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In a way, the sprawling urban collage of Balestier is representative of the zeitgeist and has been so since its humble beginning as a sugarcane plantation estate. Travelling a century back in time, historical figure grounds reveal a consistent cycle of typology changes that respond to shifting arteries and rather significant events. Development of settlement revolved around the interchanging importance of Balestier Road and Sungei Whampoa till the 1960s, while the urbanization of the post-1960s was spear-headed by the frequent flooding of Sungei Whampoa and the aggressiveness of Capitalism. Balestier’s changing typologies could thus be perceived as a continuous and ongoing struggle for survival. The following phase after site studies and redefining the urban fabric, was to revitalise the retail scene in the existing structures of Balestier Point. Brick-andmortar shops during the 2020 pandemic have been immensely problematic. Forcing the suspension of retail trading especially. In this vision, the building is saved, preserving Balestier's threatened urban infrastructures, allowing new and existing typologies to come together under an umbrella of neologism whilst giving a direction for the future planning of the future planning its new urban conditions.
Balestier Point 2.0 Image on the right, is a collage of readapting and reusing the existing residential structure. Creating extensions out to the plaza.
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Balestier Point 2.0 Design Intervention Spatial Distribution
BLUE The urban respite demarcates the retail area from the public square. Masking itself as a "construction barrier" for the future phases of redesigning Balestier Point. YELLOW These are mini retail shops where native crafters of Balestier can sell their works where there is a high volume of pedestrians. GREEN These are all spaces catered to the eateries, cafes, alfresco back alley dining areas. Balestier is a food hub and such eateries are finding it difficult to cover costs due to inflation amidst the pandemic. Here hawkers operate their kitchen and the public roam around to eat. PINK Majority of the spaces are dedicated to public recreational uses such as activity centers, coworking spaces and a plaza. Congregation spaces that were lacking in Balestier. The structural members act as directional maekers and at night they light up to brighten the podium and the rest of the village.
Balestier Point 2.0 Design Intervention Spatial Distribution
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FUNOMENA! Revitalisation of SCAPE
FUNOMENA presents a phantasmagorical critique of the state of the everchanging retail typology scene. It expounds on the transparency of dataism and citizen agency through a speculative reinterpretation of Orchard's shopping district into an urban amusement park and Data Centre onto the existing SCAPE site. Reimagining the typology of a Data Centre as engaging and an integral part of the urban environment. Celebrating the engineering machines, and increasing governmental and corporate surveillance, privacy has turned into an issue. However, the project reimagines architectural design that foreseeably will be driven by data, cloud tracking and technological prompts in the interest of society. The Data Centre functions by obtaining data from the consumers of the park through interactive screens. The information assessed enables the prediction of future structures and spaces by comparing the algorithms of the data, addressing the prevalent problem of everchanging typologies.
FUNOMENA Collage of The Site
The current problem at SCAPE Orchard, in the prime shopping district of Singapore, is that it has become a ghost town. Despite its megastructure, there has been a loss of patrons, clusters, culture and identity which was once synonymous with the youth-centred mall. The grey and red circles represent the existing public spaces where the youth community currently loiter. The structure of the mall is not transparent, which means entrances and the display of livery are not easily viewed from any visual points noted in the mapping. Within the areas of influence, the strong facades of the malls are uninviting the youth to have fun nor are the activities. However, the mapping, does show that there is a strong community that exists on the outskirts of SCAPE.
The beginning points of the project were to question the state of existing consumerism, youth engagement and the inflexible retail typology of Orchard. The project aimed to redesign SCAPE as a cultural and technological landmark predominantly for the youth. Where engagement lies beyond interaction with friends, but the ever-rising technology. Image on the right is a collage mapping of out visual points, porosity, nodes, facade expressions and focused demographic activities.
