIT Kaufman Teaching Certificate (Massachusetts Institute of Technology)

Adjunct Assistant Professor; AA Dip, BA Arch (National University of Singapore); MSIA, Registered Architect, Singapore

Wu Yen Yen

Zhang Ye Assistant Professor; PhD (University of Cambridge), M Arch, B Arch (Tsinghua University)

M ARCH II DESIGN RESEARCH THESIS OFFERINGS FORM

Tutor: François Blanciak What should a significant architectural project look like? How can it come into existence within the ecological context of architecture, and a strained economy of attention? In light of current debates on what is— fundamentally—a building, this thesis topic will focus broadly on the issue of form in architecture—a notion so contentious that it is often presented as necessarily “following” particular variables. What these are, and why they surface at specific moments in history, will be investigated, with a particular emphasis on the study of precedents in order to envision architectural outputs that transcend solutionism.

IN PURSUIT OF OPTIMISM Tutor: Hans Brouwer Today’s outlook seems to be obsessed with the pessimistic. Our co-dependence on the media has inadvertently drawn us into its worldview and modus operandi: to chase the disaster in order to capture eyeballs (tragedy sells). If we remove ourselves from the ‘here’, ‘now’ and ‘terrifying future’, and look at our journey as a species, we see that we have always been masters of adaptation and change. Homo sapiens’ success lies in our ability to take adversity and use it as an agent of designed change. It is this insatiable positivism and curiosity that has led us on this amazing journey to where we are today. The post-pandemic outlook which we now confront, does not need to be one of gloom and doom. Yes, we are confronted with a multitude of deeply concerning problems. From the global issues of climate change, food scarcity and inequity, to the personal ones of identity, screen addiction and social media dependence. This studio is interested in taking these challenges as opportunities to envisage design changes inspired by an undaunting positive belief, that architecture is up to the task to foresee futures that not only address the underlying problems but can go beyond them to create futures that are better in every way.

IMAGE CREDITS TO: GOI YONG CHERN

ANTIFRAGILE FRAMING

Tutor: Cheah Kok Ming

When dining-in restrictions hit Chicago-based Dimo’s Pizza shop during the pandemic, they reinvented themselves by deploying some of their ovens and manpower to produce plastic shields for health-care protection. The transformed business thrived for Dimo despite the adversity and constraints. Nassim Taleb describes “antifragility” as an attribute beyond resilience or robustness. The resilient resists shocks and stays the same but the “antifragile” gets better. The studio provides an “antifragile” framework to look at crises, problems or threats for thinking about alternative architectural possibilities. For Dimo’s Pizza, it raises the question of how architecture would change to reconcile the production of pizzas and plastic shields.

REMOTE PRACTICES: A MINOR ARCHITECTURE AND ITS DISTANT ARCHIVES Tutor: Lilian Chee Assisted by: Wong Zi Hao Remote Practices is concerned with disciplinary boundaries, seen in architecture’s acts of improvising and transposing; the (mis)alignments intrinsic to its distance from the built environment it conceives, and its “promiscuous mix of the real and the abstract.” This studio will further accentuate such distance and dissonance by concerning itself with architecture’s peripheral subjects. It argues for the necessity of a “minor architecture”, founded along the seams of the discipline. Located in tropical Southeast Asia, the studio engages the region’s uncategorised subjects: mythic environments, shapeshifting practices, and/or its often anecdotal knowledge. Students will select one peripheral phenomenon found in S.E.A’s climatic peculiarities of health and environment, post/trans/colonial histories, the rural-urban transition, traditions in the aftermath of modernisation, etc. They are to co-locate themselves in a corresponding archive, a distant site which embeds expert knowledge of their chosen periphery. The studio’s outcomes—“architecture [that] makes its appearance other than architecture” —will further define the boundaries and forms of a “minor architecture”.

EMERGING CIVIC URBANISMS: DESIGNING FOR SOCIAL IMPACT

ADAPTIVE TROPICAL BUILDINGS UNDER LARGE SPAN ROOFS

Tutor: Cho Im Sik

Tutor: Florian Heinzelmann

With rising awareness of the impacts of environmental degradation and growing polarisation, various forms of civic urbanisms are emerging as an alternative to the growth-oriented and market-driven urban development. This implies an awakened desire for a new paradigm based on more sustainable ways of life, which contributed to a greater emphasis on wellbeing, social inclusion, environmental consciousness, and active participation of citizens in decision-making. By critically reflecting upon the conventional ways we perceive, plan, and build our cities; the studio will rigorously question established norms, conceptions, and systems—to inspire new visions of urbanism designed for long term social impact.

The roof—or atap—is an essential element in vernacular architecture, but also in contemporary buildings such as mall atriums, hawker centers, and many others. The interior of large roof structures does not get sufficient daylight and ventilation via vertical facades. The roof surface itself has to manage both. This must be negotiated between solar heat gains versus visual and other requirements. Daylight availability and direction are variables, and apertures therefore need to react by either changing their geometry or material properties. Students are invited to research, simulate, design, and prototype functioning adaptive daylight systems; including other passive climatic strategies for a building typology at a tropical location of their choice.

ARCHITECTURE’S BACK LOOP Tutor: Simone Chung

Based on ecologist C.S. Holling’s theory, the back loop is the stage in the Anthropocene cycle where hitherto established structures come apart, and individual entities or small groups interact across divides to create something fundamentally original. What undergirds back loop innovation is a spirit of experimentation that is not mutually exclusive to humans or nature. Wakefield (2020, 98) states, “Deciding on one’s own terms where to go from here, can everywhere be a matter of taking infrastructure, architecture, and design in one’s own hands and wielding them as the powers they in fact are”. A recalibration of mindset is essential as we depart from outmoded and limiting ways of thinking and operating in the front loop. The “biopolitics” that Foucault (1997) speaks of cannot be forcefully administered on one level alone. Rather, it invites softer and more plural forms of intervention technologies that stitch together knowledge, practice and design.

F.U.N.3 | INFLEXION POINT Tutor: Fung John Chye Fifty years ago, Buckminster Fuller pre-empted the challenges to human civilisations which are now impending. In Operating Manual for Spaceship Earth, he posits the criticality of managing the planet’s finite resources sustainably through a systems view for regenerative living. “Spaceship Earth” is at an inflexion point as cities face the convergence of existential threats—climate crisis, ageing populations, resource scarcity, pandemic, and technological disruptions. Third in the series on Future Urban Neighbourhoods, this studio will explore urban planning and architecture that mitigate the immense problems to invent viable Anthropocene futures through scenarios of sustainable human communities, urban environments, and deep technologies in 2050 and beyond.

CITY - CULTURE – CONSERVATION Tutor: Ho Puay Peng This thesis offering will look at the social and cultural contexts behind design initiatives. How might a design project form a locus for symbolism, cultural representation, or the expression of identity? In exploring answers to this, students will embark on a journey of uncovering the meaning behind conceptions of society, community, and cultural manifestation. Observation and critical discourse will be essential to the process; these will be applied to questioning students’ views of individual or national identity. Along the way, the juxtaposition of time and space in architectural production would not only be a key factor examined in this journey, but may also be a product of the journey itself. This thesis offering would also complement a research interest in the areas of heritage conservation, adaptive reuse, and intervention in historical buildings and neighbourhoods.

IMAGE CREDITS TO: LIM HOCK SIANG TYLER

HILL WITH A VIEW – THE KEPPEL GOLF CLUB

THE MEDIUM IS THE WEB

Tutor: Richard Ho

Tutor: Patrick Janssen

It has been announced that the lease for two of the 23 golf courses in Singapore will not be renewed when they expire in 2021 and the land will be returned to the Singapore Land Authority. The Keppel Golf Club being one of them. It’s high time that we as a nation re-examine our priorities, especially when so much land has been set aside for the recreation of so few, not to mention that golf courses are perhaps the most detrimental to the biodiversity of our natural environment and not sustainable in the long run for a city-state that purportedly has a shortage of land. But what will happen to these two golf courses?

