Tiah Nan Chyuan Adjunct Assistant Professor; AA Dip, BA Arch (National University of Singapore); MSIA, Registered Architect, Singapore
M A R C H II D E S IG N R E S E A R C H T H E S I S O FFERIN GS
Zdravko Trivic Assistant Professor; PhD (National University of Singapore), Dip Ing Arch (University of Belgrade, Serbia) Johannes Widodo Associate Professor; PhD (University of Tokyo), M Arch Eng (Katholieke Universiteit Leuven), Ir (Parahyangan Catholic University); IAI
Picture credit: Loh Tze Yang, Glenn
Wong Chong Thai, Bobby Adjunct Associate Professor; MDesSt (Harvard University), DipArch (Robert Gordon University); MSIA
THE NARRATIVE OF TECTONICS Tutor: Hans Brouwer The craft of architecture evolved from simple shelter to the complex structures we are capable of today. it will continue to evolve into amazing and hitherto unimagined forms and spaces. At its core, however, architecture is about craft and the making of things. It is about the human ability to take materials and to transform them, through care, innovation and craftsmanship into architecture. This thesis offering is predicated on the belief that good architecture is the result of a powerful narrative directing a love for material and construction. EVERYDAY MODERNISM Tutor: Chang Jiat Hwee The focus of this thesis offering is on the banal and ordinary built environment that surrounds us, the “other 99%” that architectural discourse doesn’t cover. In Singapore and many Asian cities, this taken-for-granted built environment is inevitably a modern and transient one. Students would look at employing strategies to sift through heterogeneous time and map layered socio-cultural spaces of the ordinary, so as to develop alternative and innovative ways of understanding and intervening in them. Ultimately, the hope is to propose alternatives to, and perhaps even resist, the inadvertent erasure of such rich, multi-dimensional spaces, by the hegemonic system of (de)valuation and the ideology of “upgrading”.
Wu Yen Yen Adjunct Assistant Professor; M Arch (Columbia University), BA Arch Studies (National University of Singapore); Green Mark AP, MSIA, Registered Architect, Singapore Yuan Chao Assistant Professor (Presidential Young Professor); PhD Architecture (Chinese University of Hong Kong), MIT Kaufman Teaching Certificate (Massachusetts Institute of Technology) Zhang Ye Assistant Professor; PhD (University of Cambridge), M Arch, B Arch (Tsinghua University)
TOWARDS A POSTHUMAN ARCHITECTURE Tutor: Chaw Chih Wen
Picture credit: Goi Yong Chern
The thesis offering is concerned with the paradigmatic shifts in the conception of the body schema and selfhood, taking cues from Katherine Hayles’s seminal work, How We Became Posthuman Virtual Bodies in Cybernetics, Literature, and Informatics. The new Being, construed as part of an ephemeral informational pattern/network instantiated in a biological substrate, would serve as the impetus for further research into related socio-politicalcultural phenomena and their spatial implications. Theses should refrain from a simplistic application of black box technology in architecture, but should focus instead on the discovery of novel, unimagined spatial practices through the lens of a posthuman. CRISIS OPTIMIST: ANTIFRAGILITY AND ARCHITECTURE Tutor: Cheah Kok Ming “Antifragility’ is beyond resilience or robustness. The resilient resists shocks and stays the same; the antifragile gets better.” – Nassim Nicholas Taleb, 2012 This thesis offering builds on the silver lining presented by the COVID-19 crisis. Beyond highlighting the need to adopt many public health counter-measures in daily life, COVID-19 has also revealed the potential for new modes of practice and new perspectives leading to fresh architectural or infrastructural paradigms. These may well have lasting relevance to our industry even after the spectre of the pandemic fades. Rather than reacting defensively to this crisis with rebuttals and counteractions, students will be invited to adopt an “antifragile” framework, and to explore and discover new architectural possibilities.
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