Erik
Diong Fuhan
Kenneth Koh Qibao
Loo Bo Yan
Ma Xiao
Yang Han
G. L’Heureux AIA, LEED APPublished by the Centre for Advanced Studies in Architecture
National University of Singapore
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Thesis Advisor
Assistant Professor
Erik G. L’Heureux, AIA, LEED AP
Thesis Studio:
Diong Fuhan
Kenneth Koh Qibao
Loo Bo Yan
Ma Xiao
Yang Han
• a time of intense difficulty or danger:the current economic crisis
• a time when a difficult or important decision must be made:[as modifier] :the situation has reached crisis point
• the turning point of a disease when an important change takes place, indicating either recovery or death1
Singapore has always been in crisis: a communist insurgency, a colonial contamination, a claustrophobic position, a racial tinder box, a poverty underbelly, an economic collapse and now an environmental apocalypse. Crisis is opportunistic. Crisis empowers. And crisis fuels action. In the case of Singapore, crisis is a surgical instrument, sometimes sharp; other times blunt that keeps the city state in an atmosphere of continual change --a process of radical transformation the envy of the world.
In Singapore, crisis keeps the economy moving forward and the jack-up cranes rotating throughout the night. This ballet of construction, silent but ever going, illuminates the blackened sky, expanding a landscape for the country’s expansionist desires one square kilometre by kilometre. Architecture fills the land with objects and forms, infrastructure and parks, highways, and subways, facilitating a growing city as if there is no other choice. In the race to fill herself, Singapore and her architects dance with ever increasing speed and freneticism. If only one had a moment to
rest and see what has been made.
Through a series of probes into the milieu of this amazing architectural laboratory on the equator, at once the darling and punching bag of our architectural heroes, Singapore Transcripts peers onto the landscape with eyes wide open – looking at what has been built over 45 years of reaching for the first world. The devices of architecture and graphic diagramming are employed as detectives, forensically uncovering the mythic, the hidden, and the less obvious along with that which one pretends to know. Has a crime been committed? In most opinions: no, yet the scene is nevertheless dramatic and titillating.
Singapore Transcripts depicts a foundation to a city as a speed bump to the country’s own frictionless efficiency. It represents a moment of pause and reflection in an orgy of doing.
And yet, Singapore Transcripts remains Singaporean at heart, embracing crisis as opportunity in an offering of future visions to spur the experiments and radical transformation forward, if ever so slightly, askew.
Erik G. L’Heureux, AIA LEED AP, Editor Assistant Professor Department of Architecture National University of Singapore1 Oxford English Dictionary, http://oxforddictionaries.com/view/entry/m_en_gb0191250#m_en_gb0191250, Sampled August 10, 2010
2 See articles by Michael Sorkin, Rem Koolhaas, and William Gibson.
This is a love story. It is a story of our own love for Singapore.
It is a narrative of Singapore’s desire to remain relevant. A tale of Singapore’s continued foresight and ambition. As in all love stories, there are seemingly irrational and extravagant ideas that create acts of absurdity. Yet in the context of love, everything seems completely appropriate and entirely plausible.
Singapore’s unique history of perpetual transformation is combined with speculations of a future Singapore illustrated with visions of a Singapore reaching for its logical conclusion. But more than any fiction, this is about Singapore’s survival and the strategies required to overcome its historical burden and self-created geographical challenges.
Scene One: The First Hydrological Nation State Set in 1516, a map of Sir Thomas More’s Utopia, the first Hydrological Nation State.
Scene Two: The Most Developed Hydrological Nation State Singapore, 2009 – the most developed hydrological nation state – looks forward to its own radical transformation in the next eighty-eight years, a tripling of the nation’s history of autonomy. The parallels between the two scenes, 1516
and 2009, are shockingly familiar, an uncanny resemblance that resides in one’s architectural subconscious: two islands crossed by rivers and lakes, surrounded by ports and sea traffic, visions of the Garden of Eden. Large landmasses to the North anchor the two island visions where a multitude of new towns are dispersed across the landscape; Utopia has fifty-four, Singapore only twenty-five. But Singapore is only 44 years old, Utopia: 493.
Scene Three: For the Love of Topos, for the Love of Water, for the Love of the City Rudolph De Koninck, in his text “Singapore,AnAtlas of Perpetual Territorial Transformation”, notes of Singapore’s Topophilia. Topophilia is a love of ground, a love of place, a love of topography, and it sets the stage for an amazing history of battle. Land fights sea growing day by day. Sea attacks land in a slow process of erosion. A give and take forming the basis for Singapore’s continued transformation and continual reinvention, fighting ocean currents, monsoon deluges, and territorial reclamation. Topos is fundamental to the island’s existence. Without topos the amazing Singapore Story would be just a seafaring myth awash in the Straits. Then again, for Singapore, land equates with modernity; surely a floating city is bound to sink.
Singapore’s topography has been entirely constructed from its earliest
beginnings; at present, at least 25% of its original size has been added. Dredging hoppers form new topos on a 24-hour cycle, “rainbowing” sand to an ever growing island. Albeit at the expense of her neighbors continually shrinking. In South East Asia geopolitics is literally about geology: sand. Singapore is a fully constructed landscape inside as well as out – new territory created from ocean bottoms or a nearby island, a flattened surface topography to make building that much easier and more expedient. Its engorged perimeter retained with a stone beachfront, encloses a 365-day green interior, an average 28°C 80% Humidity atmosphere produces complete atmospheric consistency. In this landscape of continual transformation, we see the traces of Utopian aspirations: a city in self created constant growth, a city that is at once an idea and in a process of becoming, a green garden manicured and constructed, a city of modernist icons sampling the best of everywhere, encapsulated by a glistening blue sea; the lubricant for a frictionless city the envy of the world.
Singapore is now an urban prototype influencing the development and growth of cities and nations the world over: Dubai, Russia China along with its ASEAN neighbours closer to home. It has simulated its city experiments and exported them to Tianjin and Suzhou summoning its internal talent for external expansion. The model
is as if Singapore was embedded within the pages of Calvino’s Invisible Cities. Kubla Khan sits in his garden listening to the travels by the Venetian Marco Polo… imagining a city like no other – the envy of all cities. To know Singapore is to know where the urbanized world is heading. And to imagine a future Singapore is to imagine future urban configurations of massive global impact. Singapore represents the biggest wet dream of urban and architectural transformation – a vision of the city for perpetual architectural employment and enjoyment. It is a city constantly reinvented – a radical proposition of a future coming to fruition only to be remade on the peaks and valleys of the shifting tides.
Singapore is one of the greenest cities on earth, and with 2.37 metres of rainfall each year. It is also one of the wettest. Beside its population of 5 million, Singapore’s only other resource that makes it so successful is the water and the ships over its sea lanes. In Singapore, water is everything. Yet in a biblical twist of fate, Singapore has no significant fresh water source. It imports or recycles almost all of its drinkable water. Singapore’s best invention for liberty may well be drinkable water from her own effluence, affectionately embraced as “New Water.” With “New Water”, Singapore literally drinks up to thirty percent of its own discharge – a percentage that grows
with every new water reclamation plant. Tremendous quantities of energy are expended to fabricate water, yet it rains more in Singapore than ninety percent of the world’s cities.
In 2011 and 2061 the water treaties between Singapore and Malaysia will expire. Will the tap be shut off permanently? Aquatic autonomy must be the new answer for security in this little red dot. In Singapore, and now the world over, the black gold now appears more and more -- blue.
Despite Singapore’s architectural love for topos, its most important real estate is not land. Le Corbusier and his fascination with Cruise ships a century earlier seem all the more pressing now. Raising an architecture on Pilotes, the ships in the landscape appeared to float over the vegetation. Tranformed into the ubiquitous HDB project, 83 percent of the nations population believes high is the only way to go. A more literal interpretation is what we need now.