For this studio, the medium is the message (Marshall McLuhan, 1964), and the medium is the web application. For your final thesis, you are required to develop an architectural proposition in the form of an interactive web application. People on the web should be able to engage in a two-way interaction with your architectural proposition. For your web application, you can focus on any topic you like, as long as it has a clear and direct relevance to a discourse on architecture.

HOLON STUDIO

FUTURES FOR OUR MODERN PAST Tutor: Ho Weng Hin

Faced with mounting redevelopment pressures, postindependence modernist structures and landscapes in Singapore are at a watershed moment. Today, imageable heroic modern megastructures such as the Golden Mile Complex and People’s Park Complex, built barely four decades ago are threatened with obliteration, through their impending en-bloc sales. On the other hand, following estate intensification programmes, what used to be a substantial and varied building stock of modernist housing heritage—such as the pioneering Queenstown Estate—has been severely depleted. The studio proposes that this paradigm is increasingly environmentally and socially unsustainable, causing ruptures in social, cultural, and urban accretion indispensable to a vibrant, liveable city. Rather than seeing conservation as opposition to progress and intensification, it explores rehabilitation and adaptive reuse as an alternative mode of urban regeneration; one that layers on rather than a demolishand rebuild approach. Under the guidance by a practicing conservation specialist, the studio will adopt a rigorous researchbased approach to inform conservation design strategies for a site of the student’s choice, during the Thesis Preparation stage. Students will gain new skills and tools for ‘deep reading’ into heritage landscapes, structures, and artefacts that will inform a robust conservation/ intervention framework to guide the Thesis Design stage.

Tutor: Khoo Peng Beng This thesis offering is concerned with examining the concept of the holon and holoarchy in architecture. It starts with the student as the basic unit of the holon—building up the complexity of the system through integrative processes. Students will explore how simple system nests within larger systems, creating a holoarchy. Unlike the traditional hierarchy, a holoarchy does not have a defined top and a defined bottom, but is open-ended and bidirectional. Architecture, therefore, is seen as a complex system comprising autonomous wholes that exist within a larger system. Students will be free to explore this conceptual framework and its implications in any context pertaining to a future Singapore.

FORM FOLLOWS SYSTEM

Tutor: Nirmal Kishnani

We tell ourselves we seek a different paradigm. Then we go about looking for it with the very tools and mindsets that created the problem in the first place. This thesis brief does not promise answers; it asks questions. We will be led by two. First, how do we reconnect the built with the natural? Second (emerging from the first), how to design systems? Here, the very meaning of good is called into question. Is good design a beautiful thing or a profound abstraction? Maybe neither. Maybe it is an act of engagement; many systems—human-made and natural—create positive reciprocity within a wider system-of-systems. Is this architecture with a capital ‘A’? Let’s find out.

TEN MODEST SUGGESTIONS FOR A NEW ATHENS CHARTER (IN SINGAPORE)

NEW TYPES

Tutor: Thomas Kong

The sustainability of incumbent forms of retail, production, education, recuperation, and recreation is in question with future pandemics. Your thesis rethinks ways of doing business and living instead of limiting occupancies and contact numbers. What sectional and floor plan configurations for space can withstand changing social distancing requirements and continue business operations? What new cluster advantages and economies of scale can we imagine with new programme mixes that were not previously planned for? Can a cloud kitchen be integrated with restaurants, cafes or food centers? Can a quarantine allow your vacation to begin without incarceration? Can seating reconfigurations radicalise worship, lecture, and cinema spaces? Students will learn from international consultants from AEDAS, SAA, LTA and URA to develop a cross-disciplinary design thesis.

“Every intervention has to be reversible, incomplete, elastic, because what is definitive is dangerous.” (Andrea Branzi, 2010). In 2010, Italian architect Andrea Branzi envisioned a future city in Ten Modest Suggestions For a New Athens Charter. In the list, the first six points provided a view of the city as an entity of different possibilities as a hightech favela, a personal computer every 20sm, place for cosmic hospitality, an air-conditioned full space, genetic laboratory and a living plankton. Point 7 points to the research models of weak urbanisation. While the last three points explore the realisations of faded and crossable borders, reversible and light infrastructures, and great transformations through micro-projects. Branzi advanced a vision that is beyond a collection of architectural objects, and proposed continuous territories of porous boundaries that are incomplete, spontaneous, relational, and enmeshed in networks, flows and exchanges of different systems, ranging from social, ecological, economic, and information. He approached urban projects as a critique and reflection of the conditions and crises of contemporary cities. Similarly, the thesis studio is an invitation for critical discourse and spatial speculation beyond the narrow relation between means and ends. Proposals that take on one or a combination of the ten modest suggestions by Branzi are welcome. Theoretical ideas, deep research, fearless material, and spatial experimentation will drive the thesis project, leading to novel propositions at the architectural and urban scale.

HOT AIR: ATMOSPHERE AND THE EQUATORIAL CITY Tutor: Erik G. L’Heureux

The equatorial city’s relationship to climate and its territory has become an increasing imperative in the face of global warming and rapid population growth. Against this background, this thesis offering will research the atmosphere of “hot and wet” architecture in dense cities on the equator. The research will focus on modes of atmospheric calibration and representation overlooked by traditional techniques in drawing and photography. Humidity, temperature, breeze, sound, heat and rain—the mediums that produce a hot and wet environment—will be considered to expand students’ visual and design capabilities. Films, photography, sound, and simulation techniques will be mined to develop novel modes of seeing and experiencing atmosphere; these ideas can then be incorporated into architectural design. This thesis offering will expand on its parallel module in M Arch I while furthering site and representational research outside of Singapore, to the rest of Southeast Asia. Each student will develop a robust and considered design thesis emerging out of discourses on equatorial architecture, so as to extend and produce new knowledge for architecture calibrated to the hot and wet climate of the region.

Tutor: Joseph Lim

HUMANS, NON-HUMANS, AND NON-HUMAN AGENCIES Tutor: Victoria Jane Marshall The focus of this thesis offering is on the intersection of creative-practice research and periurban, built landscapes that are shaped from dense, intergenerational interactions between humans, non-humans and their diverse agencies in Monsoon Asia. Such areas are often problematised as not much more than ‘becoming urban’, yet they are better thought of as a certain ‘kind of urban’. The term “non-human agencies” is used in a broad way, encompassing institutions with their official documents and reports, infrastructural and architectural legacies, as well as the forceful agencies of heat, humidity, wind, water, vegetative decay and growth, and the life of animals. Drawing from a situated, urban political ecology approach, each thesis will start with everyday practices, be attuned to discerning diffuse forms of power, and open the way for a politics of change based on spatial practices of incrementalism.

NATURE UNFOLD

Tutor: Shinya Okuda Contemporary social issues are often complex and intertwined to include financial and environmental issues, which require holistic design approaches across materials, built forms, programmes, and performance. Advanced architectonics designs are to sublime them into innovative multi-dimensional architectural solutions by leveraging essential game-changing phenomena, such as carbon sequestration, and construct them into sophisticated functional advanced architectural compositions and unique sustainable aesthetics. Embracing the power of architecture, the Nature Unfold thesis studio envisions to reveal various symbiotic future relationships including nature and urbanism in Southeast Asia and beyond.

