Aqua Lines Changi, Singapore

This infrastructure serves primarily as a form of resistance towards climatic conditions, to control and overcome tropical forces such as rain and floodwater for short periods, and divert its forces into the sea. It latches onto the natural and the built alike, becoming an essential part of its survival against the tropical forces. This form of architectural infrastructure is thus crucial in creating a “sterilized and clean” environment on which we build and live.

The series studies the “architecture of leaks”, creating a taxonomy varying from transport, conveyance, diversion to filtration. Multiple systems connect and to one another to form an intricate web of systems. However, with the extensive amount of roughly 200 ongoing and upcoming projects, this system is bound to experience points of splintering, where connecting points become disjointed or incoherent.

Neighboursheds North Batam

Estelle Sim (MArch\ Associate Professor Erik L’Heureux)

A watershed is conventionally known as an area of land that captures and drains water to a common point of discharge. It is a system where topography governs the flow of water through the landscape. Against an increasingly urbanized world, however, it is evident that this traditional notion of the watershed has not been displaced fast enough or far enough to accommodate human activity. In many cities today, the urban environment and watershed are two distinct territories, linked together by a series of pipe networks. The urban grid and site design bears no semblance to the actual natural watershed.

My thesis seeks to define a new form of watershed, using the concept of “neighboursheds”–atermIusetodescribeaneighbourhood-basedwatershed. Eachneighbourshedisdefinedbytheperimetersofaneighbourhoodcommunity andhasitsowngrammarofcollectingandmanagingwater.Strategiesemployed aresite-specificcalibrationstothedifferentfinancial,topographicalandpollution realities in each neighbourshed. The “neighboursheds” scheme is a system of distributed water infrastructure located at the community level. It intermediates between two extreme scales in Batam’s urban water system – the large, highlycentralized city reservoirs and the small, household level of domestic wells.