In Singapore, water is everything. Aquatic territory gives Singapore its geopolitical power, its functioning port, and its reason for existence. Even the UN knew this in their vision for a hydrologically inspired urban Singapore in 1963 – the “Ring City” with mass transport by rail and sea in concentric circles of developing
The most public of spaces is found at Singapore’s perimeter. Ports are free and open for business 24 hours a day –measured in fractions of a second – with surrounding shipping lanes packed with ships from all over the world. Singapore now has a “New Padang” at the very site of the old harbour, now constructed as Marina Bay. A city square transformed into a constructed lake. A floating arena in the centre of the lake is Singapore’s newest spectacle. A yearly act celebrating nationhood is acted out annually on August 9th in a feat of amazing proportions and choreographic precision the envy of any international performance. And water is its foundation.
Singapore claims to have one of the highest population densities of any urban environment. Yet it never feels like that on the street. It has planning parameters to grow from today’s size of 4.8 million to 6.5 million or even larger. Yet when compared to Manhattan, Singapore could fit a population the factor of nine. 34 million bodies fighting for blue gold in this utopian island…that is if only everyone loved Singapore as much as “I love New York”. In its quest for urban supremacy and aspiration to be one of the top cities of the world, Singapore competes for tourism dollars, creative talent and investment against Hong Kong, London,
Tokyo, Shanghai, Beijing, Bangkok, and Moscow. The average size of those cities is over 8.1 million. Why isn’t Singapore competing with smaller cities such as Boston, Geneva, Frankfurt, Capetown, Yokohama, which have populations closer to her own? Because Singapore as an idea, fully embraces its slang stereotype: Kiasu-ism – a fundamental fear being left behind. The burden of being irrelevant is too much to ignore. But fundamental to living on this small island is to be threatened, on the verge of erasure, of being irrelevant. Crisis is operative and an instrument for architectural execution. Over in Dubai, an even smaller population before the impeding financial ciris seemed to do a better job at eclipsing Singapore’s shine in their own aspiration to be the best of everything. Dubai’s own hydrological ambitions had momentarily overtaken Singapore’s transformation in every category. The Palm, The World and the planned Universe were the euphoric spectacles of Google Earth. What will Singapore ever do in its own rationed growth?
Luckily for the planners of singapore the spectacles in the desert are now coated in a layer of sahahra sand particles, abandoned cars, and empty glass towers. Anna Wintour, the veritable fashion editor states “I don’t think anyone is going to
want to be overly flashy, overly glitzy, too Dubai, whatever you want to call it….” Anything Dubai is now a liability.
In Singapore’s state of constant selfconstructed urban and architectural crisis, fear and change are best friends. Singapore fears many things: shifting economies, powerful neighbours, departing talent, interior terrorism, returning poverty. It is also afraid that the water might run out. The one thing it is not afraid of is the consequences of its own ambitions.
And now more than ever, Singapore is afraid, not of “too Dubai” but that climate will massively reconfigure its landscape, undoing its history of self-modification and extension. The flattened landscape or land reclamation of Singapore has become big but it has also become vulnerable. Volume and area are inextricably linked. The dictums of architectural geometry return with a vengeance. In a landscape of increased area and radically reduced volume, the biggest threat to Singapore’s made form is the sea. It has always been this way. Singapore has been fabricated from the sea and it now very well could undo it.
We know Florida is about to go under. The Netherlands has been fighting for a very long time. New Orleans was inundated in 2005. Malaysia was swamped
in 2007. Venice tried to accommodate the Mediterranean but is currently spending billions to hold back the sea in a mechanical wall. And now Singapore, due to its reconfigured topography, is threatened to sink right back in. The flattened landscape is perfectly functional – the ideal tabula rasa for new invention – yet entirely vulnerable to the sea it depends on. A few meters of additional sea will submerge this fantastically functionally flat landscape and undo forty-four years of ambition.
Singapore’s emulation of the Avenue des Champs-Elysees, made for an orgy, not of culture, but of consumption was recently inundated with a tropical flood. Shopping landmarks were filled with a few meters of what it means to live in a tropical jungle: rain and mud. But Singapore with its techonological prowess embraced its own amnesia and forgot where it came from: the equator Even the Minister Mentor Lee Kwan Yew had to respond to the mounting criticism “No amount of engineering can prevent flooding”. This is after 45 years of embracing technology as the means to transform the swamp to the city. Clean up crews were dispatched in effortless expediency and now Hermes if open for business once again. The irony remains to be noticed.
Coupled with Singapore’s sinking shrinking feeling, it plans to grow if only to keep competing with all the top cities
of the world. An increase of 1.7 million people by 2050 - 26% more bodies to occupy a limited territory. Where will these bodies go? More importantly, where will they go when the rising sea erodes all that we love: topos. Water and land – it is a constant struggle, a conflict like no other. And it is about to get much worse.
Only a radical transformation of Singapore will save it from this nightmare. Only by imagining such a complete makeover will we reassert Singapore’s ability for massive change, to reassert the constant state of changing relevance, a path to utopia. It is the fulfilment to embrace the history of hydrological urbanism –the uniquely Singaporean experiment in Southeast Asia.
If only now amnesia can be prescribed again, in limited doses to repress its Modern aspirations and embrace its previous equilibrium with its surroundings.
Imagine a city of equilibrium rather than restriction, a city embracing its hydrological past as a beginning for a new future. Imagine a city as a laboratory incorporating its almost theme-park-like ever-changing culture as shopping; where everything and everyone is on the market, where the most economic space on earth reaches its spatial manifestation. Imagine a city with the best of everything and
innovation happens as a product of the best shopping market practices. Imagine a city that everyone likes and maybe not immediately love...but eventually does.
Imagine a city where the extension of this thinking is taken to its logical conclusions, a city that becomes the most amazing, constantly changing fantasy, securing its relevance, if only due to its ambitions and tremendous ability to change. Imagine a city where change is the norm, where architects live out their fantasies, and the Tower of Babel exists – though rather than reaching for the sky, it reaches out to the sea. Imagine the solution to Singapore’s impending irrelevancy found precisely in Singapore’s extraordinary history of transformation projected forward. Imagine a city where the culture of crisis is deployed for positivistic ends.
To love is to fight for survival. Two acts of survival Singapore must take in this battle for her territory:
1. Flood herself
2. Float herself
Act 1: Singapore floods herself in the nation’s largest “New Water” reservoir. Singapore has already started self flooding – a fresh water Marina Bay. Aquatic bigness secures autonomy, sustenance, and recreation. Le Corbusier’s
“Machine for Living” in cruise ships
finally acknowledges its hydrological beginnings. A heartland where the “void” in the “void deck” returns to sea – a sea of self constructed New Water – and a nation of HDBs embrace their typological lineage. Flooding insures Singapore’s hydrological security. It puts its interior in equilibrium with the rising sea level change and provides for a new landscape of aquatic production.
Act 2: Singapore floats herself to establish perfect equilibrium in rising seas. Equilibrium is the only sure act of self defence. Floating future Singapore thrusts new development in equilibrium with its surroundings, an ocean one. Manufacturing is re-tooled for self preservation. In this new engine for growth, urban form meets ocean technology at a colossal scale. In such an absurd act, Singapore dreams for an eventual complete national relocation to more beautiful surroundings. Moving the entire nation to international waters secures the global symbolism of a nation willing to dream and more importantly: to execute.
A short term expense insures long term viability. Singapore does both in this crazy almost plausible story.
And of course on a massive scale.
The Singapore government has
already started to act. So have the engineers. Even the scientists are in on it. But where are the urban designers? Where are the architects? Individualistic performance keeps them with eyes which do not see.
