ISLAND STATE RETHINKING SINGAPORE’S RELATIONSHIP WITH THE SEA
Diploma Professor:
Asst. Prof. Milica Topalovic Architecture and Territorial Planning ETH Zürich SEC Future Cities Laboratory
Student:
Panos Coucopoulos B.Sc. Arch AAM
ISLAND STATE: RETHINKING SINGAPORE’S RELATIONSHIP WITH THE SEA
DIPLOMA PROFESSOR: Asst. Prof. Milica Topalovic Architecture and Territorial Planning ETH Zürich SEC Future Cities Laboratory COEXAMINATOR (t.b.c.): Prof. Christophe Girot Institute of Landscape Architecture ETH Zürich SEC FCL’s Module Leader EXPERTS (t.b.c.): Prof. Dr Vladan Babovic NUS Prof. Dirk Sijmons TU Delft
Island State: Rethinking Singapore’s Relationship with the Sea
STIMULI
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Having received, during my undergraduate studies, a concept-oriented way of approaching and resolving problems of architectural nature – applicable to various scales – I acquired skill in perceiving the subtle qualities that deliver to architecture a humanistic touch rendering it “to produce a positive effect”, in the words of philosopher M. Foucault. Yet, after dedicating two years to practicing architecture in different offices, I realized I was more intrigued by the complexities of contemporary cities and how one could apply the aforementioned humanistic sensibility within them. Understanding the way in which people use the city, studying patterns of movement, behavior and relations so as to better design the city to serve its purpose as the place where people can develop their creativity and be productive while enjoying comforts of urban life; all these matters aroused my curiosity. My studies at the ETH Zurich helped me comprehend the city as a complex “organism” composed of distinct physical factors and dynamics that guide, define and are defined by the society that grows within it; a series of networks superimposed over infrastructure, resources, necessities, political realities and human conduct. To grasp the relations sprouting out of all these layers of quantitative and qualitative data, one must have the possibility to examine all aspects of the city’s “physiology”. Participating in the Sea Region studio of Assist. Prof. Milica Topalovic, last semester, gave me the opportunity to examine the “physiology” of Singapore and its surrounding territories. Singapore as a city-state with its geographical and political situation is a unique opportunity to study contemporary urbanization.
Singapore, Johor Bahru and the Riau archipelago: the trinational territory
Panos Coucopoulos
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ARCHITECTURE OF TERRITORY
PREMISES
Building on a four-year research and analysis conducted by the Assistant Professorship of Architecture and Territorial Planning, ETH Zurich at the Future Cities Laboratory (FCL) in Singapore, the Island State project finds its raison d’être directly in the results of these studies. As a first step in understanding the territory at hand, the Hinterland research carried out by the professorship illustrated the influence of the trinational metropolitan region on the current and future development of the city-state. Overseeing the significance of geography, Singapore is often depicted operating in terms of a globalized city, neglecting the existence of the proximate region and thus, a connection to its surrounding territory. Parting from the opposite statement, the research proved the strong impact of geography in the formation of Singapore and the direct and indirect ties it has formed within the region, expanding its effective territory past its political borders. Continuing to build on the idea of the trinational metropolitan region, the Sea Region research aimed to further clarify the relation of the Singapore Strait to the region. It illustrated the necessity of engulfing the Sea Strait in a synchronized common territorial vision as a condition for a better and more sustainable evolution of the trinational space. The master thesis will build on the existing research conducted in the Hinterland and the Sea Region course in the HS 2014 and continue to examine the relationship between the city and the sea.
Tabula Rasa, Region of Singapore, Hinterland Reearch, 2012
Island State: Rethinking Singapore’s Relationship with the Sea
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SINGAPORE AND THE SEA With a modern history spanning just over two generations and an effective history of over 2,000 years, the city of Singapore is still fighting to assert its identity within and across its borders. It is also still in the process of defining its relation to the sea. The four years of study in the Singapore region brought to light the crucial factors that have defined the development of the city-state: the sea as an urban territory that produces a blocked coastline, which functions as a barrier and creates the paradoxical situation of an island city withdrawn from the sea. Another decisive factor for the development of the city has been the emerging economies of the neighboring cities. Strategically situated at one end of the Straits of Malacca, the trinational region of SiJoRi, constitutes a main link connecting the Indian and Pacific Oceans. Thus, the geopolitical importance of the region is paramount, specifically in terms of merchant transport. Yet, the SiJoRi growth triangle is still uneven with highly industrialized hinterlands serving Singapore, while Sinapore serves as an example for urban development for the neighbouring cities. In this context, and taking into consideration the aforementioned factors that are decisevely grafting onto the future urban strategy of the city, the Island State project will attempt to rethink the territorial setup and renegotiate the use of the coastline towards a more public oriented balance with easier access to the sea, as an opportunity to study the concept of quality of life within this emerging crossborder metropolis.
