D E S IG N S T U DIO: S E M E S T E R 2 S T U DIO D E S C R I P T IO N S (A R 5 8 02)
drawing, making, imagining — to tease out forgotten histories, diverse heritages, the ecocritical dimension of media and other subdued narratives.
PROGRAMMATIC SCULPTURE Tutor: François Blanciak
CREATIVE ENCOUNTERS Tutor: Hsinming Fung
The Programmatic Sculpture studio will focus on one basic geometric form as a basis for design investigation. This form will be a large tetrahedron with fixed dimensions, located on a given site in Singapore. Following a thorough analysis of the site in its greater context, students will be asked to determine their own programme. The design work will then consist of adapting the original form of the cube to its given site and chosen purpose; in a process that can be referred to as an act of programmatic sculpture, involving the erosion of the initial form with the projected programme.
The design and construction of important past works of architecture, especially cathedrals of the post Gothic period are clearly collaborative in nature even though their end purpose was emphatically hierarchical.
DOMESTIC CAPITAL: AN EXPERIMENTAL STUDIO Tutor: Lilian Chee Assisted by: Wong Zihao and Rachel Sim Work is moving home. Buildings that previously distinguished productive (paid) from reproductive (domestic/care) labour are being rendered obsolete; sacrosanct boundaries between private and public realms made ambiguous. The home | work phenomenon remains to be conjectured. We will enact a series of counter-situations — practices, objects, temporalities, scales, programmes, sites — which challenge the conceptions, forms and experiences of ‘work from home’. We will engage in the production and curation of architectural artefacts (drawings, paintings, field sketches, photographs, models, films and other objects), with the aim of delineating emerging domestic sites of labour by projective means through the descriptive, the imaginative, the speculative. An accompanying seminar component Workaround grounds design research with historical and theoretical material. This studio-seminar will be run as part of Foundations of Home-Based Work: A Singapore Study, funded by the Social Science Research Thematic Grant.
ALCHEMICAL ATELIER Tutor: Simone Chung; assisted by Mary Ann Ng The Alchemical Atelier presents a space for experimentation in collaborative work, and through resultant artefacts of processual investigations, offer ways for people to engage with aspects of our enquiries. Despite the discipline’s expanded remit, material practices of architecture remain habituated in creative solutioning. We ponder Mark Linder’s (2005: 14) profound prompt: “how does architecture make its appearance as architecture? [...] and where does, did or could architecture make its appearance other than as architecture?” We are interested in technē — the tools, techniques and technologies of a discipline — made richer through collaborative exchanges and interdisciplinary dialogues (Troiani and Ewing 2014). For this, we draw on the full range of our disciplinary repertoire — mapping,
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In our own era, as collaborative work is increasingly pursued over cyberspace, devising an architecture of exchange of ideas and knowledge, aimed towards media production and the environment best suited to support the process as well as the product will be the subject of the studio. Creative collaboration is a skill most often found in the performing arts, where all aspects of a film or stage production are bound together by a singular artistic vision. This much-admired quality is deserving of a teaching facility that enhances and promulgates it throughout its architecture, extending perhaps to the intellectual concepts which underline its structure, spatial organisation, and aesthetics.
LEFTOVER SPACES AND DETRITUS Tutor: Gaurang Khemka Our cities produce leftover and interstitial spaces. Spaces under flyovers, disused rail lines and other unclaimed leftover and negative fragments are some examples. We humans, generate copious volumes of material waste — some of which are incinerated, some goes into landfills, some finds its way to the oceans — while some ends up in these unused leftover fragments of the city. Can architecture intervene at this juncture of waste? This studio shall explore crafting alternate typologies, materials and construction methodologies for a reduce/ reuse/ recycle future for the Singapore cityscape.