The new Singapore envisioned; imaginings for the future, “An Hydrological City of Tomorrow”:
1. A flooded national interior with floating exteriors
2. Floating Density is the way to go
3. Sampling the world over –the best of everywhere; typological imports is the new vogue as a Grand Architectural Sampling.
4. Co-opt international city strategies rather than invent new ones – displacement always forces innovation
5. Floating ideal cities: to be the best of anyplace in a near perfect tabula rasa
6. Deform idealism for maximum aquatic frontage for a perfect calibration of real estate and value -- A landscape of maximum frontage, minimum environmental impact
7. Create a continuous monument of housing and idealism: 6.5 million people in a 390km perimeter, only five stories high, eight streets deep is required to fit everyone. It consumes only 20% of the nation’s territory permitting complete ecological freedom. Each citizen can walk to the jungle and to the sea.
8. Maintain a continued safe haven for
shipping; a port with massive floating docks, safe harbours, and not forgetting, a dramatic form
9. Legions of cruise ships go nowhere but change all the time ensures variation and dreams
10. Return Singapore to its ocean faring roots, embracing its uniquely Singaporean history where the kelong is the typology of choice
11. The city embraces itself as nation of objects now in a glistening blue sea: a new field of possibility.
12. The city is of tides and containers, a city of piercing verticals and floating horizontals
13. Singapore’s green heart becomes an international symbol – Even New York City’s Central Park is jealous.14. Clean green and blue takes on massive proportions.
15. The nation embraces the perfect gated community on a global scale. Bucky Fuller would be envious in a Truman show like display of technology.
16. The garrison city returns where everything is protected inside the gate : even the military planners are happily on board.
17. Imagine a city of leisure and internalized pleasure, of exclusivity and luxury, of autonomy and freedom.
18. Imagine a city of the most advance research occurs in the strangest of spaces.
19. Imagine a city where Wal-Mart and Carrefour is the port on a massive scale.
Shopping is direct and package free.
20. Imagine a city which is a host of Dormitories for Everyone….
21. A city of canopies and connectors – there is no other option for spatial interconnectivity
22. A city of absurdity and logic; a scenario of a city that OMA is already building
23. A city of Greenpeace resting on Exxon Mobile; a city of oil and a city of abalone farmers supporting one another; a city of Monsanto and floating rice plantations
24. A city of contrasts and contradictions of big things and small things.
25. A city of architectural dreams waiting to be realized…
A city in love with itself. A city in love with all cities. A city like no other. An Exuberant City. An Exuberant Singapore
In ancient Egypt, funeral practices and burial customs were based on the belief in the rebirth after death. By preserving the physical form of the body through mummification, the dead is immortalised and prepared for an afterlife.
1 Before the Old Kingdom, bodies were laid in desert pits and preserved naturally through dessication. The wealthier Ancient Egyptians laid their bodies in stone tombs. This led to the construction of the burial monument, The Great Pyramid of Giza, for an Egyptian Pharoah.2
During the Ming Dynasty, the people believed in the existence of an afterlife, so the rulers sought to build massive tombs for themselves. Over a period of 200 years, tombs were built at the foot of hills and protected by walls totalling 40 kilometres. These tombs cover an area of more than 40 square kilometres, northwest of Beijing, the capital city of China.3
These ancient societies were built upon totalitarian values.
More than 4000 years after the completion of the Great Pyramids of Giza and 400 years after the fall of the Ming Dynasty, how different are our policies regarding the remembrance of the dead
1 http://www.crystalinks.com/egyptafterlife.html
and landscapes of death in Singapore?
1) Cemeteries in and around the valuable city area were exhumed. A stateowned public cemetery at Choa Chu Kang was offered as an alternative to deal with the disposal of the dead.
2) A 15 year leasehold on burial plots in Choa Chu Kang Cemetery is imposed. All graves are to be exhumed in 15 years. If one was not bounded by religious reasons, the remains will be cremated. A grid pattern is now imposed onto this state-owned cemetery to facilitate burial and exhumation.
3) Cremation is advocated. It is the preferred way of dealing with the disposal of bodies.
4) Besides temporary burial and cremation where you place cremated remains in an urn, you could also opt for the scattering of ashes into the sea, 2.8km South of Pulau Semakau, a landfill site.4
2 http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Egyptian_pyramids
3 http://www.crystalinks.com/chinartifacts.html
4 http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Death_in_Singapore
The coast has to be read in its multifariousness: as cultural object or commodity; as territory or political field; as a geographical feature; as an outline around a landmass; as a demarcation between ground and sea; as a figureground relationship; as a fractal edge; as a place where boats harbour and dreams ebb into the frothing waves.
Peering from the full-height glass railings of the Marina Bay Sands’ iconic Skypark, the first thing that strikes me is how immaculately framed this particular view is. It was apparent that the immense cantilevered platform was designed to present this interface between land and water as Singapore’s glowing scoreboard of triumphs and successes-to-come. The apparatus responsible for this massive moving of the landscape – scaffolding, machinery – all proudly assembled and displayed. This scenario somehow recalls artist Shen Shaomin’s bonsai installations: plants shackled and bolted with torturous devices designed to wrench the woody stems into beautiful forms, the metal clamps and screws equally compelling.
In Berita Singapura: A New Look at Housing, a propagandistic film produced in 1967, the many scenes of HDB flats are interrupted with images of a coastline of dense vegetation fringed with a wide band of virgin soil that expands into the sea. This is the result of land reclamation at
Changi and the East Coast where strips of new virgin ground were created, and later, transformed into new housing estates like Marine Parade. In the process of reclamation, “one thousand acres of land are reclaimed”, forming an appendage that stretches half a mile out to sea”, as narrated in the film. The earth comes from the Changi Hills, transplanted and formed into the homogeneous rectangle of land displayed in the film.
As I furiously flip the pages of my street directory printed less than a year ago, I realize that the three roundabouts that were supposed to be along the road are now gone, along with the many colonial-era bungalows that used to dot the landscape of coastal Seletar. The roads are now straightened and the hilly terrain leveled to make way for the new Aerospace Hub envisioned by Singapore’s planning authorities. A peek at online forums would reveal the collective lament of these changes by the people who once lived here - it is these fragments or unclaimed shards of the city that go unnoticed, and are silently rendered obsolete by the mappings of change.
While I do not personally feel any attachment to the changing coast and its artifacts, it is slightly inconvenient to keep purchasing new maps.
Imagine you would stare exactly 5 kilometres off a coastline and decide that that would be your new ground for architectural contention. You would sum up your thoughts by conceiving a ship / factory right there, abandoning all maxims of civil engineering for naval architecture. You would tread new ground(water), beyond the physical limits dictated by planning, just to know what you can achieve. And then there is more.
93 years back, the publication of Tony Garnier’s Une Cité Industrielle1 informed of the separation of land into parcels, tagging them as appropriate into functions organic to urbanism. Imaginary lines drawn on paper became actual physical sites of ideological battles latent with heterogeneous pressure. That very idea is not unlike Singapore herself, who has often battled at its coast to build and rebuild its coastline facing wrath from the choppy Singapore Straits. Its land is subdivided into parcels – from 5 main regions to 55 planning areas.
At the point where functionalism pushes land planning to its limits, water as ground (and dumping ground) becomes less a daunting thought and more a hydrological ambition - a flippant retort towards the aimed exodus of the industrial image towards an economical front in
developing nations. With topographical influence at its minimal, (like the Cite Industrielle, on a plateau in Southeastern France) the range and depth of the sea becomes the first and perhaps only layer of inhibition. Such featurelessness shall influence buildings to generate themselves as landforms, as undulations to respond to muted landscapes.
