OPTIONS DESIGN RESEARCH STUDIO + ADVANCED ARCHITECTURE STUDIO

As Tuas Phase 2 is currently under construction 150 meters away from the Sultan Shoal Lighthouse — situated on a 0.6 hA island; the idea of a bridge to provide vehicular access arises. While the crossing is a vital landmark reflecting the corporate image of Maritime and Port Authority of Singapore as a progressive organisation, the public appreciation of this special facility requires deeper thinking.

Beyond a singular transport function, the studio identifies key challenges in order to direct design strategies fulfilling fitness for purpose, sustainable and low energy imperatives with innovative scopes for fabrication and installation.

To this end, the physical linkage between Sultan Shoal and Tuas Port Phase 2 is to provide more than accessibility to Sultan Shoal; as it is to link new with old, in a heritage site of historical value in the development of Singapore. The linkage will integrate the Tuas Port development and the Victorian architecture of the Lighthouse in a proposal to do more than display maritime heritage and history, or to facilitate corporate functions and events for public engagement. It seeks meaning for a new existence in an area of former restricted access.

This studio is supported by Maritime and Port Authority of Singapore.

FEELS LIKE 38 ̊C, SOUTH SEA WIND FLOWING THROUGH AT SOME SPEED

Tutor: Ling Hao

62% humidity is pretty intense. I sit shirtless soaking it all in; on the 23rd floor with multiple cross ventilations and directly under a fan; this thing still hits you with a full force — each time, every year, on this island, in this flat. The building came before me, I came from somewhere else, but I adapt to this flat — move around in it, lie here, sit there, look out from, clouds drift by.... The environment and our behaviours continuously mutually transform. As we wake up each day, are we able to refresh our relationship with our environment. The intentions of this studio are to discover the flows of time in our daily world and to encounter a natural way of living.

DESIGN FOR DEMOCRATIZATION OF ARCHITECTURE

Tutor: Warren Liu

The business of architecture and construction is very inaccessible to the vast majority of the population — it is expensive, complicated and undemocratic.

In particular, building is largely left to wealthy speculative developers who build directly for the second-hand market and therefore have little incentive to build something of good value and sustainable. Today, architecture and building are still primarily top-down activities driven by profit, and not the wishes and needs of end users. With its history dating back to the 1930s, it is a repurposed horse racing stadium that now houses lifestyle, F&B, retail, education, office and sports facilities. It is also home to a wide variety of flora and fauna.

Rewilding is a strategy used by conservationists to ensure continuity of our natural environment and sustainability of resources for future generations. In nature, cross-pollination leads to stronger species. Due to the pandemic, the way we reimagine spaces has been accelerated, and the hybridisation of spatial programming is on the rise.

How can we add a value proposition to the land sale of Grandstand that does not involve a full-scale bulldozing of the site? We see The Grandstand as the best place to test bed a “cross- pollination” of programmes, urban rewilding, and placemaking to serve the community around.

Are we able to better design the building and/or the spaces around it, and ensure its materials also contribute back to the ecology?

than 50% of the non-renewable resources consumed by humankind — and a situation where a few decide what is good for the majority — how can we even begin to solve some of the serious and systemic challenges we face today; such as global warming, resource depletion, disruption of labour and material supply chains, aging population, and rising costs?

With advanced, high-performance materials that are inexpensive and easily sourced, augmented with digital design technology and manufacturing; it has become tenable for the act of building to be more accessible to a larger segment of the population. The key lies in combining cheap materials with simple construction techniques that enable portable and quick assembly, like lightweight prefab or modular systems, as well as with new technologies and innovations like open-source collaborations and digital fabrication that simplify customisation without compromising architecture’s creative potential.

It is time to change the traditional tendency for Architects to conceptualise building designs with the design brief in mind but leaving it to engineers and contractors to work out how to build it. The profession needs to apply design thinking to allow transparency and to optimise all stages of the building process allowing more people to engage in the act of building. Through this, a bottom-up architecture process can emerge and meet with the top-down process.

