O P T IO N S D E S IG N R E S E A R C H 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) PROGRAMMATIC SCULPTURE Tutor: François Blanciak The Programmatic Sculpture studio will focus on one pure geometric form as a basis for design investigation. This form will be a large cube 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. This process can be referred to as an act of programmatic sculpture, involving the erosion of the initial form with the projected programme.
DOMESTIC CAPITAL: AN EXPERIMENTAL STUDIO Tutor: Lilian Chee Assisted by: Phua Yi Xuan, Anthea, Tan Yi-Ern Samuel & Wong Zi Hao 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 are made ambiguous. While this phenomenon is not new, its historical insignificance arises from architecture’s tendencies to divide these realms, minimising a territorial intersection with multiple social-cultural-economicalethical-political repercussions. This is to say, the home|work phenomenon remains to be conjectured. The studio 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, and other objects), with the aim of delineating emerging domestic sites of labour by projective means—i.e. the descriptive, the imaginative, and the speculative. An accompanying seminar component Workaround (see p.30) combines ground 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.
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EMERGING CIVIC URBANISMS: DESIGNING FOR SOCIAL IMPACT Tutor: Cho Im Sik
THE ART-ARCHITECTURE NEXUS: NEW CONVERGENCES AND INTERSECTIONS Tutor: Thomas Kong
The studio will explore integrative and hybrid urban models that cultivate genuine socially and ecologically sustainable lifestyles. Innovative approaches will be investigated to facilitate timely, flexible and contextsensitive urban interventions. This is to encourage a shift from centralised, top-down approaches; to more decentralised, bottom-up processes. From singular and static design solutions, to dynamic and pluralistic design processes, which can be instrumental for reconceptualising urban space design, for the hybrid and high-density environments of today and tomorrow. Diverse hybrid social spaces that encourage individual and collective creativity and allow for continual transformation and adaptation will be explored.
There are myriad ways the art-architecture nexus is expressed. It includes material experimentation, use of media, techniques of making and documenting, critical and social practice, writing manifestos, design of cultural institutions, and participating in biennales as curators; to name a few prevailing examples. The spaces for learning, making, viewing, and presenting art and architecture are also less clearly bounded. Art schools now offer professional architecture programmes. Artists have occupied public spaces with their installations while art galleries and museums commission architects to build temporary structures.
S.E.A BASTARDS STUDIO Tutor: Chatpong Chuenrudeemol S.E.A. Bastards, or Southeast Asian Bastards, are homegrown architectural concoctions and strategies created by everyday people to solve everyday problems. Bastards are live street typologies, not frozen vernacular artefacts from the past. They may include beautiful shacks in a city slum, illegal pop-up vendors, a secret love motel…even a wonderful make-shift bench on the sidewalk. Most view Bastards as eyesores to the city, lacking in any serious design pedigree. However, it can be argued that they are the most authentic and inventive examples of Southeast Asian architecture despite their unrefined appearance. The recognition and understanding of S.E.A. Bastards is key to creating urbanistically responsive, ecologically-informed, and culturallyauthentic architectural vocabularies for Southeast Asia. In the S.E.A. Bastard studio, you will discover, survey, and document an existing Bastard, either in Singapore or in your hometown. You will then “grow” wonderful new Bastards from these originals.
This studio will examine the art-architecture nexus as a place-bound practice with an attention to material, time, body, phenomenon, perception, and visceral experience. The broader context of a world undergoing a profound socio-cultural, political, ecological and technological transition will frame the material and spatial speculations. The studio is ideal for students seeking a deeper theoretical understanding of the art-architecture nexus; and who enjoy material experimentation, drawing, and making at different scales.
HOT AIR: THE DRAMATIC ATMOSPHERES OF THE EQUATORIAL CITY Tutor: Erik G. L’Heureux The equatorial city’s relationship to climate and atmosphere has become an increasingly complex interface in relation to climate change, population growth, and contamination. Against this background, this studio will research the atmospheric mediums of “hot air” situated in urban Southeast Asia. Three features will guide the work: saturated urbanisms, thick envelopes, and aggregated roofs that modulate and filter the “hot air” of the equatorial city. As the equatorial city evolves from the granular, porous, and informal, to a more formal, conditioned, and hygienic metropolis, it is being transformed with large-scale capital, global aspirations and imported technological systems, often to its longterm environmental detriment. The design research will focus on modes of architectural construction in the region, and the tension between these and the precedent of mid-20th century tropical modernism of the 1930s to the 1980s. The dramatics of heated air, aggregation, scale, vegetation, humidity, heat, rain, and hygiene, and the numerous contagions that compound an atmosphere of “hot air”, will drive the studio’s design and representational research efforts for the semester.
ARCHITECTURAL NARRATIVES OF IDIOSYNCRASY Tutor: CJ Lim There is always a space of empathy cultivated from the acceptance of idiosyncrasy. Whether by bold gestures or by subtle attrition, our love affair of the city and its architecture is constantly re-written to build a fundamentally different idea of society. At different times and places, we break down hierarchies to empower the oppressed, the ignored, or the disenfranchised by embracing equality in expression, diversity, and identity. This studio encourages students to explore the critical thinking and the poetics of unconventional architecture and resilient urban design that address the idiosyncratic narratives of humanity and climate.
SKY TIMBER™ - TROPICAL RENEWABLE ARCHITECTURE Tutor: Shinya Okuda The year-round high intensity sunlight experienced by tropical plantations, allows trees and crops to grow a few times faster than the ones in temperate climates. One of the strongest motivations to review timber plantations nowadays, is that it is a 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 of constant high-humidity, harsh weathering and fierce termite attacks. SkyTimber™ is a professional design research studio, aiming to create symbiosis between nature and the built environment, providing microclimate, fresh oxygen, comfort, and amenity for humanity, leading to unique sustainable tropical aesthetics in architecture.
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