COASTAL CONSUMPTIONS – LIVES & LIVELIHOODS

ASSEMBLAGE

Tutor: Neo Sei Hwa

Tutor: Tsuto Sakamoto

Water covers more than 70% of earth’s surface, most of which is ocean. Surrounded by water, humans inevitably develop intense relationships with the ocean. The ocean supplies moisture to the environment and produces oxygen, regulates the climate, influences the weather, acts as a major carbon sink, supports huge biodiversity, carries more than 80% of all global trade, and is a vital source of protein to feed the world. Closer to shore, humans build extensive coastal habitats and commune with the ocean in countless ways. Yet, it is suffering from pollution, climate change, over-exploitation, and acidification of the ocean—much of which is contributed by human activities. Once considered too vast to fail, our oceans now seem in dire need of rescue. Driven by climatic factors, the ocean is also increasingly hostile with rising sea levels and growing coastal abrasions. Less organised coastal cities that are unable to engineer costly barriers and diversions are experiencing devastating consequences of being strangled by pollution and smothered by the ocean at the same time. With more than a billion people living along low-lying coastal regions, mostly in Asia, the need to address immediate local plights are just as important as any distant global climate fights. Large proportion of these populations have traditionally relied on the ocean for sustenance; but must now either endure the degradation of living environments, or abandon their homes and businesses altogether; some losing lives, many losing livelihoods. The studio will examine how we search for a new balance, displace or coexist with nature, prioritise economy or environment and/or how relevant are climate agendas in discussions of lives and livelihoods. The practical ambition is to explore a coastal area in neighbouring West Java, Indonesia. Humans used to coexist with the ocean , but are now fighting for survival after losing most of their homes and much of their livelihoods in a futile struggle against environmental pollution and coastal abrasion.

This thesis studio focuses on an assemblage of things and living beings including animals, plants, and humans. Experiencing disasters, pollution and pandemics, and being immersed in the environment where intelligent technology and pervasive networks enforce a certain lifestyle, behaviour and response; we have come to realise that a variety of non-human entities have as many expressions as humans. Scrutinising these, the studio speculates that alternative environment and architecture consequentially emerges from various assemblages of non-humans and humans that are co-functioning and symbiotic. Although they might be seen as troubles and disturbances from a human perspective, they suggest ways humans can negotiate and coexist with others.

DIRT, FORM, PERFORMANCE Tutor: Ong Ker-Shing

From early modernity, architecture, through its envelope, plumbing, air-conditioning, weather-tightness and relationship to the ground, has increasingly separated people from the dirty— from natural processes, organic waste, and germs. Human interferences in natural systems have created fractured links, fragmented systems and energies—a multi-scalar context for new alignments and interactions. In this studio, we will explore reversals of the values of modern architecture’s resilient cleanliness, aiming for strategic and designed “failures”. We will explore how new typologies, languages, and material systems may restore or invent new modes of architectural production that combine the architect’s intentions with the input of non-human collaborators; these shift from biome to micro-biome, between building, body and public.

REIMAGINING THE VERTICAL CITY

Tutor: Swinal Samant

The vertical redistribution of multi-speed transportation presents novel opportunities for reimagining the highdensity city and transit-oriented developments. In this context, layered public and green space networks could become continuous structures that organise and redefine hybrid, urban settings through transformative conditions of intersections between nature-mobility-infrastructurebuildings for a renewed engagement with the high-density urban form. A new taxonomy of layered public spaces and multifarious architectural interventions will aid a more seamless transition from the horizontal to the vertical city. It is speculated that this may lead to a paradigm shift for cities and urban habitation, one where urban life is increasingly stratified and energised, and the ground plane is no longer the most familiar datum and is returned to nature and biodiversity. Collaborations with industry experts in various disciplines will be explored in this studio: Structures, Construction and Building Services (Peter Ayers – Managing Director, Aurecon Asia), Vertical Transportation and MultiModal Transit Integration (Fanny Lalau – Major Projects Director, KONE, Asia Pacific), Smart Building Design and Services (Stuart Mackay – Technical Director, Ramboll) and Environmental Performance, Natural Ventilation, Super Low Energy Building Design (Sripragas Nadaraja – Associate, Web Earth). Students will also be encouraged to submit their designs for the Evolo Competition.

POSSIBLE WORLDS: AN ARCHITECTURE OF SIMULTANEOUS TEMPORALITIES Tutor: Peter Sim

The 1960’s collective, Archigram, mixed technologicallyinspired ideas, a new liberalism, and humour, to produce some of the most influential works of architecture. They propositioned architecture not just as space, material, and form; but as a projective medium to imagining possible ways of living, and of critiquing convention and traditional conceptions of the city, and the boundaries of architecture. Their imaginings ranged from flippant and whimsical personal wearables to vast megacities. They did much absurd, yet profoundly provocative and influential work. That was 50 years ago. Architecture has grown up and moved on. But where has it gone and has anything important been left behind? If the cultural revolution, the space race, and British provincial humour combined together to create Archigram’s pulsating visions, what is the age that we live in? Reimagining a post-pandemic world is understandably a pressing matter. However, the present milieu is rich in contradictions, complexity, and pressing problems: the age of the internet, the drone, the robot, facial recognition, social media, cyber hacking, urban farming, global warming, space X, the mars rover, Trump, Brexit, Airbnb, uber, veganism, hipsters, tiny homes, co-living/ working, electric cars, self-driving cars, floating farms, shrinking ice caps, wind generated power, plastic in fish, liposuction, reality tv, kpop, etc etc etc… We ask: What can architecture become? This studio is interested in architectural propositions which are not only about the future, but can intimate simultaneously an architecture which encapsulates the dreams, desires and narratives of past-present-future.

ABOVE & BELOW – ALTERNATIVE URBAN NARRATIVES Tutor: Ruzica Bozovic Stamenovic As Singapore’s “City in Nature” paradigm reaches its limits, the possibility for formation and coexistence of alternative urban narratives emerges. The Park Connector network is one, but could we envision others? In this Thesis Studio, we are examining alternatives to the current urban “ground zero”, by developing new urban layers along vertical axes in both directions, above and/or below. The hypothesis as stepping stones to strategy development, should refer to the current urban context. From there, however, the new autochthonous urban narratives should develop according to the original and inherent set of rules. This hypothetical framework needs to be constructed upon data from real geo-political, economic, social and cultural world trends that might radically affect Singapore in the future. Main objective is to demonstrate how design could interpret the values of an unorthodox critical urban narrative to support survival, well-being and how cities and its people will thrive in the future.

DATA / PROCESS / EXPLORATION Tutor: Rudi Stouffs Computational design processes are largely data-driven, and the elaboration of the process can be considered more important than any single outcome, instead, aiming at the exploration of alternative outcomes. Such exploration serves as a means to achieve better-informed designs. Whether adopting computational methods or exploring alternatives by hand, the objective is to systematically explore a design aspect, issue or component, so as to gain a better understanding of the choices and implications thereof. The act of considering performance as a guiding design principle defines the architectural object, not by what it is or how it appears; but instead by what it does or how it performs—by its capability to affect, transform, and serve a given function. Identifying both the parameters and boundaries of the exploration, defines the design space under consideration, guiding the exploration toward the desired performance.

AGILITY AND ADAPTABILITY - THE NEW NORMAL OF LIVING WITH ENDEMIC COVID-19 Tutor: Tan Beng Kiang

The unprecedented COVID-19 pandemic has upended our daily lives and posed social, economic, and environmental challenges. It has affected how we live, work, learn, and play; and disproportionately so for the vulnerable communities. As we move to the next stage of living with COVID-19 endemic and anticipate the inevitable next pandemic, there is a need to rethink architecture and urban design solutions for the new normal. Any thesis proposals that falls into this theme are welcome.

TERRAIN VAGUE: NEW TRANSFORMATION POSSIBILITIES Tutor: Teh Joo Heng

A shift in usage patterns is being anticipated in the city, supported by hybrid land use, car-lite policies, and with COVID-19 accelerating the state of flux. This transformation allows for the reclamation of land from roads, carparks, and other public infrastructures. A new possibility is emerging within the city that comes with the recalibration of usage for existing buildings and leftover land. The studio is to speculate what the existing city will be like when this transformation takes its full effect. Students will select areas of interest within the city/city fringe to postulate the possibilities.

IMAGE CREDITS TO: LOO QUAN LE

ISLAND PEOPLE

MAKING CONNECTIONS

Tutor: Tiah Nan Chyuan

Tutor: Wong Chong Thai, Bobby

Across different cultures and time, the island condition has been described historically and mythically as the experience of an outpost that is defended, surrounded, contained, isolated, quarantined or hidden. The inherent vulnerability and siege mentality of islands imbue their inhabitants with both a deep awareness of their identity, their self and their relationship with the surrounding externalities. This thesis will explore the “island condition” through both physical and abstract notions, looking at operative conditions from isolation to protectionism, access and rights, and equality and equity. Non-linear enquiries would be conducted across multiple probes, to unravel deep mindsets that define the unique behaviour of “islands” and their people. The hope is that these insights will suggest alternative strategies to engage geopolitical issues related to collective identity, shared responsibility and ownership over contested territories, and space and time.