This suggested infinite capacity for expansion and, as such, an escape from romantic ideas about place, for a place2 (heavy industries) which has surely little if not no inklings about romance becomes strangely appropriate. Superstudio did it and claimed irony – exaggerating concepts of a technological utopia to the point of absurdity. The fashioning of industrial landscapes, usually out of reach of architects but often the bread butter for engineers and technicians encounters an intentional role reversal, a possible dystopia and utopia.
Yet, was it Anthony Burgess who mentioned in A Clockwork Orange if it was better for a man to have chosen evil than to have good imposed upon him? Inventions generate reinventions, reinventions are reinvented. The skewing of ideological thoughts, like a skipped beat in clockwork, generates new momentum in discourse.
1 http://www.britannica.com/EBchecked/topic/118760/Cite-Industrielle
2 http://blog.eyemagazine.com/?p=63
In 1975 during a talk organized by Rotary Club Central on “Alternatives to Public Housing”, Tay Kheng Soon presented the research1 based on Leslie Martin and Lionel March’s urban investigation that served as an antithesis of high-rise living as the only solution to Singapore’s land scarcity. When being asked by the press, Mr. Liu Tai Ker, who was then the Chief Architect of HDB, gave a political answer in response to this technical proposition, that, “he obviously has a different calculator from mine.”2
Such studies on low-rise high density housing were initiated approximately 40 years ago at Cambridge University. Leslie Martin and Lionel March, in their book Urban Space and Structures, and later in the essay From Sky-Scraping to Landhugging, proposed various speculations and hypothetical situations based on mathematical models that suggested a non-direct variation between the plot ratio and density. It is further demonstrated that the equivalency in plot ratio can be achieved using perimeter blocks with much lower heights compared to its skyscraping compatriots. In the thesis The Wrong Calculator, the perimeter configuration proposed by Leslie Martin
and Lionel March propagated itself into a mode of massive urban model that thrives on the flatness and connectivity. Not only did Martin and March’s theory manifest itself as an anti-HDB statement here, it also suggests a departure from Corbusian ideology that was adopted by Singapore in its early stage of development.
Being a model of “Macro-Radical” approach, a term coined by Erik G L’Heureux, “one that proposes largescale speculative changes to the city, economy, politics, culture, transportation, hinterland and architecture to counter the negative climatic effects of development and current models of urbanization”3, The Wrong Calculator offers an alternative vision that echoes with its predecessors such as Constant Nieuwenhuy’s New Babylon Project and Yona Friedman’s Space City, a grand speculation that is created to reassert the authority of the architect as the visionary in order to make direct influence on the making of the new sustainable world in an age of crisis. The “Macro-Radical” approach, being the most latent paradigm in architectural field in the current age of crisis, has essentially extended the scope of design and architecture to related fields such as
1 Newsintercom. "NewSintercom » Tay Kheng Soon and SPURS: Activism in the Early Days of Singapore’s History." NewSintercom. 15 May 1999. Web. 10 Aug. 2010. <http://www.newsintercom.org/?p=18>.
2 Ibid.
3 L'Heureux, Erik G. "Radicality", Winy Maas MVRDV. Vol. 4. Singapore: Department of Architecture, School of Design and Environment, National University of SIngapore, 2008. Print. Ong Siew May Distinguished Lecture Ser. 2008 "Sustain/Ability" p. 10
infrastructural, economical, sociopolitical, ecological and cultural aspects, creating an amalgamation of specialized domains in which the agency of design needs to be repositioned. Nonetheless, as architects are compelled to deal with increasingly larger contexts and the mushrooming eco-cities, the unprecedented crisis that we are facing today points to more than a shift in the scale. It spells an opportunity to rethink the alternatives in the process of expanding the scope of architecture and urbanism: in this case, the reinterpretation of Leslie Martin and Lionel March’s theory that was crystallized more than 40 years ago.
For Singapore, land scarcity is a threat inculcated from young. From Civics and Moral Education lessons as early as Primary One, the physical limitations to Singapore as a cold hard fact is constantly instilled, ringing a perpetrual siren of insecurity in all Singaporeans’ hearts.
Truth be told, Singapore’s land anxieties are no more life threatening than the country’s water issues, but the extravagant investmentss in the drive to expand the nation’s territories is much more costly than sustaining the lifeline of water supply: at S$15 per m2, Singapore imported 300 million m2 of sand just in the year of 2001, of which construction usage is on average 4.3 million m2 per year1. Since independence than 50 years ago, Singapore grew 13% of its current land mass from reclamation of its coast 2. However, with the stoppage of supply of sand material from neighboring countries, the expansion has to come to a halt. Singapore’s ceaseless dredgers have finally hit a grinding stop.
But can Singapore remain satisfied with its current land area?
When Singapore once again feels the urge to expand its territories, this time we re-examine the value of the land that
Singapore holds as its reserves. Land value can no longer remain planar, but is now associated with its volume that allows it to be effectively useful above the sea level. This new economics depends on the most efficient distribution of the commodity of sand as reclamation material. The basic construct of land should be re-read in the new context, as previously reclaimed land should be reassessed for opportunities that allow it to achieve a net gain of usable land area, though utilizing the same absolute volume.
Instead of the typical flat uniform reclamation, a new scenario can be extrapolated, where Singapore finally embraces the only resource that it has in abundance: water, to achieve a new equilibrium of a hydrological nation state. Singapore will finally be completely independent of geographical resources, as the nation becomes self-sufficient in providing material for expansion.
With the new land order, it inspires new imaginations and romanticism of the hydrological urban state. A more suitable building typology better adapted to the conditions of tropical Singapore can be derived, that generates a model of true water front living for the tiny island nation.
1 Bill Guerin, ‘The Shifting Sands of Time – and Singapore’, http://www.atimes.com/atimes/Southeast_Asia/EG31Ae01.html (accessed 11 July 2010)
2 De Koninck, Rodolphe, Julie Drolet and Marc Girard, An Atlas of Perpetual Territorial Transformation. Singapore: National University of Singapore Press, 2008 p15.
