BENEDICT CHAN
PORTFOLIO
ABOUT THE AUTHOR Name: Benedict Chan Wei Zhe Date of Birth: 8 May 1996 Email: benchanwz@hotmail.com HP: 96442908 Linkedin account: https://sg.linkedin.com/in/benedict-chan-wei-zhe-2b219b100 My website: http://benechance.wix.com/portfolio
DESIGN PHILOSOPHY I design with passion, inspired by architectural references and uniqueness. The style of my design is the use of complexity, with a touch of comformity to use the forms and features found in the site to relate to its environment. I would use these elements in the site to generate building forms and ideas for the site, to relate them to its surroundings. I use my designs to tackle the issue of sustainability through using Eco-friendly methods and technologies to better conform nature to the urban environment. Manipulating light & shadows are essential in all my designs, as I appreciate them as intangible art in any structure.
ACADEMIC QUALIFICATIONS I Graduated from Temasek Polytechnic's Diploma of Environment Design in 2017
ABOUT THE DIPLOMA 'This course sits at the exciting confluence of architecture, landscape architecture and urban design. It equips the students with broad-based knowledge and essential technical skills to comprehend the complex urban issues and environmental challenges, such as rapid urbanization and population growth, sustainability, biodiversity and climate change.' - Mr. Damian Tang Design Director National Parks Board
INTERESTS I enjoy doing sketches, photography and travelling. Road trips and sightseeing are what I love to do most, when travelling. I spend most of my time alone serving in church and exercising. I have been serving in national service for the past two years and would like to further my studies.
CONTENTS Individual School Projects -
8m x 8m Garden Nautilus @ Coney Island Herit Square @ Dakota Crescent Torsion @ Kallang
Internship - BroadwayMalyan
Competitions & Events -
CUBE 2014 School Open House Booth Singapore Garden Festival Singapore Night Festival
Personal Projects - ``Always find time for the things that make you feel happy to be alive.''
This garden was designed in a semi-detached house for a client with a family of 6.
8m x 8m GARDEN
This garden was part of the submission for an additional module to design tropical gardens. This module helped me to gain insight on the types of materials and tropical plants used in a small scaled garden and coming up with design concepts to implement in it.
The client was a businessman and lived with his elderly parents. I made an entrance from the garden to both his living and dining room to allow better accessibility.
There is a koi pond in the garden which is visually therapeutic for the whole family. The children would enjoy watching koi fish swimming in the water.
Near the entrance of the living room, there are two seats shielded by water features and plants to host a guest meeting or just a relaxation corner.
Aquatic plants such as Thalia and Cyprus would be placed in planting pots and near the water features.
In this garden I'm able to do details which I usually am unable to specify due to the large scale of the site.
A cross section of the garden.
This is a plan of the garden which I came up with, with the legend stated below. LEGEND Concrete Wall
Yellow Cow Wood Tree
Glass Panel
Syzygium Campanulatum
Water Feature
Plumeria Rubra
Lava Rocks
Licuala Grandis
Concrete Tiles
Lipstick Palm
Timber deck
Red Thalia
BBQ Pit & Sink
Shrubs and Groundcover
Furniture
Shrubs and Groundcover
Control Panel
Koi Pond
The type of plants used are such as these. They give out a colorful and vibrant feel.
The hardscapes that I used are timber decking and concrete flooring. The yellow colour spots are where the garden lights will be placed to light the garden up at night. The is a barbegue pit and dining table near the entrance of the dining room to allow the members of the family to dine in their garden.
The project's name was inspired by a species of resilient hardshelled sea creatures that roam the indo-pacific ocean, the Nautilus.
The task was to design of a part of a new campus for Outward Bound Singapore, situated in Coney Island, an island northeast of Singapore. The vision was to create a cohesive learning environment for the participants, with much consideration to the biodiversity and impact on the natural setting of the island. On the left, is my proposed masterplan for the entire campus. It is planned to reduce deforestation and preserve the nature of the site as much as possible. After the masterplanning stage, I focused to a smaller part of the site to create a proposed design.
The site area which I had chosen to design is the where the most urban density will be: the main building. The main building consists of carpark, reception, offices, medical centre, a cookhouse, a sports hall, an outdoor auditorium, classrooms and staff dormitories.
