REFLECTIONS

We had the opportunity to visit Jakarta and work alongside UI students, which was a fruitful collaboration. Studying about the local community was eye opening and I was immediately intrigued by how people use the limited outdoor spaces (in the dense setting of the settlements) and make it their own. This led my project - to design for the community but by investigating impact out of the least invasive and costly interventions. I began to dive a lot into the socio-economic dynamics of the kampung and the multi-functional aspect of spaces. Throughout the process, I learnt to be self-critical, and focus on my rational my time management and prioritization. Excited to use the knowledge gained and see what the next studio has in store!

The studio offered me different perspectives on designing an adaptive landscape for Jakarta. Throughout this get to experience the living conditions within the kampung community, neighbourhood conditions as well as venturing out to other parts of Jakarta. This experience opens up opportunities where I can explore various possible design solutions which can better serve the people living in Jakarta. As my project focus on solid waste, I’ve gained waste production and am excited to apply the knowledge gained from this studio in the upcoming studios as well. Overall, this studio taught me to be analytical throughout the whole design process, to be bold in exploring new landscape design ideas and self-critical on my project work.

Chin Qiwei

This semester is an unforgettable one. First of all, I have never been to Jakarta, a big city with chaos and complexity. every day. The city is full of crises as well as opportunities. In addition, the studio course later became an online type because of the pandemic, and our project quickly entered the stage of personal design. This is a big challenge for everyone. We need to communicate the details of the plan with the teacher through video. I have to say it improves the ability to think alone. Finally, I tried large-scale urban shortcomings. I hope I can make progress next time.

This studio provided an opportunity to explore potentials of Landscape architecture to solve complex level city challenges. This was the first time for me to explore a complex city like Jakarta and confronting issues related to crime. While working on it, I realized that almost every city has those pockets and alleys where these negative activities breed and Landscape design strategy can really provide a solution for transition towards improving the neighbourhood. Though the final design outcome was greatly affected by COVID situation, I am extremely grateful for the guidance from Ervine and Kenya. I feel that this semester I learned a lot at the level of system thinking and social dynamics that shapes the spatial use in public places.

I really enjoy the process of the field trip, and the whole experience is very hard, interesting, and even unforgettable. The studio this semester enabled me to complete the design of a river from the perspective of the city-scale. It was a crazy design in a sense because I diverted the river. But it was for this reason that I was driven to study the nature of the river in-depth, to do various simulations to verify my conjecture. I believe that through this studio, I will have a deeper understanding of the laws of the natural river system than before, which also makes me pay more attention to the landscape benefits brought by the whole site design, and make better design decisions in future works.

In the studio this semester, I decided to choose the topic of flooding management that I have never been exposed to, which was very complex and difficult for me. I had a lot of thinking, searched a lot of data and tried to make the runoff calculation. There were many mistakes and shortcomings in the final results, however, for myself, I harvest and achieved pretty much. This was the most complete design process I have ever made. In the further study, I will try to challenge other landscape issues and improve my design ability.

This semester had been a roller-coaster of emotional and stress which I have never experience in any of my pervious studios for the past 4years in NUS. The studio started with a comfortable pace of researching and site visiting and eventually expedited by the second half of the semester. Being naturally slow and lost in thought, I was stuck with my design thinking and couldn’t narrate and convince myself what exactly I wanted to do. Eventually I dropped a few initial explorations and things started geting clearer at last. I wished I could start on the final focus “river ecology” earlier so that I could strengthen my argument and really go deep into it. Nevertheless, I really enjoyed this semester as we get to experiences the kampung’s culture of Jakarta!

This semester, I learned a lot about design logical thinking and large-scale design principle. In a preliminary field trip, we went to Jakarta, where I gained the local situation, culture, city life and made new friends. What an unforgettable journey! During my design process, my design topic is wastewater, and I met some problems like professional theoretical knowledge, which involves engineering. It’s a big challenge for me. Fortunately, my tutors gave me a lot of useful suggestions and encouragement. They help me combing design logic and drawing revision. During this pandemic period, our normal face-to-face course cannot continue, but our tutors try their best to improve class quality. Thanks for their efforts! I hope I can study harder and learn more next semester.

I want to thank Ervine and Kenya for guiding and supporting me. I’m glad I made it through, although I could not work out the details. This project was a great opportunity for me to think about how to build an interactive relationship between humans and water deeply. I realized that referring to historical things is my fundamental design approach. Overall, through this semester, I have enhanced both my perspective and designing skills.