1957 : 581 km2 (40%)
1990 : 633 km2 (43%)
2000 : 660 km2 (45%)
[2006 : 723 km2 (50%)]
2009 : 776 km2 (53%)
Total reclaimed (13%)
Quantity of Undersea Topography, Land Topography and Water Bodies (2009)
Area of Land Topography
776 square km (53%)
Area of Undersea Topography
646 square km (44%)
Area of Water Bodies
36 square km (2%)
Total Volume of Earth = 13.90 cubic kilometres
Total Volume of Sea = 26.68 cubic kilometres
UOB Plaza (280m high)
Percentage of Singapore’s Land
Less than 5m Above Mean Sea Level: 45%
Water Import: 1,131,838 m3 / day
NEWater: 240,000 m3 / day
Rainfall: 4,523,974 m3 / day
Water Consumption: 1,262,000 m3 / day
Reservoir Water: 680,000 m3 / day
Desalinated Water: 136,000 m3 / day
Average Cost of 1 cubic metre of Water
Domestic Usage: $1.59/m3
Non-Domestic Usage: $1.77/m3
Shipping Industry Usage: $1.92/m3
Industrial Usage: $0.43/m3 = $0.10/m3
DAILY: 1,262,000 cubic metres
MONTHLY: 37,860,000 cubic metres
Typical Quantity of Water Consumption = 1,000,000 cubic metres
YEARLY: 454,320,000 cubic metres = <1,000,000 cubic metres
2011 Contract
325,545 cubic metres / day
2061 Contract
946,353 cubic metres / day
Volume of water sold back to Johor
140,060 cubic metres / day (2002)
Total Net Import
1,131,838 cubic metres / day
4,523,974 cubic metres/day equivalent to 1810 swimming pools spread out over area of Singapore: 4,523,974 / 710,000,000 m2 = 0.0063m = 6 mm
Amount of Water Catchment Area to Total Area
Water Catchment Area: 421.8 sq.km
Total Land Area: 710.2 sq.km
Typical Amount of Water Subtracted by Evaporation
Pan Evaporation : 1565mm / year
Typical Amount of Water Subtracted by Evaporation
129358 cubic metres / day
1000 cubic metres of water
Building Typologies in Singapore
Low Density Housing
vernacular hut stilt house parti-wall courtyard house
High Density Public Mass Housing
terrace housing semidetached housing
detached housing
low rise slab block straight slab block bent slab block point block
skybridge-connected super block
Building Typologies in Singapore
High Density
Public Mass Housing
box block
curved slab block
horse shoe block
semi-enclosed block
joined parallel blocks
swiss roll block
diagonally joined segmented blocks
uneven twin block
butterfly blocks
enclosed blocks with uneven height
bent slab block
joined jigzaw blocks
continuous podium with tower blocks
High Density
Private Mass Housing
low-rise assemlage of blocks
horseshoe block high rise block with podium
Commercial Mixed use
short slab block
mega podium
multiple high rise blocks with podium
Population: 4,620
Total Open Space: 774,264 m2 -- 77%
Footprint of Building: 225736 m2 -- 23%
Total Floor Area: 564,340 m2 -- 56%
Jurong West
Population: 52,100
Total Open Space: 741,842 m2 -- 74%
Footprint of Building: 258,158 m2 -- 26%
Total Floor Area: 3,815,780 m2 -- 380%
Tuas Industrial Estate
Population: 3, 840
Total Open Space: 6798550m2 -- 70%
Footprint of Building: 300145 m2 -- 30%
Total Floor Area: 450 000 m2 -- 45%
Little India
Population: 11595
Total Open Space: 857,573m2 -- 86%
Footprint of Building: 142,427m2 -- 14%
Total Floor Area: 647,438m2 -- 65%
Total Floor Area (Shop + Office + Warehouse + Factory) = 45.2 sq. km
Total Floor Area (Residential) = 115.2 sq. km
Total Road Area = 30.7 sq. km
Overall Area (Present) = 191.1 sq. km
Area Required Per Capita = 38.2 sq. m
Area Required by 6.5 Million = 248. 3 sq. km
Resulting Natural Lanscape (6.5 Million in Four Storey Building Height )
Resulting Natural Lanscape (6.5 Million in Single Storey Building Height)
Resulting Natural Lanscape (6.5 Million in Max. Building Height of 280m )
1km x 1km Urban Fabric
Single Storey Building Height (Ideal Situation)
Population: 13,600
No. of Cars: 1,800
Projected GDP: SGD$723,411,200
Energy Consumption: 20,703,620 KWH / year
Area Required by PV Cells: 7.35 sq. km
Area Required by Wind Turbine: 113,073 sq. km
Water Consumption: 767,351 cubic. m / year
Petrol Consumption: 1,019,258 bbl / year
1km x 1km Urban Fabric
Four Storey Building Height (Ideal Situation)
Population: 56,800
No. of Cars: 7,200
Projected GDP: SGD$3,021,305,600
Energy Consumption: 86,468,060 KWH / year
Area Required by PV Cells: 30.7 sq. km
Area Required by Wind Turbine: 472,248 sq. km
Water Consumption: 3,204,821 cubic m / year
Petrol Consumption: 4,256,902 bbl / year
1km x 1km Urban Fabric
Fifty Storey Building Height (Ideal Situation)
Population: 405,000
No. of Cars: 50,625
Projected GDP: SGD$21,542,760,000
Energy Consumption: 616,541,625 KWH / year
Area Required by PV Cells: 218 sq. km
Area Required by Wind Turbine: 3,367,265 sq. km
Water Consumption: 22,851,281 cubic.m / year
Petrol Consumption: 30,352,909 bbl / year
Scenario 1
One Multi Storey Carpark
1km by 120m = o.12
Scenario 2
1 Open Compound Parking Lot 10km by 1.3km = 13 sq.km
Scenario 3
867 Multi Storey Carparks
100m by 30m, 5 storeys each = o.oo3 sq.km
Quantity of Land Required to Feed 6.5 Million
Vegetarian Diet
52500 sq.km
Amount of Solar Energy Available per year
(calculated based on a ten year average weather report, coupled with the hypothetical situation of covering the entire land area of Singapore with solar panels of maximum efficiency 21%, and maximum daylight hours from 7am- 7pm.)
Amount of Solar Energy Available per year
2.0 billion KWH = 0.17 billion KWH/ month = 0.0056 billion KWH/ day
Amount of Electricity Consumed per year
30.4 billion KWH
Area of land required to generate 30.4 billion KWH of solar energy per year x 15.2
10, 792 square kilometres
Amount of Wind Energy Available per year
Amount of Electricity Consumed per year
Amount of Wind Energy Available per year
billion KWH / 7, 692
Amount of Wind energy generated per day = Power of wind x time x efficiency = 0.5 x swept area x air density x velocity3 x 0.3 = 14.1 x (365x24x60x60)x 0.3 = 0.00013 billion KWH/ year = 0.000011 billion KWH/ month = 371 KWH/day
Area of land required to generate 30.4 billion KWH of wind energy per year x 233, 846 166, 030, 769square kilometres
92 square kilometres
13% of Singapore’s land area
Total Built-up Space
= Building footprint x No. of floors
161.4 square kilometres
24.2% of Singapore’s land area
Total Green Surface Area
328.7 square kilometres
46.3% of Singapore’s land area
Quantity of Green Volume
Total Green Surface Area x Average height of trees
= h x Total Land Area of Singapore
h =
Total Building Footprint x No. of storeys
= h x Total Land Area of Singapore
h = 1.10m
Animals in Singapore, Exotic and Native
Hornbill Buceros bicornis Parakeet Psittacula longicauda Orangutan Pongo pygmaeus Pink Dolphin Inia geoffrensis Macaque Macaca fascicularis White Tiger Panthera tigris Greenwing Macaw Ara chloropteraPlants in Singapore: Exotic and Native
Rate of Return: (Governmental assets from GIC and
GDP per capita
--foreigner
(1.2 million)
SGD$98,305
GDP per capita
--residents (3.6 million)
SGD$38,371
GDP per capita
--average SGD$53,192
Average Range of Income per person
1000 Singapore Dollars
GNI (Gross National Income) per capita: S$49,996
Annual Savings per capita: S$24,350.5
GDP (Gross Domestic Product) per capita: S$53,192.2
Annual CPF Contribution: S$17,250
Comparison of Singapore’s Wealth with Others
Assuming volume of 1 tonne as 1 cubic.m
Air Passenger Movement
37,700,000
1,857,000 tonnes
Assuming average weight of a person: 65 kg
Total weight: 2450500000kg=2450500 tonnes
Shipping Total Cargo 515,415,000 tonnes
Transported Volumes In and Out of Singapore Air FreightFlight Volume into Singapore
100 planes
Daily: 317 flights
Monthly: 9660 flights
Yearly: 115930 flights
Ship Traffic into Singapore
100 ships
Daily: 360 vessels
Monthly: 10,824 vessels
Yearly: 131,695 vessels
Ports of Singapore and Shipping Channels
Cars: 487,804
Taxis: 24,300
Rental cars: 12,391
Buses: 15,327
Motorcycles & Scooters: 146,120
Goods & other vehicles: 156,089
Singapore: 8.2pax/car
USA: 2.1pax/car
China: 142.9 pax/car
DAILY: 916,000 bbl
MONTHLY: 27,480,000 bbl
= 1,000,000 bbl
YEARLY: 329,760,000 bbl = <1,000,000 bbl
Petrol consumed in Singapore: 916,000 bbl/day
Petroleum refined in Singapore: 1,350,000 bbl/day
Petroleum imported into Singapore: 2,440,000 bbl/day
Petroleum exported from Singapore: 1,270,000 bbl/day = 1,000,000 bbl/day = <1,000,000 bbl/day
Blue Gold H20
Consumption: 1,262,000 cubic metres / day
Black Gold Oil
Consumption: 916,000 cubic metres / day
Volume of Sand Imported from Indonesia before 2007
Total: 93.3 million m3 / year
Reclamation: 89 million m3 / year
Construction: 4.3 million m3 / year
1 million cubic metres of sand
Volume of Burial Spaces needed to house the dying population
Volume of an allowable coffin
2.1 x 0.9 x 0.6 = 1.13 cubic metres
Volume of Burial space needed to house the dying population in a year
Volume of space needed to bury the Muslim dying population in a year
Allowable volume for one coffin x crude death rate per year = 1.13 x 17,140 = 19,436 cubic metres
Volume of space needed to house the cremated
Percentage of Muslim population x Total Volume of burial spaces for the dying population = 2, 915 cubic metres
14,569
16,463 cubic metres
155 174.8 cubic metres
Total Volume of space needed to house the dying population in a year = 3, 090 cubic metres
1000 cubic metres
The Floating Cemetery is a critique of the state’s unrelentless, concerted effort to reduce, compress and homogenize deathscapesin Singapore.
