M ARCH I SEMESTER 1 & 2

FORM INTEGRATES SYSTEMS: DESIGNING ECOPUNCTURE

Tutor: Cheah Kok Ming

“Ecopuncture is acupuncture for the built environment. Every designed object affects the wider condition within which it is nested. Each insertion enhances the connectedness of social and ecological systems, seeking positive reciprocity and strengthening the whole.” - Nirmal Kishanani, Ecopuncture – Transforming Architecture & Urbanism in Asia, 2019 The notion of ecopuncture broadens the purpose of a building to embrace the functions of serving, strengthening, sharing and engaging with its surroundings, promoting symbiosis between the built and natural environments. This studio will look at the design of critical and meaningful architecture where the form integrates energy networks, hydrology, ecology, food production and elements of the public realm. Combined learning activities will be conducted with DOA’s Master of Science in Integrated Sustainable Design studio and WOHA. Markets are an essential part of Southeast Asian culture and lifestyle. From Singaporean hawker centres to Indonesian pasar tradisional, traditional markets in the region have a number of things in common. Often, they are semi-outdoor spaces, covered by a large roof housing various stalls underneath. This studio examines the roof as a distinct typology and its performative aspects from various perspectives. In its simplest form, a roof protects from sun and rain, but it has potential to be much more. A roof’s performative aspects can range from supporting communal activity, to presenting an organisational principle structuring functions and circulation, to constituting cultural aspects of representation and displaying advanced microclimatic, engineering, and environmental elements. Students will explore these ideas with reference to case studies of markets and roofs. For instance, they will be invited to think about Markthal in Rotterdam by MVRDV as a thick roof layered over a market floor housed underneath. What else could be layered, embedded, or integrated underneath, inside or on top of the market’s roof? And how would this building prompt us to rethink the roof as urban typology?

SPECTRES OF VENICE: INVISIBLE CITIES REVISITED

Tutor: Simone Chung

The historical city-state of Venice has long fuelled the imagination of travellers and writers, perhaps none more so than journalist-novelist Italo Calvino, whose seminal 1972 book Invisible Cities vicariously recounted scores of imaginative simulacra through a fictionalised Marco Polo. But in the last few decades, Venice has battled environmental perils, and more recently the impact of the COVID-19 pandemic and lockdown, leading many to ponder its long-term survival. This studio will grasp the contemporaneous challenges of island cities through a reading of Neal E. Robbins’ Venice, An Odyssey: Hope and Anger in the Iconic City and a discussion with the author. Taking inspiration from The Hard State, Soft City of Singapore (ed. Chung and Douglass) and lessons from Venice, the studio will also work towards translating the intangible qualities of urban experience and cultural life into a virtual wonderworld. Underpinning the studio’s exploration will be a look at the role of space in narrative construction, and that of digital technology in the experience of space and place. Space will be examined as the context, referent and text that is essential to understanding human spatial experience. This studio is supported by a NUS Teaching Enhancement Grant. A provisional schedule, studio activities and key readings are found at: https://millennialnomadspace.com/ spectres-of-venice/

DIALOGICAL DESIGNS AND HETEROTOPIC ARCHITECTURE IN THE NEW NORMAL

Tutor: Constance Lau

The role of dialogue in design practice is adopted as questioning and incomplete, with the capacity for user intervention to assume authorship, shaping the reading and outcome of the work. This creation of multiple interpretations is furthered through spatial explorations in Michel Foucault’s notions of heterotopia and heterotopic spaces that encompass layers of meaning within their apparent uses and established contexts. These arguments, in conjunction with a reading of Italo Calvino’s Invisible Cities and Darran Anderson’s Imaginary Cities, will be used to formulate a post-pandemic narrative for how Singapore as a city can be reimagined through “interdisciplinary approaches that embrace multiple perspectives”.

HOUSE OF THE MUSES

Tutor: Betty Ng

The earliest use of the word “museum” was in the early 17th century, and it is believed to have originated via Latin from the Greek mouseion, or “seat/house of the Muses”. Since then, there has clearly been an evolution in museum design and in ways of showing art. This studio aims to investigate and look deeper at this evolution: from the salon, to the appropriated office space, to the white cube, which has become the standard approach since the 1970s. Participants will be invited to reflect on the relationship between architecture and the ecosystem of the museum, and on the evolution of the display of art. They will be prompted to consider future trajectories in museum design and in the presentation of art: What shape or form will displays and the role of museum move towards in the future? Could we, and should we, challenge the current “museum standard”? Designing exclusive seclusion without selling your soul Tropical Asia is the birthplace of the hyper-luxury resort. This hotel typology is unique in its combining a hippie trail expectation of authentic engagement with indigenous culture, incongruously combined with all the pampering expected by the prosperous. Post-COVID-19, well-to-do domestic travellers from large countries and the socalled 1%—international guests with the wherewithal to circumvent travel restrictions—are expected to be the first to drive revival in the hospitality market. Work in this realm has fed and made famous many Singapore architects: KHA, WOHA, SCDA, and so on. This studio will examine the work of these designers, as part of a broader exploration of cultural appropriation, critical regionalism, architectural autonomy versus sitespecificity, sustainability, economic development and patronage. Following this exercise in contextual research and reflection, a resort will be scoped and designed: working from brief development through to master planning, architecture and interiors.

ARCDR³ STUDIO: RE-FOREST CITYTM – A RESILIENT URBANISM-NATURE SYMBIOSIS

Tutor: Shinya Okuda

The research-intensive design studio Re-Forest CityTM invites participants to apply their intelligence to mitigate the impact of global warming and promote a resilient symbiosis between urbanism and nature, as our world moves towards an inevitably hotter climate for present and future generations of mankind. This studio will operate as part of the ArcDR³ (Architecture and Urban Design for Disaster Risk Reduction and Resilience) global initiative, which seeks to address recurring risks of natural disasters by engaging in collaborative research studios across the Pacific Rim. For more information, view the Re-Forest CityTM studio brief, ArcDR³ Forum Vol. 1 New Agendas for Regenerative Urbanism, at: https://youtu.be/ Rl6Hvitu5A4?t=11125

Picture credit: Su Myat Noe Naing This studio embraces forms of dirtiness as a matter of urgent public necessity. Our public health crisis of inflammatory diseases seems to be due, ironically, to the eradication of dirt from our everyday lives. Participants will explore reversals in the values of modern architecture’s resilient cleanliness, aiming for strategic and designed “impurities”. Solutions will expand upon historical modes of interaction between buildings and types of “dirt,” from pre-modern practices, to modern ventilation systems, to domestic animals and other vectors. They will attempt to restore, in part, a type and degree of organic waste in the spaces, surfaces, and systems of buildings, to create an architecture as hospitable at the microbiotic scale as it is at the human one.

ARCDR³ STUDIO: SINGAPORE UNDER RISING SEA LEVELS – A RESILIENT LANDSCAPE

Tutor: Tsuto Sakamoto

In recent years, Singapore has seen the effects of global climate change: intense rainfall, prolonged dry spells and a rise in sea levels that is expected to reach a metre or more by 2100. In response, how can we develop and promote an alternative lifestyle and economy to mitigate the impact of this? And how can urban and architectural design contribute to these more sustainable alternatives? Students will explore such questions with respect to Singapore’s East Coast area, where the impact of rising sea levels is expected to be amongst the most significant in the country. This studio will be conducted as part of the international Architectural and Urban Design for Disaster Risk, Reduction and Resilience (ArcDR³) initiative.