The organic shape of the main building was a space in the site that had a clearing without big trees.
Design of the layout was inspired by ripples and waves. They were integrated in the nodes shown.
The building form embraces monsoon winds and faces a staggering view of mainland Singapore.
The section cuts of section A, B and C are shown in this plan.
2nd Storey Plan
SECTION A-A
SECTION B-B
SECTION C-C
The plants above are integrated in the planting plan shown below.
The rooftop garden on the top floor has a great view of the sea and a place for staff and students to unwind. The building is wheelchair accessible, to allow people with disabilities to join the outward bound experience with the best of their abilities.
The image on the left shows the walk-in entrance to OBS. Which is where the carparks and drop-off points are. The staff room is shown on the left where it will be an entertainment room with a pantry. This is to give an exclusive place for staff to enjoy.
The corridor below is on the second floor where it leads to the outdoor auditorium. There is a play net on the right for kids to play on.
The night view of the proposed design is shown on the right. This image was created to experiment with the maximum amount of light pollution from the building that can affect the surrounding environment. This shoes the building at its brightest at night. The huge walkway south of the building is a proposed park connector which is not part of Outward Bound School.
There are also places for staff and students to have a picnic or take a swim in the heart of the campus.
This was the initial sketch of what I had imagined it to be and I'm happy with how it turned out. There are still things that can be improved, but for now I'm satisfied.
OBS 50th Anniversary
I was invited to Outward Bound School's fiftieth anniversary celebrations, where my was work was showcased. Unfortunately, I was unable to attend the occasion as I was doing a jungle exercise in my part of national service. The photo taken above had the other selected students, lecturers and the director of Temasek Polytechnic's design school in it.
The site is located at Dakota Cresent, one of Singapore's oldest housing estates. The tenants were evicted and the estate will soon be demolished. The project brief was to restore and revitalise it with purpose to bring it to this modern day.
The vision is to create a holistic childcare centre which helps improve the bond of 3-generation familes and to make use of these bonds to create a better learning environment for the children.
After analysing the site, I found out that there are many accessible transport networks nearby that leads to many parts of Singapore. For example, the Mountbatten MRT station in the site only takes 5 minutes to reach Paya Lebar, a future business hub. This can be seen in the MRT map I drew, on the left. In the surrounding areas, there are many educational institutions, sport and medical facilities. This open potential collaborations with these facilities to improve the programmes of the proposed design.
The whole area of the site is shown on the map above. But I am only focusing on one part of the site to design. I chose this part on the left.
A model of the proposed design.
After interviewing the previous residents of the site, I found that many of the residents were elderly whose children had left the house to start their own families. Then I thought what if old estates like this one could cater to newer generations and promote 3-generation families to live together. A community like this would help the elderly to be better taken care of.
The main building is a childcare centre for children aged up to 12 years old. The surrounding buildings in the site were planned to be refurbished as SOHO offices and residential buildings. Thus, allowing 3-generations of people with different ages to live in this estate together.
There are slides in double volume spaces that allow kids to slide down the floors of the building.
There are outdoor kitchens in the void decks to promote social gatherings in the neighbouring community with the use of alfresco dining.
Retail booths and festivals can be set up on the courtyard to help SOHO businesses thrive in the area.
ROOF Roof Garden BBQ & Dining LEVEL 7 Staff Lounge Art classroom
The boardwalk that extrudes out from the second and third floor of the building is a playground for the kids. They can have outdoor activities here too.
LEVEL 6 Math & Science play lab LEVEL 5 Kindergarten classroom LEVEL 4 Kindergarten classroom LEVEL 3 Childcare centre management office LEVEL 2 Preschool classroom
This project located at Kallang, has a gross floor area of 63,400msq. The buildings in the site consists of a Spa Centre, Hotel, Sports Rehabilitation Centre and the Singapore Dragonboat Association. From site analysis, I came up with the spiral form based on the circulation map of people moving around the area. My concept was to create a place for relaxation from sports, like a therapeutic hub next to Kallang sports hub.