ORDINARY DENSITIES

Tutor: Victoria Jane Marshall

Problems of extreme population or building density are often used to influence desirable or undesirable urban form. Would other conceptions of density, shape urban futures differently? Density, as geographer Colin McFarlane (2016) notes, is both a topographical problem of number, and measurement, as well as a problem of topological politics and space. The studio will explore one kilometre square — “ordinary” (Robinson, 2005) areas in Southeast Asia through found densities; topographical, relational, volumetric, experiential, and perceptual. The term “ordinary” means an area where there is no singular big conflict; where power (understood topologically) with nonhumans and their diverse agencies in mind, is diffuse.

ESSENTIAL QUALITY OF SPACE: AN ANTIDOTE TO CHAOS

Tutor: Pier Alessio Rizzardi

How do we experience space? And why should we mind about it?

A showcase of projects, from masterplans, buildings, and installations will offer hints on how to respond, displaying approaches to design rooted in visual, physical, and immaterial dynamics arising between users and architectural space, simulating experiences, and guiding behaviours.

The course will present the ephemeral nature of architecture, the uncertainty of fixed programs, and solutions to the fragility of the present and future urban environments. Each module will uncover interdisciplinary and crossscale design solutions providing functional tools to create thriving and vibrant spaces, successfully withstanding the test of time.

Starting from a conceptual understanding of the potential of the space, students will explore the possibility of formal and informal spaces, creating practical design results to implement in different archetypal architecture projects.

SENSORIAL & SMART - DESIGN INVESTIGATIONS

Tutor: Ruzica Bozovic Stamenovic

This Option Studio examines the potentials of sensorial mechanisms to drive design decisions, initiate paradigmatic changes and generate new built landscapes in the process. Support of smart technologies and advanced integrated thinking should be the tools for achieving novel, exciting, affective and effective designs. The generic design brief is Sensorial Singapore Capsule, the temporary pavilion set in Singapore, or abroad. It represents the essence of sensorial values of the city, exceeds the expected tropical framework, and implies more conceptual characteristics detectable through all senses. Methods of design investigation include facilitated short design exercises, scenario-based explorations, experimentations with sensory design — monitoring and documenting through collages, intuitive drawings, cartoons, conceptual models, material performance exercises and visualisation of ideas and concepts in other forms and analogue/digital techniques.

URBAN DECARBONISATION: COMPUTATIONAL ANALYSIS AND RULE-BASED DESIGN

Tutor: Rudi Stouffs

This studio focuses on Singapore’s sea-city fringes and its current threat of increasing shocks and stresses induced by climate change and excessive CO2 emissions. Specifically, through computational analysis and rulebased design, we aim to explore urban design and planning approaches that can help to mitigate climate change and reduce its effects, emphasising the reduction of carbon emissions and the potential for building biomimicry technology to capture, absorb, store and remove CO2 from the atmosphere. Starting from the current urban landscape, we aim to identify positive design actions and express these in the form of design rules that encode their conditional application to the existing situation, thereby achieving a preferable outcome. Embedding both conditions and parameters for application, design rules operate on the data at hand, and express geometric and semantic transformations. Design rules support computation and the exploration of alternative design outcomes.

THE LOOS & WAGNER VIENNA STUDIO – RETHINKING THE RINGSTRASSE

Tutor: Rene Tan

This is part of a series of design studios that applies history to design. It pairs a great architect of the past with an important city. Its primary aim is to guide students towards creating beautiful designs for a better sustainable environment today. Like its companionstudios — the Palladio-Venice, Brunelleschi-Florence, Le Corbusier-Paris, the Bernini & Borromini-Rome studios — this traveling design studio engages a city, revisits the past and applies relevant lessons to the present.

This studio explores Loos & Wagner’s contribution to architecture and design (in this case the Raumplan of Loos and the urban vision of Wagner) and how its relevant in today’s design challenges. This studio engages urban planning, conservation, landscape and reconstruction within the larger scenario of design, travel and fun.

Conceived as a ‘travelling studio’ that takes the classroom out of the school, actual travel to Vienna (during termbreak) is contingent upon Covid restrictions. If travel is not possible, the studio will proceed with virtual-travel —utilising online materials, digital information and other resources available.

MORTAL ENGINES: TURF CITY

Tutor: Gwen Tan (co-tutor with Chew Kok Yong)

By the end of 2023, the Singapore Land Authority will repossess the plot of land where The Grandstand sits on, as well as its surrounding areas, for upcoming land sales.