The thesis offering examines architecture as a matrix of pathways, networks and connections, both existing and emerging. Architecture is often about making connections; it is in making connections that significations occur. These are moments where thoughts or actions are virtualised or actualised. Like a throw of the dice; diverging and converging forces collide, producing singularities. At that point, the old is refreshed, or morphed into new emergence. For Nietzsche, this emergence represented the way to truth. We will examine architecture through this lens, putting aside notions of pre-existing cultural values or preconceived perfect absolutes, and look instead at the production of sense prior to language, codes or identities.

ASIAN MODERN HERITAGE IN THE CONTEXT OF CHANGE: CONSERVATION FOR SUSTAINABILITYES Tutor: Johannes Widodo

Modern Asia has not developed in a vacuum but has evolved through sustained interactions with the West, which has had a constant presence in our collective consciousness. Asia is a dynamic source of our identities. Industrialisation, urbanisation, westernisation, colonisation, decolonisation, and nation-building-these phenomena have variously defined Asian modernism. Asian modern heritage is manifested in the myriad forms of architecture. Conservation is a process of managing change and permanence that is directly related to ecological sustainability and cultural authenticity. In 2012, the UN released 17 Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) as a blueprint to achieve a better and more sustainable future for the world by 2030. The conservation design thesis deals with the adaptive reuse of modern heritage in the Asian context with a new well-integrated function, while maintaining cultural authenticity, architectural integrity, economic viability, social inclusivity, and historical continuity.

ALTERNATE HISTORIES, PERIPHERAL ASSOCIATIONS Tutor: Wu Yen Yen Architecture is rarely predicated on discourses and ideologies. Instead, it reacts to other metaphysical, natural and societal constructs. This studio offers a space for architecture-esque counteranthropocentric germination. Materialist ontologist Manuel De Landa suggests that geology, biology, economies, linguistics and culture, steered the growth of cities. Mario Carpo suggests that form generation is afforded by mathematics and science. With computation, a new kind of intelligence that is incongruous even to our logical minds is upon us. Beginning from outside of architecture, we will find our way back in, piecing together self-motivated theses, for physical expressions in environments where they thrive unseen.

IMAGE CREDITS TO: ANNABELLE LIM

CLIMATE SENSITIVE DESIGN; LIVABLE AND SUSTAINABLE CITIES

Tutor: Zhang Ye

With the rapid urbanisation and climate change, the key challenge in front of architects is clear: it is difficult to achieve a balancing act between unstoppable human desire for development and the finite environmental carrying capacity of cities. This design studio engages students to explore ways to conduct climate-sensitive design to create buildings that are more human centralised and environmentally responsible. The studio emphasises the impact of environmental analysis on design. The knowledge delivered in this studio allows students not only to develop climate sensitive design concepts and ideas, but also to practice the corresponding design strategies and skills.

A sharing culture offers a sustainable and equitable way of living together in an increasingly fragile urban world. In sharing culture, individuals participate in sustained practices of togetherness characterised by the co-creation, co-management, co-ownership, and co-consumption of resources. Crucial to this sharing process, is the recognition of architectural spaces as both a shareable asset, and an enabler for more effective sharing activities. This thesis offering will explore the important question of how we can design an entire space sharing system to embody the culture of sharing itself, and how we can harness architectural design to facilitate the continuous production of new socio-spatial relations and new modes of gathering and interaction in sharing activities.

Tutor: Yuan Chao

ARCHITECTURE OF THE SHARING CULTURE

PLEASURE FIELDS by Ahmad Nazaruddin bin Abdul Rahim The Pleasure Fields is a park that aims to negotiate a space and time in which the queer body could exist, through illuminating the spatial language of cruising in Singapore. Building upon prior research into queer spaces within Singapore, the thesis assumes that the queer body is not constant, but contingent to its spatial and temporal context, while denoting cruising as a queer spatial practice of seeking sexual and physical connection. Thus, the project proposes a counterpoint to how the body is programmed by the state to produce a heteronormative family unit towards reproducing future citizens. Within the urban scale, the project aims to see how architectural interventions could ally with natural site conditions, namely the topography and trees, towards creating ambiguous spatial conditions for tactical spatial negotiation. The Casuarina Equisetifolia are studied to see how they could accommodate an urban scheme that unfolds in layers across the site, with paths that undulate along the topography as the user progresses. The individual architectural interventions then aim to illuminate the secret spatial language of cruising onto the layman through spatial devices of layering and appropriating vernacular forms into configurations that are previously known only to the cruiser. The Towers act as an increasingly sexualized signal system that pull the uninitiated cruiser deeper towards the Chalets, which deconstruct HDB housing and park infrastructure to blur the public-private threshold fundamental within cruising. Here, the bedsheet is a device of negotiation as it follows the user through twin processes of decloseting, and closeting, back into daily, Singaporean life.

Studio TSUTO SAKAMOTO

The architectural propositions of the Laundry, Chalet and Tower woven together by the Bedsheet as a bodily device.

Film stills from “Pleasure Fields”, which unfolds the architectural devices through the narrative of two men seeking company, under the cover of the Casuarina Trees within Fort Road Beach.

An ontological database of forms

TRANSLATING THE SUBCONCIOUS by Amelia Lim Jia Yi This project is an experimental process of condensing and forming architecture with a different lens -- to translate the immaterial subconscious information (e.g. memories & emotions) into generating new space and forms. Through the means of a haptic exploration, the project runs along the narrative of my memories, of my childhood self, inhabiting the old house. Using a plastic material (clay), to express 4 states of my inner child in order to study relational patterns to produce a pavilion. Understanding that we experience space in a far more complex manner (than the objective / functional aspects that we usually design for), through phenomenology & the subconscious, this project looks into the very nature of space and form and how it suggests, retains, communicates information beyond the obvious. And through the process, generate forms that are phenomenologically expressive.

Studio KHOO PENG BENG

Comparative overlay of reality vs. gestural model

Translating atmospheric memory into form

Part 1: Subconscious – Space The project starts off by taking premise in my childhood self, inhabiting the old house, and dives into the multiple layers of perception of the minds’ eye. It asks: How can I convey to someone fully, all of what I felt in the space? An exercised is formed in translating the essential information of the subconscious mind, into 3D forms, categorized/represented as abstract, gestural, literal, atmospheric models. Part 2: Space – Emotions It then became clear that there was an overarching theme that guided all the associations— emotions. The realities of the space passes thru my mind’s eye, which are filtered n distorted by my internal emotions, — in that first case, it was about feeling vulnerable. So, if we were to then switch our lenses to look at these 3D model outputs in the terms of how it contains information about the emotion, How can we use these models as an informational input to then extract and conceptualise space for emotions? The project then expands to 4 spaces each representing an emotion / face of the inner child— vulnerable, angry, creative, and playful. And goes through a series of translations, spanning across the immaterial, 3D, 2D, through the process of making, drawing and collage. Resulting in an ontological database of forms, where relational patterns, vocabulary, and grammar of forms, across either emotions or model type are extracted, synthesised, and transformed, to generate a new level of space and forms. > Head over to https://a-m-0.world to experience the full repository of models!