There are plant climbers on the walls of the facade from the 3rd to 6th floor of each building in the site. All three buildings are linked by the basement carpark, ground floor and 2nd floor. The jetty that sticks out of the site is linked to the dragonboat association and used by them to row out to kallang basin on their dragonboat or canoe.
LEVEL 10 Roof Garden LEVEL 9 Hotel Rooms LEVEL 8 Hotel Rooms LEVEL 7 Hotel Rooms LEVEL 6 Hotel Entrance, Cafe & Roof Garden LEVEL 5 Sports Rehabilitation Centre & Spa Centre LEVEL 4 Sports Rehabilitation Centre, Indoor Courts & Spa Centre LEVEL 3 Sports Rehabilitaion Centre, Gym, Dragonboat Association & Spa Centre LEVEL 1 & 2 Retail Shops, Cafes, Dragonboat Association and Spa Centre
This is the ground floor plan of the project. It helps to show how people enter the site. In the section below, it shows the hierachy of spaces from top to bottom, with the bottom right of the section leading into the Kallang Basin. This allows people from each floor to have a view of the basin without any obstruction. The hotel is situated at the 6th to 9th floors for a nice view of the basin and there is a link-bridge which connects two of the hotel's east and west wing.
Internship In 2016, I took part in an internship with an international architecture firm, BroadwayMalyan. I chose this reputable firm to allow myself to be exposed to the various types of projects they do not just locally, but internationally. I was elated when my internship application was accepted by them.
I started off learning about detailings and autocad drawings. Followed by designing shelters and small landscape features. The shelter on the right is a river taxi stand I helped design for the Tanjung Aru Eco Development (TAED) project in Sabah, Malaysia.
I was given the task to design the water feature on the left for CIBIS NINE, a project in Jakarta, Indonesia, that was near the completion of its design phase. On the water surface, there are colorful lily pads sculptured which looked aesthetic amidst the plain surfaces of the business hub.
There are times where physical models are made to look at the site from a different perspective that computer models can't see. I learnt how to make simple massing models like the one on the right, using paper, foam and markers.
After making various massing models like the one above, will I then make a computer model and work on it together with my colleagues.
The project below is a proposed hospital in Manila, Philippines at an early design phase. I had helped in its building massing and design process. I liked this project a lot, but it never came to pass.
CUBE 2014 In October 2014, I participated in a local competition which was organised by the Urban Redevelopment Authority (URA). The week-long competition had participants from various tertiary schools across the country. The project was to revamp and create a masterplan of an area in Chinatown which consists of Pearl's Hill Park and the buildings around it. We had to also include 5000 residents into our designs.
School Open House Booth This was my diploma course's booth for Temasek Polytechnic's Open House in 2016. I was part of the team which consisted of coursemates and one of our lecturer. We came up with the design of the booth with the concept being a visual permeable space that our projects will be displayed on. We spent our fridays for 3 months cutting wood and assembling the structure. The booth turned our nicer than we had anticipated when we added in lighting and the works done by our coursemates and alumnis.
That year, I was featured in the cover of the open house pamphlet for Temasek Polytechnic's School of Design.
Singapore Garden Festival I took part in an inter-school competition in the 2016 Singapore Garden Festival, where students from tertiary institutes must design and construct a garden exhibition. Though my team and I did not get first place, it was worth the experience. If not for this competition, I would not have had the opportunity to work with people from the landscape industry and see the hard work put behind the scenes of an exhibition.
Singapore Night Festival I had volunteered myself to help out in the Singapore Night Festival in the years 2015 and 2016. For the exhibition in 2015, I was placed in a lighting consultant firm called 'Light Collab', where I helped to put up a shadow puppet show about a myth of Redhill in Singapore. In 2016, I took part in activities held by the International Association of Lighting Designers (IALD) and became a festival guide.
Personal Projects
There were some projects that allow us to make additional small scaled products that can enhance the experience of site users. This robot claw I made was a game I created for the kids at the childcare centre in the Dakota Crescent Project.
This maze I made below was a game made for interaction between people. The four syringe controls the directional movement of the maze, which allows the ball to move and solve the maze. But one cannot move all four syringes at once, thus making it only possible to solve with at least two people playing it.
These gauntlets were made for a few of my friends to be worn during orientation camp and it was my first time doing craft with faux leather.