Plot Size & Purpose
53,190m2
Data Center Spatial Fabrication Lab
Digital Amusement Park Flexible Open Spaces
FUNOMENA Mindmapping of Design Through Citizen Agency
The youths of this generation are getting more aware of the digital shadows they cast. Moreover, social media has become a tool in empowering the generation to take a more active role in inhibiting and contributing to where they live. As such citizen agency was used a design tool for users to respond to interactive displays and the structure around them. Responses recorded by them help to influence the future structures of the place, where architecture is susceptible to change with future trends and demolished when deemed out of style.
FUNOMENA Programme Planning
Using the site analysis as a tool kit, mapping the building notes juxtaposing these nodes against the mapping of public clusters and visual connectivity. Understanding where the line between the public area of the entertainment hub should be versus the extremely private data processing zone. In Pamphlet Architecture's Building by Robert McCarter, Buildings should not be as nearly as functional as they pretend to be and the forms should engage rather than alienate.
Translating into the project as an intention to engage with the audience through technology and the feedback informs the architecture. A cyclical economy. The spatial and zoning studies were inspired by the 'plan' of a circuit board. Where one was able to borrow ideas of the flow of data in the circuit board and translate those into architectural strategies such as areas of infringement, concealing structures as data framework and facade trickery. Allowing all these ideas to come under one design.
ENTRANCE FROM EPICENTRE
ORCHARD LINK
FACING CINELEISURE
SUPPLY PIPES TO/FRO DATA CENTRE
NETWORKING EQUIPMENT
CONTROL CENTRE
GENERATORS
CABLE MANAGEMENT SYSTEMS
VENTILATION / COOLING SYSTEMS
“PUBLIC” SERVER ROOM
PRIVATE SERVER ROOM
SPACES IN A DATA & PRODUCTION HUB
OPERATIONAL OFFICES
TOWARDS PROPOSED SKATE PARK AND GREENERY
SECURITY MANAGEMENT
TESTBED
FINAL PRODUCT DOCK
RECYCLING CENTRE
MATERIAL STORAGE
MANUFACTURING LAB
VERTICAL + HORIZONTAL TRANSPORT SYSTEM
INPUT OF DATA THROUGH TECHNOLOGY HUMAN PARTICIPATION TO POWER THE ARCHITECTURE
FUN
TOP FLOOR
FUN
ENTRANCE FROM EPICENTRE
ORCHARD LINK ROAD
ENGAGING THE PUBLIC
FUN
MAN AND MACHINE BIG BRAIN SURVEILLANCE CONTROL TOWER
PUBLIC SPACES
GROUND FLOOR MERGING THE “FUNCTIONAL” WITH THE PUBLIC
POWERING FUNOMENA THROUGH ENERGY EMITTED FROM THE DATA CENTRE
AMUSEMENT RIDES AND GAMES
PRODUCT TESTING
FUNOMENA Breaking Down Parts of The System
This project prances around the blurred lines of the extremely private defence sector and a major tourism hotspot in Singapore, both pioneered by governmental sectors. NatSteel a renowned steel-producing company with a weaponry manufacturing history in Singapore becomes the underbelly of this park
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The steel plant, research lab and landscape park are embedded within the site of Mandai. Incorporating the existing park connectors, visitors traverse through this double entendre of a place witnessing levels of exposure of tourism-public attractions, national legacies and production within a site that has a history of both. In the morning, users enjoy the undulating lush landscapes, fresh air and structures with the feeling of submergence into the quarry. Through the descent into the quarry, the journey becomes a convergence of two “plants”, the steel plant and the natural landscapes of ecology. The turn of every corner becomes compelling and secretive to invite the user to explore the architecture. The use of man-made, natural landscapes and shards of voids in the ground becomes a barrier to private spaces for steel production, assembly and research. Revelling the dichotomy of the existing Mandai quarry that is widely publicised for its military ammunition dump within a heavily touristed site. At night, emanating a grey cloud of smoke, the factory produces steel components which are sent to the neighbouring underground ammunition storage facility, where machinery and nature co-exist.