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SHARING A BACKYARD by Anna Claudia Yenardi The Not In My BackYard attitude (NIMBYism) is not a new thing in Singapore. Time and time again, Singaporeans have shown a lot of resistance towards the building of stigmatised facilities such as nursing homes, foreign worker dormitories, columbarium, etc near residential areas. It has been studied lack of communication between residents and developer contributes to NIMBY attitudes. Participatory planning workshops can help in improving this communication barrier by communicating the objective and impact of the development to the residents and the worries and concerns of the residents to the developers. However, traditional participatory planning workshops have limitations in terms of scalability and support for spatial exploration. Face-to-face workshops have physical limitations regarding the number of workshops that can be held and the of participants who can join. On top of that, the typical apparatus used for such workshops mainly support 2D planning. Meanwhile, in high-density cities like Singapore, the most innovative solutions often require 3D solutions that are spatially complex. This thesis proposes to overcome these drawbacks by leveraging online digital tools that allow participants to explore alternative design options. Sharing a Backyard allows participants to create their own design of a neighbourhood using a set of modules, indicating their preferences. The game acts as a middle-man that facilitates communication between the two parties. The voxel based game makes sure that it’s simple enough for most people. The developer set the rules, modules, and design challenge that they wish to get residents’ insights for. Residents then play the game and build the neighbourhood, the information and logic encoded in the game is hoped to increase the residents’ understanding regarding the issue.

Studio PATRICK JANSSEN

Some design iterations done by pilot test participants

Try the version of Sharing a Backyard in “Free-build” mode! ( Only for desktop browser )

Sample of 12 out of 24 in game modules

NEGOTIATING THE THREE FACES OF EVEREST: AN ARCHITECTURAL WUNDERKAMMER by Annabelle Lim The Wunderkammer, a collection of things pertaining to a remote subject, works to stir up the atmospheric, the iconic, the mythical and the mundane. Its epistemology is by nature multiple and contradictory, specific and enlarging, and thus, tests the limits and efficacy of architectural representation. In this thesis, Mount Everest is adopted as the Wunderkammer’s extreme subject, and reconstructed by following the tracks of three protagonists— the Climber, the Sherpa, and the Refugee fleeing Tibet in fear of Chinese persecution. Central to each journey is a key item. The Climber carries his/ her Backpack, a vessel containing survival items for the gruelling ascent. Circumambulating the periphery of the mountain, the Sherpa uses his Mandala as a spiritual map and sign of devotion to his religion and humankind. Camouflaged by a blanket of snow, the Refugee brings along a Khata scarf as assurance for her safe journey in a perilous crossing. The thesis regards the Wunderkammer as architecture in its most compressed, and powerful, form. It exhibits a series of documents, drawing genres and diorama models, curated to form an analogous imaginative-critical landscape. In place of the single monumental space, Negotiating the Three Faces of Everest forwards a simultaneously shared and contested mountainscape holding multiple meanings, particular to each protagonist. In piecing together fragments of the Wunderkammer, the idea of Everest is manifested through the interstices of things and their stories.

Studio LILIAN CHEE

Construction of the Diorama through the Complexities of Everest’s Landscape, Atmosphere and Narratives in 10 Key Objects ‘The Climber, The Sherpa, The Refugee’

An ontological database of forms

HOW TO LIVE WITH ANOTHER by Anthea Phua How to live with another is an experiment of architectural coauthorship and a proposition which addresses a current domestic dilemma and an architectural lack. The thesis began at home from my research of unschooled drawings, explored with the help of my Grandmother and her live-in Indonesian helper Asri, which revealed other forms of knowing, representing and creating space. As they live with another, they become co-authors of the flat. Yet, even with their mutually respectful relationship, there are social boundaries set in place. Here, the potential of architecture – its epistemological and professional capacity to address the production of space that can speak to social and class-based proximities - is tested. Represented from the occupants’ perspectives through portrait photography and ethnographic videography, three devices are conceptualised at the scales of body, furniture and the space of the standardised flat. Line drawings show household materials – cotton string, bamboo laundry poles, used teabags, origami magazine paper – and methods – knotting, braiding, weaving, sewing – crossing over from domestic chores into the architecture studio. How to live with another is politically gendered in its concerns for architecture’s intersection with, and manifestation of, equity and voice.

Studio LILIAN CHEE

Smoke Screen; Tea Party for Two; This is not a walker

WIN-WIN SOUTH CHINA SEA by Emily Lai The South China Sea has long been a focal point for complex territorial and maritime disputes and has seen a rise in regional tensions in recent years. As the act of occupation itself is a strategy in asserting one’s sovereignty, the overlapping claims in the region has led to the construction of outposts of varying sizes according to the power of each claimant. Situating itself in one of the outposts that is in the form of a World War II-era ship that the Philippine government deliberately ran aground in 1999 on the Second Thomas Shoal, the thesis poses a question: What is the minimum in making a presence felt? Currently occupied by nine Philippine marines, the dilapidated ship functions as a symbol of the Philippines claims to the atoll. Working within its limitation, the first part of the thesis focuses on building up token defences to assert Philippines’ presence and sovereign rights to the resources as a claimant state. The second part of the thesis looks beyond just a particular moment and explores the possibility of achieving peace and tranquility in the region through the idea of the win-win and winlose strategies. Rather than the win-lose approach which holds little purpose, the thesis holds out the prospect of achieving winwin situation by considering the replay of the Chinese tributary system where both China and the Philippines can benefit from it. Building on the belief that the relationship between the two will continue to improve, the thesis explores the possibility of an emergence of a settlement and eventually a place that welcomes people from all nations. One where differences can be accommodated. However, since the thesis does not fully reject the possibility of a win-lose situation, the project is also about exploring the thin line between these two scenarios.

Studio BOBBY WONG

120 DAYS by Emma Lau Si Ying Christmas Island’s prominence as colonial and mineral extraction territories, and recently, as Australia’s appointed detention island, has severely side-lined its natal identities. However, the island is known above all for the annual Christmas Island red crab migration. By weaving the iconic spectacle of the red crab around native practices and myths, the thesis creates a temporal architecture of festival that celebrates the island’s cultural, civic and historical identities. It engages a coast straddling two sites – the sea goddess’ temple and the earth god’s cemetery, reflecting contradictory but complementing perspectives about the island’s ecological future. The architecture comprises two coastal systems: a floating mobile worship procession, and a sea wall columbarium with soilstabilising pandanus tree groves. Space is re-examined through the body of the crab, architecture designed around its rhythms, movements and physiology; crabs play practical, symbolic and mythical roles in the festivals of veneration. Through the spaces, rituals and spectacle of these mythonatural festivals, the abstract matter of climate change is tangibly manifested, with Christmas Island reimagined at the frontiers of culture-climate activism. The evocative architecture examines the mediated relationships between human, animal, environment and place, raising questions on the politics of sustainable human inhabitation. In addition to increasing tourism and national ecological responsibility, the architectural proposition creates new political conversation around the island that may re-position its significance in Australia’s political portfolio.

Studio LILIAN CHEE

UNEARTHING HILLVIEW by Felyncia Ng The thesis research takes a survey of what had past, asking questions for the histories that remain, and the histories that are erased. It recognises the importance of both development and conservation, and the relationship between them. The thesis looks at land as a record of its own history. It seeks to unearth the ground beneath us of it architectural past, of hidden, decades old factories amongst new gleaming condominiums and of demolished buildings that are long gone. It attempts to make obvious, the fact that land bears witness to time and its own development, accumulating layers of history as development spreads across it. Land develops at different rates. Noise remains in the pixels and parcels of land, and it is never in a single, pure colour. Observing development over time in Hillview, Singapore, the thesis frames the land as a physical record of history and hopes to look for an answer to display this record, as a testament to the land’s identity. The experience of history, found through reading the story of the land, and the author’s derived understanding of the different urban environments and conditions across time, was then integrated into an upcoming MRT station (Hume Station) that sits within the site. The programme of an MRT station, while perhaps not the most intuitive derivation of the research, seemed to be appropriate due to its accessibility and importance in public, everyday routine. It adds that in the name Hume, there is the trace of history - of a factory that had its name passed onto the condominiums that replace it.

Studio CHANG JIAT HWEE

Summary of the Land’s past - Overlapping of Buildings in model, be it currently existing, demolished, or built over.

Tracking the traces of Hillview as one descends into the depths of the train station.