GUARANTEES OF THE MODERN CONSTITUTION: NATURE & SOCIETY Tutor: Koon Wee Drawing from my 2016 introduction and writings from the book entitled “Singapore Dreaming: Managing Utopia”, this studio would explore the effects of modernisation in our city-state. On a philosophical level, it connects with, but is distinct from, my option studio exploring the architecture of the “Urban-Industrial Complex.” The drive towards modernisation and industrialisation bear the same logic and relentlessness. In his “anthropology of science,” Bruno Latour (1993: 32) observes three guarantees of the modern constitution: “First guarantee: Even though we construct Nature, Nature is as if we did not construct it. Second guarantee: Even though we do not construct Society. Society is as if we did construct it. Third guarantee: Nature and Society must remain
absolutely distinct…” It is not by coincidence that the two irrevocable pillars of the Singaporean condition were evoked — Nature and Society. These will serve as entry points for students to situate their sites of inquiry in Singapore and Hong Kong. Hong Kong is a city surrounded by 75% of countryside, formed largely by its 24 country parks. Singapore is almost the perfect inversion, with 22% of forested area surrounded by the city. Singapore is aggressively replanting the city to achieve close to 50% of green cover; while Hong Kong is fighting to conserve its country parks. This studio will explore architectural responses within the modern regime to the new expressions of society that might co-mingle with new forms of nature. (Travel to Hong Kong is not required, but may be an option, should Covid restrictions be lifted by 2023).
and heavy snow; the country has experienced numerous disasters and gradually developed a variety of systems to prepare, respond and reduce damage caused by them — the national/ local warning system, identification of escape routes and destinations, organisation of volunteer forces for rehabilitation and the foremost, construction of a physical infrastructure. By investigating and analysing the variety of attempts and engaging with the sequence of events; the studio will explore relationships of the system and everyday life of people. Taking the disaster as an event that is no way out, and accommodating it to their life inevitably; the studio questions how architecture can participate in the system, while changing people’s perception on disasters and life patterns. A particular site visit currently planned will either be in Fukuoka (Kyushu area) or Tokyo (Kanto area). The site trip is planned in Recess period in Semester 2, but is subjected to Covid restrictions.
THE LAST HOME Tutor: Thomas Kong In an essay for the Guardian newspaper, Nigerian writer Ben Okri calls for existential creativity that expresses the end of time for the human species. He is uneasy with our delusion of living a normal life despite the insurmountable facts and warning signs of our final days on earth. He laments our failure to confront the end of things, which he argues will help us get through the worst of our fears. Like writers from the past, he contends that facing the dark times will open up a new consciousness, reframe our values and awaken us to the crises and possible futures. Through visual storytelling, the staging of diegetic prototypes and emotive drawings, the studio will focus on the imagination and design of The LAST HOME. Students interested in design fiction and learning new software like Blender, Audacity, and Premiere Pro to tell the story of The LAST HOME are welcome to speculate a world drifting towards a near-terminal stage.
SKY TIMBER™ - TROPICAL RENEWABLE ARCHITECTURE Tutor: Shinya Okuda
DECOUPLING OR DE-GLOBALIZATION Tutor: Wong Chong Thai, Bobby The studio is interested in Decoupling or De-globalisation. Globalisation has been a great force in driving activities across all spheres of life. There is great exuberance, rage and speculation during the early 2000s when the globalisation we know first permeated this part of the world. But now decoupling is frequently talked about. Prompted by rivalry between the United States and China, Will the region (China included) bifurcate in outlook and expression? Or how would spheres of life morph or evolve with differing standards? Or, any turn inwards, what form would it take? Eclecticism or new invention? The world is already seeing signs of these. Different nation-states are enacting differing regulatory ethical limits on what is possible or not possible on their media platforms. Believing, as always, architecture is local, Students are to confine their studies to particular/ specific contexts and jurisdiction.
The all-year tropical climate results in fast growth in trees and crops — a few times faster than the ones in temperate climates. One of the strongest motivations to review timber nowadays is that it is renewable resource and effective carbon sink, which is the true game changer of the global warming era. However, its architectural application in the tropics faces challenges on constant high-humidity, harsh weathering and fierce termite attacks. SkyTimber™ is a professional design research studio, aiming to create symbiosis between nature and built environment, providing microclimate, fresh oxygen, comfort and amenity for humanity, which leads unique sustainable tropical aesthetics in architecture.
CONTINGENCY INFRASTRUCTURAL-SCAPE IN JAPAN Tutor:Tsuto Sakamoto Due to a recent climate change, natural disasters are currently ubiquitous especially in Japan. Susceptible to harsh natural forces: earthquakes, typhoons, flooding
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