Visit Singapore! A Manufacturing Park.
Image on the right, hand-sketched perspectiveof the quarry. Where the public can enjoy seek refuge from the heat whilst decending down into the cool abyss of the 30M deep quarry and the natural water feature.
A Manufacturing Park History of NatSteel Through Value Stream Mapping (VSM)
Through NatSteel’s timeline, what was once a National legacy is now being shedded off by the state due to it’s loss of relevance within the current narrative of Singapore. What began as a simple steel mill evolved to become a corporate company with a diversified portfolio. To reflect NatSteel’s evolving organism, the timeline of key industries were mapped out through a VSM. This mapping method enables one to view business participation and subsequent exists within these entities easier. By investigating the vitality of NatSteel through time we see how it functioned in what Deluze & Guttari termed an Assemblage, where parts of its diversified portfolio were dispensable- readily taken out and replaced at a moments notice without breaking the company. True enough it was found that the head of power in NatSteel always had strong ties to the state, holding parliamentary positions. Importantly several of them serving as the Defence Minister in Singapore.
A Manufacturing Park Site Studies
Sandwiched between Singapore’s man-made ecology and man-made economy is the proposed site. The dichotomy between these two prsent sites raises the question whether the ammunition storage facility was meant to be a secret or not? It is hidden in plain sight but at the same time widely publicised for its locality and neighbouring one of Singapore’s expanding tourist attraction, the Mandai Zoo and future Bird Park. Singapore is known for curating a Garden in the City, ironically felling structures and trees rather than utilising the natural ecology of the state. The pizza slice of a site, legend E,where the intervention would be built, raises the question of state secrecy, tourism and manufacturing all together. Where both man-made ecology and economy is portayed as a natural ecology in Singapore. And both tourism and defence controlled by the State Governement.
The 3 key players within the defence sector in this project approach are DSO National Laboratories (B), ST Kinetics and Engineering (C), and NatSteel (D). All of which inform the underground ammunition storage facility in the Mandai Quarry (A). Through charting out the nodes of production of knowledge, research, technology and materials for the Defence sector, MINDEF, the flow of operations between industries become apparent and how they influence one another. Under the Mandai Quarry, a 400 football field size ammunition storage facility is in operation. MINDEF, stores weapons, ammunition and has a training facility within the quarry.
Plot Size & Purpose
366,320m2
National Historic Park Green Park Connectors
Manufacturing Plant Research Lab
A Manufacturing Park Layering Circulation, Programmes and VSM Mapping
With a working VSM of a research institute, steel plant and visitor centre, the diagram was juxtaposed onto the site as a method of spatial planning and zoning. The programmes of a research centre, manufacturing plant and a park were planned out together onto the VSM. The working VSM also becomes a form of sectional understanding of the hierarchy and “secrecy” of spaces that interweave between the public eye and the enclosed authorised space. Enabling a planning in both plan and section to interweave one another, creating a seamless layout of interacting spaces.
The indication of bringing NatSteel back to serve the state’s golden child, the defence economy signifies its importance and past-present contribution to Singapore. Alongside the research and nature park, it attempts to reveal the man-made ecology of Singapore and tease the state’s secret of weapon making through the steel mill. Public weaves through the spaces of plant research labs and a steel plant, without knowing the underground network of research and assemblage for weaponry. Together this brings back the state narrative of tourism, the defence sector and the steel plant all together.
A Manufacturing Park Design Intervention & Section
In this section the juxtaposition of the State’s secret versus the state’s pride is defined clearly. Where tourism and the existing park connectors are celebrated encouraging users to traverse through the natural ecology of the quarry whilst basking in the sound of the chirping birds next door. However in the belly of the quarry, lies the research team and the manufacturing of steel components for the ammunition. Sent through underground passageways, further re-instating the secret networks and security the Defence state upholds.
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