THE ORCHID COOPERATIVE by Fong Shi Yuan “The more Garang Farmers will look for new ways of farming ” – an Orchid Farmer. Orchids for the longest time, have been sought after for its aesthetic and medicinal quality in Southeast Asia and all around the world. The once lucrative cut-flower trade that occupied 400ha at its peak in 1900s is left with no more than 40ha today. Another 20 ha of orchid farms will soon be lost to rapid urbanization and land scarcity as government efforts to save the diminishing farms are conflicted by more important national interests. The Orchid Cooperative is a responsive, complementary proposal to the conflicted national interests that revitalizes the ailing Orchid industry while supporting the nation’s needs. The cooperative proposes to re-embed the farms into a series of emerging community horticultural landscapes through the wealth of orchid uses, optimizing and diversifying traditional Orchid cultivation into a shared value chain. The Orchids’ bio-properties can be harnessed to drive medicinal, micro-nutritional and recuperative properties not just in humans but the environment. Discarding the traditional model of farming, the Cooperative is anchored by three key thrusts according to the nation’s needs- to synergize multi-stakeholder national interests, support the needs of an ageing population, and advancing land efficient, high value economic uses. The Orchid Cooperative probes us to think from a new perspective of how farming in a land scarce country could be sought after within a shared value chain; not just for economic benefits but also to enliven the community and public spaces around us.

Studio ZHANGE YE

The Cooperative Network

Cooperative I - Community Scaffolding

CITY PLAYBOOK by Gabrielle Wong Every city is composed of multiple narratives from a myriad of perspectives. These narratives are often in conflict and contrast with one another. The popularity and sequence of these narratives in both space and the media govern the city’s dominant image. Not every narrative gets to be told. Born out of a conviction in the fluid relationship between stories and architecture, my thesis project offers a framework connecting stories and space, by which the story of a city may be studied, modulated and retold. The project synthesizes findings from a sincere and naive exploration of narrative theory, spatial and narrative analysis of cities in film and in reality, as well as on-site testing, interviews and long hours of exploration to arrive at its present output of the City Playbook. The thesis is understood as a work-in-progress as a contribution to the field of collective architectural knowledge and spatial toolkit. The current output composes of the Playbook structure, two sample campaigns, as well as image and video documentation of several design measures that were physically implemented and tested. The resulting Playbook structure is offered through two contrasting sample campaigns: Geylang and Yishun neighborhood.

Studio TIAH NAN CHYUAN

2 Investigative Sitemaps (Map pins, newsprint, string, 118.9cm x 168.2cm each), and 24 Models of Encounters (Grey board, Bristol board, orange paint, 30-60cm length each)

SEMOGA BAHAGIA by Goi Yong Chern In recuperating histories of place, notions of value are accumulated through leisurely pursuits, personal reflection, and agency, recalibrating our attitude towards - and within - the city. 1. This thesis emerged from a study of Nuisance. Its antagonism to spatial norms of the city and its architecture made it an interesting, inspiring phenomena. However, Architecture may transcend nuisance by not just rejecting the status quo, but by substituting it with a self-affirming set of values. 2. Revaluing value functioned as a point of departure from nuisance. Leisure, critical of the capital-centric city, possessed value - on a local level of architecture, and collectively towards a communal sense of nationhood. 3. Infrastructure, so central to the productive city, is exposed. Infrastructures of leisure subvert the integrity of their ubiquitous counterparts. Their active forms might accumulate their own patina of meaning - they, too, can generate counter-values of leisure. 4. A Malayan spatial disposition towards productive leisure, drawn from the particularities of the land, is exemplified through the work of local landscape artists in the years following independence. They make visible the leisurely potentials in which the architecture sits, invisible to other modes of representation.

Studio LILIAN CHEE

Factory (Optimisation Process: Modular BESO)

Gallery (Optimisation Process: 3D Graphic Statics)

High Speed Rail (Optimisation Process: Stress Line Analysis)

Parasitic House (Optimisation Process: Macro to Micro BESO)

DECONSTRUCTION RECONSTRUCTION

by Lee Lip Jiang Deconstruction / Reconstruction is a thesis that attempts to relook at architecture through the lens of structural optimization and digital fabrication. Reacting to the zeitgeist of the Fourth Industrial Revolution, where the digital becomes material, and Carpo’s “Second Digital Turn”, where design is used to inject intelligence – the thesis deconstructs architectural elements, applying breakthrough structural optimization methods to the process of their design. Through a study of Topology Optimisation, Evolutionary Structural Optimisation (ESO), Graphic Statics, and Stress Line Analysis with reference to recent work by Block, Akbarzadeh, Xie, among others – the thesis studies how current design processes could be augmented with these structural toolkits and fabricated using digital fabrication methods such as 3D printing with the aim of reducing the materials utilized in construction. Ultimately, the thesis generates a new kit of parts from which architecture can be constructed and attempts to envision possible uses of these processes in four applications: A self-replicating ramp-up factory designed with topology optimization, a large span gallery designed using 3D graphic statics, a high speed rail terminus designed with stress line analysis, and a parasitic house which adapts to surrounding strucutral systems, designed using self-referencing evolutionary structural optimization. The Thesis posits a future where structural intelligence is an accessible toolkit for any designer’s process, and implemented into computational workflows. This allows the Architect to minimise material usage, achieving sustainability goals whilst permutating new articulations of structural elegance.

Studio RUDI STOUFFS

A NEW KIT OF PARTS Worms Eye View. Grid Size 1000 mm generated from a 5000 x 5000 module

TOPOLOGY OPTIMISED FLOOR SLAB

DOMAIN SPACE: 5000 x 5000 x 500 mm SOLVER: TOPOS (TOPOLOGY OPTIMISATION) VOXEL SIZE: 50MM LOADING: 10 KN MATERIAL VOLUME: 3,28m3 AFFECT: STRANGENESS, AMORPHOUSNESS, HEAVINESS, ENCLOSURE

ISOSTATIC STRESS LINE OPTIMISED SLAB

DOMAIN SPACE: 5000 x 5000 x 1000 mm SOLVER: MILLIPEDE LOADING: 10 KN MATERIAL VOLUME: 4.3 m3 AFFECT: COFFERING, ENCLOSURE, CELLULARISATION, LATTICING, DIFFUSION

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ISOSTATIC STRESS LINE OPTIMISED CANTILEVER

DOMAIN SPACE: 5000 x 5000 x 500mm SOLVER: MILLIPEDE LOADING: 10 KN MATERIAL VOLUME: 4.23 m3 AFFECT: COFFERING, ENCLOSURE, CELLULARISATION, LATTICING, DIFFUSION, LIGHTNESS

LOADING CONDITION

STRESSLINES

CLEANED

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TOPOLOGY OPTIMISED WALL (WITH FENESTRATION)

DOMAIN SPACE: SOLVER: TOPOS (TOPOLOGY OPTIMISATION) LOADING: 10 KN MATERIAL VOLUME: 2.017 AFFECT: DECOMPOSITION, STRANGENESS, OPENNESS , AMORPHOUSNESS

SPACE FILLING CURVE

DOMAIN SPACE: (INFILL AREA OF WALL WITH AMENITIES EMBEDDED) SOLVER: MILLIPEDE LOADING: 10 KN MATERIAL VOLUME: 2.48 m3 AFFECT: DIFFUSION, ENCLOSURE, LAYERING, STRANGENESS, ASSYMETRY

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FUNCTIONALLY GRADED COLUMN

DOMAIN SPACE: SOLVER: TOPOS (TOPOLOGY OPTIMISATION) VOXEL SIZE: 100MM LOADING: 10 KN MATERIAL VOLUME: 9.78m3 AFFECT: LATTICING, SOLIDITY, CELLULARITY, REPETITION,

TOPOLOGY OPTIMISED COLUMN

DOMAIN SPACE: 5000 x 5000 x 5000 SOLVER: TOPOS (TOPOLOGY OPTIMISATION) VOXEL SIZE: 50MM LOADING: 10 KN MATERIAL VOLUME:4.78m3 AFFECT: DIFFUSION, BRANCHING. RADIALITY, AXIALITY

