Studio SA6 Design Journal
Time Odyssey in a city of lost memories
The Book Architecture of community learning
Timeline
In 1947, The amusement park was converted into Beauty world market and was opened on July 1947. The area in red shows Beauty world Market. Present day Beauty world Center and Plaza sits on a quiet small village with lots of vegetation. (Top right of picture)
Beauty World 1960s~1990s
Students from the nearby schools would by stationary supplies, sketches books and more some book stores. One of those was well known is the Grassland Book Store.
There is also another shoe store nearby which sold school shoes to the students
Some stores sold clothes, socks and other home necessities in Beauty World Market
There was also a Mama store (not shown) near a square behind the market. The Mama Shop sold sweets and entertainment magazines. There was also an arcade game machine similiar of a Pachinko machine.
In July 1984, Beauty World Market caught fire. 20 shops were destroyed although there weren't any casualties. However, other surviving stores left standing was soon demolished.
Timeline Summary
In 1947, Tai Tong Ah was renamed Beauty World, an open-air market with stalls offering an array of goods under zinc and canvas roofs.
In 1962, the market saw expansion with the establishment of Beauty World Town. At least five major fires broke out at Beauty World Market and Town between the seventies and eighties.
Gala Cinema (late 1970s-mid 1990s)
There was an old cinema called Gala Cinema at Bukit Timah Shopping Centre. Operated by Eng Wah Organisation, it shows a mixture of Tamil and Chinese movies, and was popular among the local residents and the Malaysian tourists during the eighties. However, as there is lesser people over the years, the cinema was forced to shut down in the mid-nineties.
Despite the fires, Beauty World market has grown to about 160 stalls, including barber shops and a temple by 1976
Grassland Bookstore Founded in 1966 - Present day
A grand opening of the amusement park was held in September 1944. During the Japanese Occupation, some local businessmen collaborated with the Japanese to open an amusement park at Bukit Timah Road 7.5 milestone. It was named Tai Tong Ah Sai Kai, costing almost $1 million to build.
Period of lawlessness
Beauty World during the fifties was plagued by extortion, violence and territorial fights by the secret society members. The stallholders and hawkers at the market had to pay protection fees to the gangsters or they would be beaten up and their stalls wrecked. It was only during the sixties before the anti-gang laws came into effect to reduce and suppress the illegal activities of the secret societies.
In 1975, a fire spread through two coffeeshops and seven stalls that sold food, poultry, textile and radios, destroying $200,000 worth of properties.
The last fire incident in 1984 destroyed the 40-year-old Tiong Hwa Cinema.
Opened in 1984, Beauty World Centre’s shops on its first three storeys were reserved for the former stallkeepers at the old Beauty World. On its fourth level was a 41-stall food centre, where the previous hawkers shifted and continued their trades.
Completed in 1981, it is one of Sinagpore’s first fully air-conditioned shopping complexes.
Constructed in the early 1980s, Beauty World Plaza consists of both commercial and residential spaces and houses a number of homes as well as shops and stalls for both local and tourists.
Shops selling magazines and shoes
Site AnalysisExisting Buildings
Site AnalysisBuilding Heights
Access
Points Identified
1. From the nearby school (Dimensions International college)
2. Entrance near the temple
3. Entrance from the shophouses and residential areas
4. From Beauty World MRT station
Initial Programme Plan
scenes actions/movement etc are presented in panels of a comic book. The panels follow a sequence of action while reading through the book.
Movement in plans in the same level
Movement in plans in the section moving from floor to
Movement of students/people entering, going through the learning experience:
Structure of a book
A structure of a physical book consists of a cover, spine and pages
The structure of the book is applied to linking of the programmes and the learning process in the book community of learning
People travel through the spine as a transition between different programmes and activities.
Comic book ( Manga Like) Narrative
Strands: Ground up DIY Guru
Comic book ( Manga Like) Narrative
All this will be in comic form where different stages will be different pages in a manga or comic how do we move between different stages?
Explore: Story and transition when you flip between different stages of learning in educationlike flipping a book
Things to do: Guru, narrative SOA (Habitus)
Things to do: The narrative informs the spaces
The teacher and the students-
early stages of learning - more hands on - after that more content driven learning through books and exercises. After that the experiments eg hands on like excursions and exploration
Learning
The story of learning is how students and learners and learners go through their learning journey
Curiousity
What can i find?
Activity starts: Beginning of learning journey
The people will go through the programmes in an order whithout skipping through the bookstore, much like in IKEA where customers walk through different departments of the store to reach the cashier.
PreschoolPrimary School Education
Comic Book/Pop-up book area
Luring entrance of the curious learner
People on different stages of learning have different interests in types of books: (For Form making)
Curious - explore spaces around them and what to read
Young ( hands on pop up books)
Learning about how things work and why they do
Expression of thoughts, Imagination and abilities
Primary to Secondarymore content driven things - Knowledge -Exploration and -Problem Solving
Secondary to Tertiary education and beyondLifelong Learning and expansion of abilities and possibilities
Book binding class Study area
Chambers of the avid readers
Painting class
Silent Readers
Adolescent: Picture content (E.g. Comics)
Word content (E.g. Textbooks, novels etc.)
Newspaperstand and reading area
People can look into the spaces where people read the
Open book with folded pages is the place where the students and people learn to paint and bind books
Study Model Elevation Experimentation
1st Process Model based on Study Models
Different Areas for different programmes and activities
Form of the entrance comic book/ pop-out area
Form taken from the form of the pop out book; purpose is to attract people to explore spaces around them and books
Comic Book area where open areas can be seen through so that People outside can read the spaces like a comic/manga
Classroom areas to be situated on folding pages of the book, form taken from said book
Programs connected and
Similiar to where there are multiple rooms of different shapes and sizes, but instead of staircase connections, it could be folding connections
The capsule of adapting bookstore trades