Panos Coucopoulos
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DISENGAGEMENT
POINT OF
As an incongruous reaction to the natural geography of the island, the city of Singapore lies detached from its natural borders. For reasons ranging from the restrictions related to national security issues, to the intense use of the sea as an economic territory and the industrialization of the coastal areas, a hard boundary has developed encircling the city-state, clearly creating an inside-outside relation to the surroundings.
DEPARTURE
Another pivotal factor in the formation of the architecture of the coastline is the water management process: with 70% of rain water being captured and stored in reservoirs, the flow of water between land and sea has been steadily disabled. This closing of the rivers has transformed the urban form of the city center; primarily because the port function of these rivers has been forfeited for water treatment facilities that separate sweet from salty water (i.e. Marina Barrage) thus abandonning the flow of water and vessels from the sea towards the city. These water treatment facilities have defined a new hard edge of the coastal zone. Accessibility, use and connections are trivial matters when discussing about the coastline. One of the very first observations made in my previous studies, was the physical disconnection of the sea and the city. Upon trying to access the coast, one discovers the difficulty of such enterprise; a simple exercise of reaching the nearest accessible access point to the seafront from the FCL building, proved possible only after 70 min and 5,5 km of walking along the coast.
A Disconnected Territory Marina Barrage and Marina Bridge at the end of the Kallang Basin
Island State: Rethinking Singapore’s Relationship with the Sea
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Panos Coucopoulos
9 Unfriendly Coastline The coastline as a continuous ensemble of industrial, logistical and sea trading infrastructure with small provision for public use
Publicly inaccessible facilities form most of the coastal zone
Physical barriers blocking acess to the seashore
The unfriendly coastline allows only partial glimpses and access points to the sea
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THE SEA AS AN INDUSTRIALIZED TERRITORY The Port-City Relation Due to land-marine interrelationships having drastically changed the interactions operating on the port-city interface, ”seaport cities like Singapore have witnessed drastic evolution and transformations in their waterfront redevelopment”, according to Brian Stewart Hoyle, in The Port-City Interface: Trends, Problems and Examples. Technological improvements, automatization, greater export/import needs have lead to more efficient, faster and less human-dependant interactions between ports and the docking vessels, thus resulting into a very different infrastructural landscape than the past. Following, or better yet, leading the trends in the shipment of goods, Singapore has witnessed the change of the port areas and its direct impact on the face of its total coastline development and interaction with the city. From the earlier port/city, which featured close spatial and functional association between city and port, to contemporary large scale ports covering vast extents of land or built directly in the sea, the city is redefining its relation to the port.
The Port and the City Expansion and evolution of the Tanjong Pagar Terminal. The once integrated port is now a mono-functional zone in the outskirts of the city.
Left: Map of Singapore, 1914 Right: Tanjong Pagar Terminal until 1960
Left: Master Plan 2014, URA Right: Tanjong Pagar Terminal after 1960
Panos Coucopoulos
11 Sprawling Ports Being a passage of international relevance for maritime handling, the 16 km wide Strait attracts maritime investments from all over, resulting in a continuous expansion of port’ infrastructure and facilities through the years.
Port infrastructure, 1955
Port infrastructure, 2014
Port infrastructure, 2030
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Industrial Territory The expansion and enlargement of the ports in the SiJoRi triangle is a direct response to the demand exhibited by the number of vessels present in the Strait and the respective vessels mooring daily at one of the ports. About 130,000 vessels arrive in Singapore alone each year, according to international estimates. That breaks down to about four ships entering the Strait every minute. The intense impact of the shipping industry is reflected on the territory in the form of industrial, logistics and berthing zones spreading across the coastline in an attempt to better serve this industry; an industry that amounts to about 7% of Singapore’s GDP. As a result, the land use in areas neighboring the coast has shifted into large barren stretches of industry and port-related infrastructure filling up the coastline and obstructing the connection between the land and the sea. The coastline, however, is not the only industrialized part of the whole goods’ transportation system; the sea itself, as shown in the previous research, is a territory very well knit with laws, bilateral agreements, physical and intangible infrastructure catering primarily to the facilitiation of the transport of goods and people.
Intense Use With a new vessel arriving every 2-3 minutes, a third of the world’s shipping moves throught the Straits of Malacca and Singapore each year, including most trade between Europe and China and nearly all the crude oil that moves from the Persian Gulf to the big Asian economies, (i.e. China, Japan and South Korea).
Map showing the presence of vessels in the Strait the 30.10.2014
Panos Coucopoulos
13 Industrial Territory This heavily trafficked passage is governed by international and national laws and legislations that precisely regulate the movement of vessels within the different sovereign jurisdictions. Development along the shoreline has followed the growth of the shipping industry. Both sea and land along the seashore comprise a well lubricated industrial territory. The neighboring Malaysian and Indonesian coastlines are now following in the steps of Singapore for their future development plans.