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3D GRAPHIC STATICS - COLUMN

DOMAIN SPACE: 5000 x 5000 x 5000 mm (note: 3dgs extends beyond domain space but is scaled back down) SOLVER: 3dgs VOXEL SIZE: n/a LOADING: 10 KN MATERIAL VOLUME: 6.64m3 AFFECT: LATTICING, CELLULARITY, RADIALITY,ENCLOSURE, NODAL, BRANCHING

BOUNDARY CONDITION SETUP

SUBDIVISION OF FORCE POLYHEDRA

3D GRAPHIC STATICS - RADIAL COLUMN

DOMAIN SPACE: 5000 x 5000 x 5000 mm SOLVER: 3DGS VOXEL SIZE:N/A LOADING: 10 KN MATERIAL VOLUME: 22.8m (per 5m x 5 m x 5m) AFFECT: LATTICING, OPENNESS, CELLULAR, RADIALITY

COMPUTATION OF DESIGN

Optimisation Processes and Kit of Parts

Four Processes and their resultant Architectures ( Bi-Directional Structural Optimisation, 3D Graphic Statics, Stress Line Analysis, Macro to MIcro BESO)

THE WATER PARLIAMENT by Lim Hock Siang Tyler Cautionary tale of a new Water Parliament in Bangkok city that embraces sea level rise and valued it as an opportunity, using 3 integrated water infrastructure as an urban redevelopment toolkit that brings back Traditional Thai Water Culture. Bangkok has long been known as the “Venice of the East” for its extensive network of canals. Building on soft clay and overextraction of groundwater, according to some estimates, parts of Bangkok are sinking by two centimetres annually, and if nothing has been done, the whole city will be submerged by water completely in 2100. Water which used to be a sacred element that brings lives and civilization is now threatening the survival of Thai people as well as the unifying spirit of the country . The thesis is built around a fictional realm of the inhabitable landscape of Bangkok city in the year 2100 where a new Water Parliament is situated at the ancient Rattanakosin Island that pertained to the commons of water and subjected to the groups of people living in the island that represents the culture and people of the Thai city. It celebrates a different aspect of water and engages the traditional Thai water culture with more advanced technology and infrastructures. “The Water Parliament” also explores the potential of using water to allow the Thai people to adapt their life to this ground changes as the sea water rises. Using a new water culture to demonstrate that the environmental crisis of sea-level rise is potentially a new opportunity for them to reshape the city and the power of this organic growth is given back to the resident vthrough their participation in the redevelopment of the city.

Studio KHOO PENG BENG

What if water can be turn into a celebration element that continues serving the Thai people ?

Masterplan 2020 - Masterplan 2100

TRANSIENT DORMITORIES by Loo Quan Le The appalling living conditions of migrant workers in Singapore came under the spotlight during the COVID-19 pandemic. The government’s response was to build new purpose-built dormitories – 11 dormitories that could house up to 100 000 workers - in order to reduce the density in existing dormitories. While the de-densification and efforts to improve the living standards of workers are necessary, the thesis posits that building more dormitories is not enough to build the country’s resilience against future global crises. Beyond improving dormitory standards, the country should also take this opportunity to rethink its unhealthy reliance on migrant labour. In this thesis, a floating dormitory typology that is integrated with fish production facilities is proposed. As the country expands its coastal fish farms in the surrounding waters as part of a longer-term goal to increase its local food production capacity, the dormitories are built on top of these coastal fish farms such that they neither consume additional space on land nor in the sea. The new typology allows for future conversions into 100% fish farms when the country eventually reduces its reliance on migrant labour and when there is a lesser demand for migrant worker accommodations in the future.

Studio CHEAH KOK MING

An antifragile way of building new dormitories that respond to the growing food demand and dwindling worker numbers.

Dormitories connected by garden bridges and recreational spaces in jetties.

POST SPACES by Matthew Lee Jin Young Although virtual environments have been around for a long time, they have largely been regarded as entertainment or as accessories to physical activity and interaction. However, the postdigital revolution and ongoing pandemic sees us increasingly using virtual platforms as substitutes for real-life interaction, while advancements in technology and cost have made virtual reality (VR) headsets more accessible to the average consumer. Within these virtual spaces, traditional architectural notions such as scale, space, movement, and interaction take on vastly different forms - yet the design of most VR environments are merely imitative and mimic the designs and trappings of physical space. While skeumorphic design imitating the real world might be enjoyable and comforting for some applications, spatial design in VR warrants a critical re-examination of its foundations. I attempted the creation of a functional VR environment that exemplified my design principles and pushed the boundaries of virtual space design. With the use of VR to anchor our online experiences in virtual space, VR.Reddit aims to not only provide a unique virtual browsing experience, but also to create a shared space for media consumption and interaction that goes against the current media landscape of individualised echo chambers. Users are able to view and consume information in the virtual space as well as see and interact with other users within this shared forum. Beyond simple 3D visualisations to aid design and showcase built works, the virtual reality platform provides unprecedented opportunities for architects to create new spatial paradigms that users increasingly inhabit. jy-matt.github.io/post.spaces/thesis-index.html

Studio PATRICK JANSSEN

Derived spatial design principles for Virtual Reality

Axonometric drawing of single post space

Screenshot from final virtual environment

Viewing comments within a post space

SUPER NORMAL ARCHITECTURE by Ong Chan Hao (in collaboration with: Ng Sze Wee, Lee Lip Jiang, Jasmine Quek, Seah Ying Xin, Ahmad Nazaruddin & Amelia Lim) Super Normal Architecture is a thesis suggesting that we have overlooked the everyday absurdities that happen in architecture practice, in an architect’s pursuit of grand narratives. The truth is that architecture is a very messy process full of contradictions arising from the values of different players such as clients, contractors, engineers and more, and they are often strong drivers of design. Instead of pushing any grand narrative, Super Normal Thesis collaborated with 8 players across three residential projects, enabled differences to arise and screw with the project, and also screw with the my (the architect) intention to design anything I want. The result: A collision of unwanted characters, structures, programmes. Some are logical considerations. Some are illogical and made no sense. Some are lazy and makes your blood boil as a designer. But as an architect, you deal with it. A series of slightly monstrous and light-hearted details are designed in response (or in frustration) to contradictory values, friction or compromises made with the players, and perhaps that is a potential coping mechanism: to make a joke out of it. The details also disrupt any kind of seamless quality that architecture tries to have, and it fails at being any kind of cohesive architecture, making visible the torments of an architecture practice. But this is the absurd reality of architecture, and you will have to deal with it in your own way, and if you are practising, I am sure you do. And as my supervisor always says: “Welcome to architecture.”

Studio ERIK L’HEUREUX

Three fantastically normal houses that fail to have any grand narrative. “God is in the details” becomes an excuse for the 21st century architect who lost agency.

FILTER CITY RESIDENCES by Sherry Goh The unprecedented Covid-19 pandemic has brought about significant detrimental ramifications to the social fabric, economic aspect (livelihoods) and the human psychological wellbeing... The pandemic has undermined the meaning of public spaces which were intended for social cohesion. The time of isolation has also urged us to rethink the urban environment, emphasizing the eminent human need for open air spaces, parks, and gardens. This episode has certainly highlighted the inadequacies of the built environment pertaining to the outdoor public spaces and the home. The thesis puts forth 3 key strategies: 1) The Park-House; 2) Redefining the components of a postpandemic dwelling; 3) Dwelling as instrument of income and refuge. This thesis addresses the issue of SHN and home quarantine in apartment units which are not designed for the psychological strain of long term incarceration. Using a twofold strategy of interpreting the many thresholds in high density housing and the idea of secret gardens, the thesis sets about designing from interior spaces to rethink doorstep, shared corridors and forecourts and to extend views beyond the confines of party walls and the physical boundaries of a room. Long term stay within apartments , segregated floors and in an entire block are no longer an issue with extended private and communal outdoor spaces allowing for physical segregation yet visual contact. The entire group form of apartments maintains a porosity to enable minimum airflow requirements through voids of critical dimension and for admitting sufficient daylighting of interior gardens and sub-atria.

