Picture credit: Annabelle Lim
AGILITY AND ADAPTABILITY - THE NEW NORMAL OF LIVING WITH ENDEMIC COVID-19 Tutor: Tan Beng Kiang The unprecedented COVID-19 pandemic has upended our daily lives and posed social, economic, and environmental challenges. It has affected how we live, work, learn, and play; and disproportionately so for the vulnerable communities. As we move to the next stage of living with COVID-19 endemic and anticipate the inevitable next pandemic, there is a need to rethink architecture and urban design solutions for the new normal. Any thesis proposals that falls into this theme are welcome.
Picture credit: Loo Quan Le
ASIAN MODERN HERITAGE IN THE CONTEXT OF CHANGE: CONSERVATION FOR SUSTAINABILITY Tutor: Johannes Widodo
Modern Asia has not developed in a vacuum but has evolved through sustained interactions with the West, which has had a constant presence in our collective consciousness. Asia is a dynamic source of our identities. Industrialisation, urbanisation, westernisation, colonisation, decolonisation, and nation-building-these phenomena have variously defined Asian modernism. Asian modern heritage is manifested in the myriad forms of architecture. Conservation is a process of managing change and permanence that is directly related to ecological sustainability and cultural authenticity. In 2012, TERRAIN VAGUE: NEW TRANSFORMATION POSSIBILITIES the UN released 17 Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) Tutor: Teh Joo Heng as a blueprint to achieve a better and more sustainable future for the world by 2030. The conservation design A shift in usage patterns is being anticipated in the city, thesis deals with the adaptive reuse of modern heritage supported by hybrid land use, car-lite policies, and with in the Asian context with a new well-integrated function, COVID-19 accelerating the state of flux. This transformation while maintaining cultural authenticity, architectural allows for the reclamation of land from roads, carparks, and integrity, economic viability, social inclusivity, and other public infrastructures. A new possibility is emerging historical continuity. within the city that comes with the recalibration of usage for existing buildings and leftover land. MAKING CONNECTIONS The studio is to speculate what the existing city will be like Tutor: Wong Chong Thai, Bobby when this transformation takes its full effect. Students will select areas of interest within the city/city fringe to The thesis offering examines architecture as a postulate the possibilities. matrix of pathways, networks and connections, both existing and emerging. Architecture is often about making connections; it is in making connections that ISLAND PEOPLE significations occur. These are moments where thoughts Tutor: Tiah Nan Chyuan or actions are virtualised or actualised. Like a throw of the dice; diverging and converging forces collide, Across different cultures and time, the island condition producing singularities. At that point, the old is refreshed, has been described historically and mythically as the or morphed into new emergence. For Nietzsche, this experience of an outpost that is defended, surrounded, emergence represented the way to truth. We will examine contained, isolated, quarantined or hidden. The inherent architecture through this lens, putting aside notions of vulnerability and siege mentality of islands imbue their pre-existing cultural values or preconceived perfect inhabitants with both a deep awareness of their identity, absolutes, and look instead at the production of sense their self and their relationship with the surrounding prior to language, codes or identities. externalities.
ALTERNATE HISTORIES, PERIPHERAL ASSOCIATIONS Tutor: Wu Yen Yen
ARCHITECTURE OF THE SHARING CULTURE Tutor: Zhang Ye
A sharing culture offers a sustainable and equitable way of living together in an increasingly fragile urban world. In sharing culture, individuals participate in sustained practices of togetherness characterised by the co-creation, This studio offers a space for architecture-esque counter- co-management, co-ownership, and co-consumption anthropocentric germination. Materialist ontologist Manuel of resources. Crucial to this sharing process, is the recognition of architectural spaces as both a shareable De Landa suggests that geology, biology, economies, asset, and an enabler for more effective sharing activities. linguistics and culture, steered the growth of cities. This thesis offering will explore the important question Mario Carpo suggests that form generation is afforded by mathematics and science. With computation, a new kind of of how we can design an entire space sharing system to embody the culture of sharing itself, and how we can intelligence that is incongruous even to our logical minds harness architectural design to facilitate the continuous is upon us. Beginning from outside of architecture, we production of new socio-spatial relations and new modes of will find our way back in, piecing together self-motivated gathering and interaction in sharing activities. theses, for physical expressions in environments where they thrive unseen. Architecture is rarely predicated on discourses and ideologies. Instead, it reacts to other metaphysical, natural and societal constructs.
CLIMATE SENSITIVE DESIGN; LIVABLE AND SUSTAINABLE CITIES Tutor: Yuan Chao With the rapid urbanisation and climate change, the key challenge in front of architects is clear: it is difficult to achieve a balancing act between unstoppable human desire for development and the finite environmental carrying capacity of cities. This design studio engages students to explore ways to conduct climate-sensitive design to create buildings that are more human centralised and environmentally responsible. The studio emphasises the impact of environmental analysis on design. The knowledge delivered in this studio allows students not only to develop climate sensitive design concepts and ideas, but also to practice the corresponding design strategies and skills.
This thesis will explore the “island condition” through both physical and abstract notions, looking at operative conditions from isolation to protectionism, access and rights, and equality and equity. Non-linear enquiries would be conducted across multiple probes, to unravel deep mindsets that define the unique behaviour of “islands” and their people. The hope is that these insights will suggest alternative strategies to engage geopolitical issues related to collective identity, shared responsibility and ownership over contested territories, and space and time.
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