This project has been an exciting one to work on, although the semester through the onset and prime of the pandemic was quite challenging. It helped me learn and experiment with the limitations of the scope of my profession. I liked that we were not given a specific site, and our instincts or interests were made to guide us to it. Jakarta was a very good site with lots to learn from and a web of complex challenges.The design process however, was interrupted due to current situation and changing restrictions. With a shift in work patterns and consultations i think i struggled to handle the changing ways of things working. Its been an unconventional journey full of anxiety and ambiguity, and we were lucky to have very understanding and supportive tutors to guide us through.

This semester is quite special for us due to the COVID-19, but luckily we have made great progress. For me, the biggest challenge is keeping amending my design strategies to make them convincing and then defending my ideas of specific design proposals. This process was hard but turned out to be fruitful. It helps me have a better understanding of logical level in landscape design. I want to give thanks to Ervine and Kenya for putting much effort into their work under this situation. Also, I appreciate the company of our UI friends during our field research in Indonesia.

Compared with last studio designing for ecology, this semester I developed much more skills in designing the landscape infrastructure. Identifying the issues and developing the concept is a very resourceful experience, especially when lots of practical situations are considered. For the project itself, I find blue and green matrix can be large and complicated systems, and it requires hierarchical thinking to classify the major function systems inside the matrix, which will help me develop a more reasonable and convincing design idea. Other important knowledge I learnt is about landscape details. Landscape details can be abundant, so I should consider carefully before zooming into the most relative details.

Generally I really enjoyed this semester’s studio. I felt happy that my work could started with a macro methodology analysis then the design was developed step by step based on the analysis. The entire process helped to make my design become more reasonable. Apart from that, climate changes and flooding are the topics I always want to touch and explore, thus I’m satisfied I could do relevant design in real world and got the chance to do field trip in a totally unfamiliar context, which was challenging but interesting. This experience gave me a lot of surprise and more importantly, let me deal with conflicts in a complicated culture. Hopefully I could dig more in this field in the future.

The studio is very close to the real project. We actually went to Jakarta. It is very useful to start from surveying the kampungs and end up with thoughtful designing. It is based on a very good understanding of the site. Among all stuff, the investigation with students in Jakarta has played a very good role in communication. We did it with them and we became good friends. My project is a sensitive topic, but our teachers do not evade it, but encourages me to follow the idea to design in depth. This is an unforgettable journey.

This project gave me a chance to touch on issues like garbage dump that I had never touched before. This semester I learned how to think systematically about the design and completion of the whole project in terms of the timeline, how to integrate the landscape with technology tools, and how to sort the garbage and leachate. I am so grateful for the help and guidance Ervine and Kenya gave me.

I am quite grateful for the guidance from Ervine and Kenya. I think I have a better understanding of design after this Studio through the process of landing (Experience the complex ground conditions of Jakarta), grounding (Detailed analysis and experiential explorations), finding (Discover the potential areas), founding (Propose ways to restructure elements of the city). I learned more targeted analysis and derived my design based on analysis and observation.

During our field trip to Jakarta in this semester, I have experienced and learned a lot from this city. It was my first time to take an in-depth conversation to kampong residents, which was quite fresh to me. Meanwhile, it was an excellent opportunity to meet and study with UI students! Apart from that, the crime topic was a big challenge for me as well. Luckily, when I came across a lot of pitfalls during the whole process, thanks to Ervine and Kenya, gave many helpful suggestions to me and led me to the right direction finally. One pity thing is that on account of the epidemic situation, the face-to-face courses have reduced. However, I appreciated all the efforts we have made and happy with my improvement in logical thinking.

This semester’s studio gives me a brand new experience. The in-depth research in Jakarta made me feel the responsibility as a landscape architect and what I should do to change this situation. In this project, I mainly focus on stormwater management and how to bring new life experience to Jakarta through water. After the detailed analysis, the main issue is obtained and the new design strategy is established. Therefore, I am quite grateful for the guidance from Ervine and Kenya, so that my project can be presented step by step. Compared to last semester, I feel that I have made great progress, although there are still some areas that need to be improved.

Editors:

ZHANG Yifei

ZHANG Bingqian

WANG Haobo

SHAO Zhongran

FENG Zihan

TANAKA Mamiko

Copyright © 2020 Ervine Lin and Kenya Endo (ed.)

ISBN: 978-981-14-9850-3