Pragmatic reasons, such as the lack of land, have been repeatedly cited to justify the exhumation of old cemeteries and the advocation of cremation. Entire public housing estates have been builtupon old cemetery grounds.
At present, only 1.29 square kilometres of land is open for burial. A 15-years leasehold on burial plots is imposed to maximise the functionality of the land. After 15 years, all graves have to be exhumed and the remains cremated, as long as one was not bounded by religious considerations. This is in spite of the fact that only 3000 cubic metres o space is required to house the Muslim dying population and others who chose cremation annually.
Besides, new cemetery grounds were replanned to singularly face the perpendicular of Mecca, in a bid to regularize cemetery grounds, and in the process, sacrificing cultural preerences specific to ethnic groups in Singapore.
In addition, there are also legislations prohibitng the burning of joss sticks and candles exceeding a certain height or cross section, found under Environmental Public
Health Regulations.
The Floating Cemetery is then sited at “the black hole” of the nation’s seascape, beyond the functional Singapore port limit and yet within the Singapore International Maritime boundary, in the western part of Singapore, where most industries are located.
A single unit grave is designed for, within a system which allows for a change of angle between adjacent graves. One could also pay a premium to choose its orientation and customize their graves with add-ons.
This thesis proposes that the current contestations between meaning of Chek Jawa’s coast can be reconciled with an alternative seascape of aquaculture farms.
The investigations begin with the gradual modifications of Singapore’s coast over history, observing that extensive reclamation has created a highly controlled and urbanized coast that wraps around its southern edge. On the northern edge, the coast is left as a deliberately rural, green landscape.
Chek Jawa lies at the intersection of these 2 visions. Its shallow, sheltered waters is home to a variety of ecological habitats and is seen by the public and environmentalists as a haven for biodiversity. The state, however, sees this intertidal zone as an ideal spot for land reclamation and creation of a tabula rasa.
The thesis explores how a matrix could be established on water that simultaneously fulfils that government’s vision of a productive landscape, while extending the intertidal ecosystem of Chek Jawa. A system of fish, seaweed, oyster, algae and abalone farms extend over the territorial waters slated for reclamation. The production fields of these farms are arranged in accordance to relationships between each crop, depth of water and water current directions. This matrix comprises of a system of various types
of aquaculture farms forming a system of complementary relationships and spatial adjacencies.
A system of poles extend across this field. It organizes and anchors the elements of this system into place, while floating pods that hold specific functions like labs, hatcheries and living units are attached to these production fields.
Bamboo construction is explored as a primary material for its rapid growth and availability, and lightweight properties.
Kenneth Koh Qibao
The notion of this thesis is about landscapes in the sea, and how the sea exists as a dumping ground and repository for anything that exists in excess on land. The project envisions a water treatment facility consisting of wastewater reclamation and seawater desalination off the coast of Changi. Cast 5km away from the coast, the facility becomes an extraction from the city and finds new relation to its neighbors in the shipping straits.
Taking on the form of a micro city; the project represents a dystopian imagery where such suppressed landscapes find relevance only in their non-existence. It is the pioneer of a displaced industrial society, floating and existing almost entirely below sea level, hidden as an undesirable and unseen entity. Once shrouded by pristine imagery, formal systems can then evoke expression, where the literal act of dumping machines into the sea stretches and distorts the sea surface, creating erotic curves that sink below the sea level. From a flat deck, the facility morphs downwards into a logical rhythm of machine hulls, structural shafts and lightwells.
Like a poche space of discontinuity, infrastructural facilities are often placed in land planning at whim to market forces. In Singapore, envisioned water hubs are located on the far western and eastern corners, shying away from civilization. Up close, such facilities are camouflaged
with greenery and secured with chain link fences, an intentional subterfuge.
The project illicits how the continuing trends of national image obsession and idea of land as a scarce resource might evoke a solution, hereby termed as Seascapes, in uniquely water locked Singapore.
In 1975 Tay Kheng Soon presented his research based on Leslie Martin and Lionel March’s urban investigation, an antithesis to the dominating view of high-rise living as the only solution to Singapore’s land scarcity. When being asked by the press, Mr. Liu Tai Ker, who was then the Chief Architect of HDB, gave a political answer in response to this technical proposition, that, “he obviously has a different calculator from mine.”
This thesis is the continuation of the legacy. In the first part of the thesis, an investigation will be carried out based on Leslie Martin and Lionel March’s theory in order to debunk the myth of high-rise living as the only solution to the land scarcity in Singapore, hence finding the answer for the “right calculator”. The next part of the thesis seeks to carry forward the result of investigation in the form of architectural manifestation, using data and relationships extracted from Yishun (a typical HDB new town) through various means, a completely horizontal landscape of equivalency in various aspects can be achieved, yet creating a total architectural, social and political deviation from the HDB model that was engineered after a Corbusian ideology.
The thesis develops the Marina South Finance and Business District as a flooded quarter with the introduction of water to divide the land into parcels, resulting in an eventual increase in combined surface area, and the manifestation of a new typology of skyscrapers as a response to the transformed landscape.
It is a discussion of the imminent stoppage of supply of sand from our neighbouring countries to Singapore. To step ahead of this threat, Singapore carries out a self-consuming act: digging into one’s own soil reserves for the continuation of the nation’s physical growth in the form of land reclamation.
The experiment takes place at Marina South, where a system of subtraction of earth takes place on the pancake-flat reclaimed site to form canals, in the process enlarging the Marina Bay freshwater reserves and parceling up the land into plots of different shapes and sizes. The system maintains a steady and efficient workflow, achieving the final network of water bodies in phrases, in synch with the development of building blocks by zones.
The fill material is then strategically redistributed and re-used, resulting in an increase in the absolute national size and usable space of Singapore. A varied hydrological urban situation with an
entirely new order and modus operandi has been carved out.
The new urban response to the changed landscape called for an inversion of the typical skyscraper model, to have top-heavy forms with much smaller foot prints, stitching a canopy with their masses. The exterior in between the buildings is interiorized with the shade and enclosure created, while the interior of the buildings are exteriorized in their layered exposure to the elements. The eventual form would be more reflective of Singapore’s hydrological and tropical condition.
Reclamation over Time De Koninck, Rodolphe, Julie Drolet and Marc Girard, An Atlas of Perpetual Territorial Transformation. Singapore: National University of Singapore Press, 2008 p15.
