MAkING LIQUID EDGES ARcHITEcTURAL

// MA k ING PLOT/Ow NERSHIP c OMPREHENSIBLE

Coastarina

The Architecture of the Coastal Borders of Sijori

Between the polarities of land and water exists a third category—the flank between the land the sea. Neither entirely dry nor wet, hard nor soft, soil nor water, ground nor fluid, the shore is a constantly adjusting, flexible space of tremendous diversity, beauty and livelihood. Or so the imagery is conjured in a pastoral vision of what the ‘Coast’ should be. The tropical coast—at least of our imaginary - is the most vibrant of coastlines. It has implicit ideas of abundance and pleasure, relaxation and escape. Images replicated throughout the world imagine the tropics as a paradise, a garden of eden full of bounty. The coast is fundamental to this imaginary, the very idyllic space between the wild of the jungle and the unknown of the sea.

In the Singapore Metropolitan Region, an entirely different manifestation of paradise has developed over the past 100 years. The coast has been reframed as a space of nation building and industrial developments—a depository to be developed and exploited.Can we begin to conceive an alternate architecture for such an edge?

(Erik G. L’Heureux Studio)

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Tracing urban infrastructures, the site extends to encompass a wider territorial perspective of the geographical water basin. Uncontrolled dumping and perception of drainage infrastructures at Batam have led to the amassing of a garbage landscape at the basin’s outlet; an estuary of waste upon which local kampungs tiptoe. Can drains become architectural? How could we begin to conceptualise infrastructural languages as architecture?

A spine running across a natural ridge serves as exit for an adjacent community saddled between inundation from sea and waste in both directions. But in this mode of low-cost housing how much intervention is too much and where does plausibility cease? Basic frames for a crystallisation and impetus of urban development are tested as as almost pre-architecture, its skeleton but not yet its flesh.

As an established and acknowledged urban slum, municipal governance has stepped in to improve conditions and garner political points. Concrete pavements on piles weave through the neighbourhood flanked by houses of a more transient, make-shift quality. In this stilted commune a desire for land and its greenery perpetuates, here proposed as planter boxes strategically inserted.

Borders Between the wild and the fabricated Pasir Ris, Singapore

Located in the north-eastern tip of the city, a 2 ha sized woodland surrounded by a variety of land uses including private & public residential, commercial, industrial, preserved nature areas and urban parks plays a role as a haven for endangered birds and rare species of trees. Neighbors and residents have considered the area as a priceless asset and have voiced out to save the place against the new development plan of an international school which would happen in the coming three years.

Besides the woodland, the neighboring built environment is neither a distinctive place nor a variety of experiences: monotonous greenery, similar streetscapes, plastic playgrounds every eight uniformed blocks, and open spaces occupied by identical sports facilities. As a town having its own unique set of requirements and landscapes to respond to, cookie-cutter plans may not make sense in terms of accepting both human and nature’s demands.

How then can we balance between nature and the increasing built environment? When the city has an unavoidable development plan, how do we guide our environment towards a more ecologically sustainable direction? Beyond simply preserving the site, could landscape architects propose ecologically sustainable prototypes to infuse ecological diversity and a healthy lifestyle into the complicated urban context with the awareness of the multi-faceted value of the natural landscape?

(Hwang Yun Hye Studio)

^ Measuring the wild forest