Map showing the stretching of the logistics territory over the Strait and its coastline
MALAY SIA INDON
ESIA
SINGAP
ORE
INDON
ESIA
Overall view of fairways, trafficways, anchorages, berths and ferry terminals in the Strait.
Land Use The balance between private and public land use. In red, the logistics and industrial areas. In yellow, the residential areas and in green, the natural areas.
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Attraction of the Sea Enveloped in a string of publicly inaccessible facilities that create a barrier between the city and the sea, Singapore is profoundly disconnected from the water, especially for an island nation. The coastline is mainly acknowledged as a generator for private and/or governmental investments that do not foresee any use or access for the public. This model of capitalizing on the coastline in the interest of infrastructural investments pertaining to sea trade, logistics, industry and oil refinery, has been extensively exported to the neighboring sea fronts as well. In their effort to catch up with Singapore, Indonesia and Malaysia are investing substantially in expanding and revamping their infrastructural and logistical capacities to better compete with the little red dot. These plans envisage more and bigger ports, larger logistical areas, shipyards and other satellite facilities relating to marine activities. These intentions automatically translate into more unfriendly coastlines and less vegetation or public space, leaving the shorelines more prone to erosion and general degradation.
Inaccessible Coastline Political, financial, strategic, social, geographical; whatever the reasons, Singapore’s coastline is ligned with barriers and borders that prohibit the direct contact betweeen land and sea.
Top left: One of the few remaining natural coastlines Top right: Oil refinery facility in the Southern Islands Bottom left: Military zone in the Johor Strait Bottom right: Vessel docking and refilling facility
Panos Coucopoulos
15 Closed Coastline Accessible, partly accessible, nonaccessible; the coastline of singapore has shifted from a mangrovecovered rainforest to a hard edge covered in infrastructure. the impact is visible on the development of the city and the relation of the population to the sea. Public spaces are few.
Industrial, logistical and military use of the coastline
Natural green areas along the coastline
Publicly accessible coastline
Island State: Rethinking Singapore’s Relationship with the Sea
PROCEDURE
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THE AIM, SCOPE AND METHOD Island State is an effort to rethink the relation of the city to the coast, to the sea, to the water and to nature; an effort to renegotiate the borders; to reclaim some of the islandness, once again. This will be accomplished by challenging the character and function of the coastline that is currently overwhelmed by the presence of logistics and industries all along it, which has resulted in an inward looking city, withdrawn from the seashore. The aim is to counteract this trend by introducing a new rationale that opens up the coastline and creates new access for the public. This will be accomplished in two scales: that of the city and that of the region.
TIMELINE
The preparation semester will be dedicated to the precise research and analytical understanding of the use of both coast and sea in Singapore, which will build on the extensively developed existing work. A reference for this is the work of Studio Basel in the book Switzerland: An Urban Portrait. The thesis map on urbanization of Switzerland shows the method of analysis that leads to creation of “types of urbanization”, which in turn become the base for future territorial policies, plans and designs. An overall orchestration of the urban landscape based on typologies and types of transformations that one observes along the coastline that may include logistics, industrial areas, pockets of nature areas, strategically undeveloped land. Next to defining these coastal typologies, the goal of the analysis is to create a rich argumentation on the accessibility of the coastline and its public use.
Die Thesenkarte des „Städtebaulichen Portraits“
Synthesis map of the “Urban Portrait”, Switzerland: An Urban Portrait, 2006
Metropolitanregionen Städtenetze Stille Zonen Alpine Resorts Alpine Brachen
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The design semester will concentrate on two scenarios: Short-term scenario: an overview of possible small-scale interventions that don’t require great effort and investment and don’t challenge the current land-use, but would increase significantly the qualities of public space and accessibility. Long-term scenario: a comprehensive understanding of possible long-term scenarios, that may affect the land use along the coastline (expansion of airport, new ports, shipping necessities, anchorages, etc.), to try to best assimilate and combine them, while preserving the priority of the natural and public coastline.
In both short-term and long-term scenarios, the result can be imagined as a plan for the sea and the coastal areas, which clearly puts into focus the highest priorities and potentials for the development of public functions and nature protection. This plan would also be regarded as a suggestion for the cities of Batam and Johor and the entire surrounding region.
leisure living CITY
nature transport working
SEA
TARGET
Towards a Balanced Use Today, in Singapore, the sea and coastline are almost exclusively used by and for commercial purposes. However, they hold the potential of hosting more urban functions catering to the public needs of the whole trinational metropolitan region.
Netzwerk Stadt und Landschaft Network City and Landscape
DBAUG bearbeitet
Departement Bau, Umwelt und Geomatik