Quantity of Undersea Topography, Land Topography and Water Bodies (2009)
Lee, Kim Woon, Zhou, Yingxin, Geology of Singapore. Singapore: Defence Science and Technology Agency, 2009.
Total Volume of Earth and Sea Lee, Kim Woon, Zhou, Yingxin, Geology of Singapore. Singapore: Defence Science and Technology Agency, 2009.
Topography of Singapore - Plan Original Drawing Lee, Kim Woon, Zhou, Yingxin, Geology of Singapore. Singapore: Defence Science and Technology Agency, 2009.
Topography of Singapore - 3D Model Original Model Lee, Kim Woon, Zhou, Yingxin, Geology of Singapore. Singapore: Defence Science and Technology Agency, 2009.
Topography of Singapore - less than 5m above mean sea level
Located Defense Technologies along Singapore’s Perimeter
“Flood Maps.” Flood Maps. N.p., n.d. Web. 5 Jan. 2010. <http://flood.firetree.net/>.
Google. “Google Maps.” Google Maps. N.p., n.d. Web. 1 Nov 2010. <http://maps. google.com/>.
Water Comparisons“MEWR - Key Environment Statistics - Water Resource Management .” Ministry of the Environment and Water Resources, Singapore. N.p., n.d. Web. 5 Feb. 2010. <http:// app.mewr.gov.sg/web/Contents/Contents.aspx?ContId=682>.
Average Cost of 1 m3 Water
Typical Quantity of Water Consumption
Typical Amount of Water from Rain
Amount of Water Catchment Area to Total Area
Typical Import of Water from Malaysia
Typical Amount of Water Subtracted by Evaporation
Public Utilities Board . “Water Tariff.” PUB. N.p., n.d. Web. 23 Mar. 2010. <http:// www.pub.gov.sg/general/FactsandFigures/Pages/WaterTariff.aspx>.
“Yearbook of Statistics Singapore 2009.” Singapore Statistics. N.p., n.d. 27 February 2010. <http://www.singstat.gov.sg/pubn/reference/yos10/yos2010.pdf>.
“Yearbook of Statistics Singapore 2009.” Singapore Statistics. N.p., n.d. 27 February 2010. <http://www.singstat.gov.sg/pubn/reference/yos10/yos2010.pdf>
“Local Catchment Water.” PUB Singapore. N.p., n.d. Web. 3 Feb. 2010. <http://www. pub.gov.sg/water/Pages/LocalCatchment.aspx>.
Public Utilities Board. “Imported Water.” PUB. N.p., n.d. Web. 23 Mar. 2010. <www. pub.gov.sg/water/Pages/ImportedWater.aspx >.
Tan Stephen Boon Kean, Eng Ban Shuy and Chua Lloyd Hock Chye, ‘Modelling hourly and daily open-water evaporation rates in areas with an equatorial climate’, Hydrological Processes, vol. 21, no. 4 (Wiley: Chichester, 2007), pp. 486-499
Building Typologies in Singapore
1km x 1km Urban Fabric
Bukit Timah Road
Jurong West
Tuas Industrial Estate
Little India
CBD
Footprint of 6.5 Million in Single Storey/ Four Storey/Max Building Height of 280 m
Resulting Natural
Lanscape (6.5 Million in Single Storey/Four Storey/Max Building
Height of 280 m
1km x 1km Urban Fabric
Single Storey /Four Storey/Max Building
Height of 280 m (Ideal Situation)
Projected Parking Lots to House All Automobiles
Original Models according to town plans by HDB
“Singapore Information.” SG & Singapore Map - Singapura, Singapur, Singapore Information. N.p., n.d. Web. 26 July 2010. <http://www.streetdir
“Singapore in Figures 2009.” Singapore Department of Statistics. N.p., n.d. 27 Feb 2010. <http://www.singstat.gov.sg/pubn/reference/yos10/yos2009.pdf>.
Assumptions: Total floor area not inclusive of military facilities, seaports and airports. *280m is chosen as it is the height of UOB Plaza, one of three tallest skyscrapers in Singapore.(“UOB Plaza.” Wikipedia, the Free Encyclopedia. Web. 21 Feb. 2010. )
“Singapore in Figures 2009.” Singapore Department of Statistics. N.p., n.d. 27 Feb 2010. <http://www.singstat.gov.sg/pubn/reference/yos10/yos2009.pdf>.
Assumptions: Total floor area not inclusive of military facilities, seaports and airports. *280m is chosen as it is the height of UOB Plaza, one of three tallest skyscrapers in Singapore.(“UOB Plaza.” Wikipedia, the Free Encyclopedia. Web. 21 Feb. 2010. )
“Singapore in Figures 2009.” Singapore Department of Statistics. N.p., n.d. 27 Feb 2010. <http://www.singstat.gov.sg/pubn/reference/yos10/yos2009.pdf>.
Assumptions: Total floor area not inclusive of military facilities, seaports and airports. Average floor area per person = total floor area / 6.5 million
“Yearbook of Statistics Singapore 2009.” Singapore Statistics. N.p., n.d. 27 February 2010. <http://www.singstat.gov.sg/pubn/reference/yos10/yos2010.pdf>
Assumtions: Carparking space at LTA standards 2.4 x 4.8 for cars, etc. + 30% for circulation, each floor designed as double ramp at sides of floor slab
Amount of Total Road Surface Area Road Length In Lane-Kilometer”. Land Transport Authority, Singapore.N.p., n.d. 27 February 2010. <http://www.lta.gov.sg/corp_info/doc/Road%20length_lane-km%20 (2008).pdf>
“Yearbook of Statistics Singapore 2009.” Singapore Statistics. N.p., n.d. 27 February 2010. <http://www.singstat.gov.sg/pubn/reference/yos10/yos2010.pdf>.
Quantity of Land Required to Feed 6.5 Million
Amount of Solar Energy Available per year
Amount of Wind Energy Available per year
“The Vertical Farm Essay”. Vertical Farm. N.p., n.d. Web. 16 May 2010. <http://www. verticalfarm.com/essay_print.htm>
“The next green revolution”. Indian Academy of Science. N.p., n.d. Web. 24 May 2010. <http://www.ias.ac.in/currsci/feb25/articles16.htm>
Water, Electricity and Gas Sales, 2008, Utilities, “Yearbook of Statistics Singapore 2009.” Singapore Statistics. N.p., n.d. 27 Feb 2010. <http://www.singstat.gov.sg/pubn/ reference/yos10/yos2010.pdf>.
Guide to Singapore’s weather,NEA Meterological Services, National Environment Agency. N.p., n.d. 27 Mar 2009. < http://app.nea.gov.sg/data/mss/pdf/26March07.pdf>.
Water, Electricity and Gas Sales, 2008, Utilities, “Yearbook of Statistics Singapore 2009.” Singapore Statistics. N.p., n.d. 27 Feb 2010. <http://www.singstat.gov.sg/pubn/ reference/yos10/yos2010.pdf>.
“Small wind turbine works at low wind speeds.” cnet News. N.p., n.d. Web. 2 Apr. 2010. <news.cnet.com/8301-11128_3-10258176-54.html >.
“Introducing the Honeywell Wind Turbine from WindTronics .” Welcome to Alternative Energy . N.p., n.d. Web. 1 Aug. 2010. < http://www.earthtronics.com/honeywell. aspx >.
Total Building Footprint Google. “Google Maps.” Google Maps. N.p., n.d. Web. 1 July 2010. <http://maps. google.com/>.
Total Built-up SpaceBuilding Commencement, Construction and Real Estate, “Yearbook of Statistics Singapore 2009.” Singapore Statistics. N.p., n.d. 27 Feb 2010. <http://www.singstat.gov.sg/ pubn/reference/yos10/yos2010.pdf>.