Studio JOSEPH LIM

Let us dream a little... of what life could be; where one could roam freely... Where Life goes on, in Filter City.

Filter City Residence is part of the Filter City Masterplan by Max, Bernie, Justin, Azriel & myself.

MICROVILLE by Lim Xin Jie, Shirley The thesis seeks to investigate the current multi species coexistence tendencies at a microbial scale where the human body is depicted as part of a larger microbial ecosystem. Microbes have traditionally been thought of as harmful and are a separate existence from the human body, until in the 19th century, when the presence of microbes is first discovered in our body. Many studies have informed us that only 1% of known microbial species in the environment are harmful. Most contribute to the microbe diversity within the human body, which is found to be the most important determinant of our health. However, Architecture has consistently regarded microbes as harmful and are to be repelled at all costs. Taking the dwelling as a site of investigation and intervention, the proposal argues that microbes are a form of valuable resource to be included in the design of architecture. Beyond providing an architectural solution to better one’s microbial health, the thesis also endeavours to recalibrate modern architecture’s role as a health machine that insulates our bodies against harmful microbes, into a discerning system that selectively breeds bneficial microbes under controlled conditions.

Studio CHAW CHIH WEN

Representing the Foodscape

TO FOOD, WITH LOVE by Sim Wen Wei What does it mean for the architecture when what is deemed as important heritage is not the building, but the activities that are contained within? Despite the emphasis on the intangibility of Singapore’s Hawker Culture, we seem unable to separate it from its perceived physical vessel: Hawker Centres. Culture is not static. Food consumption, preparation and purchasing practices have changed much since hawker centres were first implemented. Neither is our culinary landscape, our foodscape, made from just kitchens and dining tables. Changes in food distribution and production methods would also greatly affect the way we buy and consume. However, the concept of hawker centres, as a typology and as a program, has remained frozen in time, isolated from changes in the foodsacpe. Design ideas put forth in the 1970s are still largely replicated in recent years, albeit with a fresh coat of paint. Our hawker culture cannot and should not be constrained within such an outdated concept with a single fixed program and typology. Rather, it is the ecosystem of a variety of food sites and activities, linked by their roles in the foodscape, that truly expresses the vibrancy of such an urban culture. Acupunctural Insertions at these various sites in the neighbourhood are used to reinforce existing relationships and create new ones between formerly disconnected spaces. A common architectural language serves not to standardise, but to highlight the relationships between each other. This is a physical message representing our intangible culture It is a message, to food, with love.

Studio CHANG JIAT HWEE

Foodscape of Teck Ghee Square

HDB Precinct Relationship Mapping

Market and Food Centre Relationship Mapping

ISOLATE TOGETHER by Soh Ming Lun The COVID-19 pandemic has severely disrupted our lifestyles and reshaped our boundaries and territories, forcing us to retreat into our homes to live, work, play, learn, exercise and shop, all within the limited space. There is a sudden need for homes to serve multiple functions with the closure of most workplaces, gyms, schools, playgrounds and shops. Government regulations such as social distancing and stay home notice measures further restrict mobility and access to parks and recreational facilities, shrinking our worlds into our homes and their immediate vicinity. Increased social isolation consequently causes profound mental stress and poorer well-being, which are compounded by the limitations of current housing design in supporting the new lifestyle. Isolate Together proposes an alternative public housing design for the ‘new normal’ that provides more opportunities for distanced social interaction within a housing block. The design explores the potential of sky gardens and balconies in evolving the public housing design, while addressing the need for social distancing in communal spaces within the housing block. The vital need for well-ventilated spaces is another key issue that informs the design. Modularity in design is also essential for the public housing typology which will be exemplified in the overall design language. The thesis ultimately presents a new way of residential living with the division of the building into three scales: unit, cluster and block - enabling the building to adapt to different pandemic phases as our boundaries change over the pandemic phases, allowing access to green spaces and distanced social interaction at every phase.

Studio YUAN CHAO

Left: Block Config.; Mid: Unit-Cluster Config.; Right: Social Spaces

[ Additional Caption ]

A HIGHER CALLING by Yee Chenxin, Jonathan Following the improved capabilities and capacities of presentday telecommunication equipment, telepone exhange buildings in Singapore are increasingly being decommissioned. Despite their architectural rarity and heritage significance, these markers of modernity are often left disused, and demolished. As purveyors of interconnectivity, these infrastructures heralded in a new era of mass communications, whilst expediting the onslaught of unwarranted and widespread surveillance. This violation of privacy undermines basic human rights and democracy. Building upon their characteristic architecture - its geographical spread across the island, visual inconspicuity, underground cable inter-connectivity, and a predominantly windowless disposition and fundamental ethos of providing unrestricted communication, this thesis argues that telephone exchange buildings should be conserved and repurposed as spaces of refuge and avenues for recourse, against an increasingly inevitable surveillance climate. Positioned as secure amenities, this reimagined network of telephone exchange buildings serves as counter-surveillance infrastructures open to all, providing the masses a choice to optout of the ambient surveillance present in our everyday - to live, work and play in a secure environment. Here, three telephone exchanges - City, East and Changi - were selected to be repurposed, based on their architectural styles, surrounding contexts, and intervention possibilities.

Studio HO WENG HIN

The repurposed City, East, & Changi telephone exchanges in their immediate surroundings, with architectural interventions to house different counter-surveillance programs

Three Stereograms for the respective Telephone Exchange Buildings, reading “FREEDOM”, “STIGMA” and “HYGIENE”

destination zone unit and block categorization

THE RETURN OF A SHOPPING STREET by Zhong Yuqin Retail architecture in the new economic era is becoming profit driven. However, we start to question whether people really enjoy their shopping experience in the current shopping mall settings. The increasingly massive and enclosed designs have resulted in a common situation where users face navigation difficulties within. Design considerations for pedestrians’ way-finding ability are often discounted. This thesis project aims to explore the design strategies and implementations to create a way-finding friendly and streetbased retail development. It is to let the architecture become the leading element in terms of navigation, with minimum digital navigation aids. With a thorough network, site and case analysis, the design strategies will be incorporated into a generative computational design process for both the circulation network and block development. This includes the usage of space syntax, 3D isovist analysis, Steiner tree algorithm and multi-objective optimization etc. It is followed by a refinement of customizable architecture language for each destination zone. The ultimate goal is to create a replicable framework, such that the strategies can be adopted for the way-finding design of similar retail developments across Singapore, including a temporary marketbased design targeting left-over open space and a permanent multi-storey design targeting large under-developed empty space.

Studio RUDI STOUFFS

TO WIN AN ELECTION by Rachel Sim This project functions as an inquiry into the possible negotiation of the ruling majority’s communitarian ideology, through a study of the Opposition’s spatial practices. It examines how an ideological consensus with the citizenry produces - and is in turn reproduced by - the built infrastructure the state has set up in the name of community life. The universality of “Heartland” community infrastructure, for instance, allows the ruling party to exert a virtual monopoly over grassroots activities and many other aspects of everyday life, engendering further ideological consensus among the governed. The Opposition employ different tactics; they walk, appropriating HDB flats via transient void deck consultations, setting up timebased systems through which they conduct their weekly welfare events and distributions. In a bid to express their own brand of community outreach, they fluidly traverse multiple flats within their constituencies to reach out to their constituents. Then, given a political terrain with marginal spatial allowance for Opposition political outreach, how more can alternative political voices negotiate dominant ideologies through space? And more importantly, how can the everyday citizen resist and potentially play a role in enriching Singapore’s – or any similar – political landscape? Months of research have culminated in the decision to use aesthetic architectural imagery to further the impact of the Opposition’s political outreach. Think Hong Kong’s umbrellas or Thailand’s rubber duckies when visualizing the convergence of real space and virtual space; the construction of Instagram images and Tik Tok videos. With that, I hope to have provided somewhat of an answer to my own questions.

Studio TSUTO SAKAMOT

Publicity route

Instagram images