Stock of Residential Properties, Construction and Real Estate, “Yearbook of Statistics
Singapore 2009.” Singapore Statistics. N.p., n.d. 27 Feb 2010. <http://www.singstat. gov.sg/pubn/reference/yos10/yos2010.pdf>.
Stock of Commercial and Industrial Properties, Construction and Real Estate, “Yearbook of Statistics Singapore 2009.” Singapore Statistics. N.p., n.d. 27 Feb 2010. <http://www.singstat.gov.sg/pubn/reference/yos10/yos2010.pdf>.
Total Green Surface Area “Annual Report 07-08.” National Parks Board, Singapore. N.p., n.d. Web. 12 Dec. 2009. <www.nparks.gov.sg/cms/docs/about-us/annual-report-08/Content-Page.pdf>.
Quantity of Green Volume “Annual Report 07-08.” National Parks Board, Singapore. N.p., n.d. Web. 12 Dec. 2009. <www.nparks.gov.sg/cms/docs/about-us/annual-report-08/Content-Page.pdf>.
Quantity of Interior Volume Take assumption floor height equals 4.5 m.
Animals in Singapore, Exotic and Native
Animal Life and Nature in Singapore. Singapore: Singapore University Press, 1973. Print.
Plants in Singapore: Exotic and Native Animal Life and Nature in Singapore. Singapore: Singapore University Press, 1973. Print.
Energy Consumption per capita per annum
Personal Wealth vs Govermental Assets
World Bank. “Energy use.”Data | The World Bank. N.p., n.d. Web. 26 May 2010.
<http://data.worldbank.org/indicator/EG.USE.PCAP.KG.OE?cid=GPD_26>.
“Yearbook of Statistics Singapore 2009.” Singapore Statistics. N.p., n.d. 27 February 2010. <http://www.singstat.gov.sg/pubn/reference/yos10/yos2010.pdf>
GDP by Contributor“Yearbook of Statistics Singapore 2009.” Singapore Statistics. N.p., n.d. 27 February 2010. <http://www.singstat.gov.sg/pubn/reference/yos10/yos2010.pdf>
Average Range of Income per person
Comparison of Singapore’s Wealth with Others
“Yearbook of Statistics Singapore 2009.” Singapore Statistics. N.p., n.d. 27 February 2010. <http://www.singstat.gov.sg/pubn/reference/yos10/yos2010.pdf>
World Bank. “GNI per capita, PPP (current international $) .”Data | The World Bank. N.p., n.d. Web. 26 July 2010. <http://data.worldbank.org/indicator/NY.GNP.PCAP. PP.CD?cid=GPD_8>.
CIA. “World Factbook.” CIA - The World Factbook. N.p., n.d. Web. 4 May 2010.
<https://www.cia.gov/library/publications/the-world-factbook/>. World Bank. “World Development Indicators database.” Data | World Bank. N.p., n.d. Web. 28 Apr. 2010. <http://siteresources.worldbank.org/DATASTATISTICS/Resources/GDP_PPP.pdf>
CIA. “World Factbook.” CIA - The World Factbook. N.p., n.d. Web. 4 May 2010. <https://www.cia.gov/library/publications/the-world-factbook/>.
Development Status
accredited to Singapore
Transported Volumes
In and Out of Singapore
World Bank. “World Development Indicators database.” Data | World Bank. N.p., n.d. Web. 28 Apr. 2010. <http://siteresources.worldbank.org/DATASTATISTICS/Resources/GDP_PPP.pdf>
CIA. “World Factbook.” CIA - The World Factbook. N.p., n.d. Web. 4 May 2010. <https://www.cia.gov/library/publications/the-world-factbook/>.
“Yearbook of Statistics Singapore 2009.” Singapore Statistics. N.p., n.d. 27 Feb 2010. <http://www.singstat.gov.sg/pubn/reference/yos10/yos2010.pdf>.
Flight Volume into Singapore “Yearbook of Statistics Singapore 2009.” Singapore Statistics. N.p., n.d. 27 Feb 2010. <http://www.singstat.gov.sg/pubn/reference/yos10/yos2010.pdf>.
Flight traffic from Singpore to the world (Singapore Airlines)
Singapore Airlines. “Singapore Airlines--Global Route Map.”Welcome to Singapore Airlines: Asia’s leading airline with flights serving over 35 countries. N.p., n.d. Web. 26 July 2010. <http://www.singaporeair.com/saa/en_UK/content/flights-fares/ routemap/GlobalRouteMap.jsp>
Airports in Singapore“ Singapore Information.” SG & Singapore Map - Singapura, Singapur, Singapore Information. N.p., n.d. Web. 26 July 2010. <http://www.streetdirectory.com/>
Ship Traffic into Singapore
Ship traffic from Singpore to the world
Ports of Singapore and Shipping Channels
“Yearbook of Statistics Singapore 2009.” Singapore Statistics. N.p., n.d. 27 Feb 2010.
<http://www.singstat.gov.sg/pubn/reference/yos10/yos2010.pdf>.
Port of Singapore Authority.”Our Core Business.” PSA Singapore. N.p., n.d. Web. 4 Sept. 2010. < http://www.singaporepsa.com/transhipment.php>
Lee, Kim Woon, Zhou, Yingxin, Geology of Singapore. Singapore: Defence Science and Technology Agency, 2009.
Typical Quantity of Automobiles in Singapore
Comparison of Private Car Ownership
“Yearbook of Statistics Singapore 2009.” Singapore Statistics. N.p., n.d. 27 Feb 2010. <http://www.singstat.gov.sg/pubn/reference/yos10/yos2010.pdf>.
“Worldmapper.” Worldmapper. N.p., n.d. Web. 7 Aug. 2009. <http://www.worldmapper.org/>
“World Population 2002”. United Nations. N.p., n.d. 23 Jan 2010. <http://www.un.org/ esa/population/publications/wpp2002/wpp2002wc.htm>.
Petrol ConsumptionCIA. “World.” CIA - The World Factbook. N.p., n.d. Web. 4 Jan 2010. <https://www. cia.gov/library/publications/the-world-factbook/geos/xx.html>
Total Quantity of Petrol Usage in Singapore
Consumption of Water vs Consumption of Petrol
Water and Gas Pipelines from Malaysia and Indonesia
Geopolitical Air Quality
Volume of Sand Imported from Indonesia before 2007
Volume of Burial Spaces needed to house the dying population
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We would like to acknowledge and extend our heartfelt gratitude to the following people who have made the completion of this book possible.
Assistant Professor Erik G. L’Heureux
Tay Kheng Soon
And also,
Owen Lam
Vikas Kailankaje
Thank you,
From left to right
Loo Bo Yan
Ma Xiao
Yang Han
Erik G L’Heureux
Diong Fuhan
Kenneth Koh Qibao
Erik G. L'Heureux AIA, LEED AP is an architect and educator. He is an Assistant Professor at the National University of Singapore where he researches utopian visions of the city, hydrology, and cruise ships. A former boat builder, he practiced architecture in New York City while teaching at the Irwin S. Chanin School of Architecture at the Cooper Union. Erik received a Master of Architecture from Princeton University where he received the Susan K. Underwood Design Award. He studied as a Fitzgibbon Scholar at Washington University in St. Louis where he was recently honored with a Distinguished Alumni Award.
Erik is a registered architect in the USA, NCARB certified, and a LEED Accredited professional. His professional design work is marked by formal clarity, material richness, and environmental calibration and has won several international awards including a Cityscape Award, two MIPIM Future Project Awards, and two AIA NYS Design Awards. His work has been published in Architectural Record, Architectural Review, Space, Form, and Singapore Architect among many others.
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Born in China, Yang Han has spent half her life in little Singapore, the country where she now calls home. A meticulous dreamer,
