Architecture Portfolio 2017. Isabella Ong

Isabella Ong

For M.Arch Application

王 芷 序

2011

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Architecture Portfolio

education

workshops

exhibitions

langauges

2015 Bachelors of Arts in Architecture (Hons) at the National University of Singapore (NUS).

Cumulative Average Point: 4.34

2013 Empower Shack ETH Zurich Summer School by the Brillembourg & Klumpner Chair of Architecture and Urban Design. Design-andBuild a replicable shack prototype

2015 NUS Architecture End of Year Exhibition (CityEx) Wall Campus Project. URA Building, Singapore

English First Language

2013 Architecture Exchange Programme at ETH Zurich, Adam Caruso’s Metropolis studio

ISABELLA ONG 王芷序 1

+65 91778470 isabellaong@gmail.com www.isabellaong.me Singapore

2010 GCE A-Levels 6 Distinctions at AngloChinese Junior College (ACJC) 2008 GCE O-Levels 8 Distinctions at St. Margarets’ Secondary School

experience 2016 General Assembly Singapore Web Development Immersive course 2011 SPARK Architects Singapore Modeling for a masterplan project, 2D Drawings, WIP Publication

2013 Transmaterial II at the Monash Art Design & Architecture (MADA).

Design-and-Build material workshop on digital behavioural simulaitons

competitions 2016 Bee Breeder’s London Internet Museum Honourable Mention 2015 Vertical Cities Asia Competition Honourable Mention

2015 SG50 : Rethinking Our City For Singapore’s Next 50 Years The Collaboratory Project. URA Building, Singapore 2013 NUS Architecture End of Year Exhibition (CityEx) Panopticon Project. URA Building, Singapore 2013 Tembusu College Exhibiton Cashin House Project 2011 Lorong 24A Shophouse Exhibition Cafe/Speakeasy Project

accolades 2012 Dean’s List Year 1 Semester 2

Mandarin Fluent

skills 2D AutoCAD, Illustrator, Photoshop, Indesign 3D Rhino, Sketchup Code Javascript, HTML, CSS, Ruby on Rails, JQuery, NodeJS, ExpressJS, EmberJS

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The Wall Campus Academic

Big Data as a Lover Competition

The Collab-oratory Academic / Competition

Panopticon Inn Academic

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Transmaterial II / Social Weaver Design & Build

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Coding Web Applications

Empower Shack Design & Build

2 Murmuration Design & Build

Materials Models

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THE WALL CAMPUS

PART I

Year 4 Semester 1

Singapore’s rising land value has chased the Port of Singapore – currently situated on prime land – to the ‘end of Singapore’ at Tuas, a land that is still in the midst of reclamation; a man-made tabular rasa.

S ITE

Tuas, Singapore TUTOR

Bobby Wong P R OG R AM M E

PART 1: Masterplan of the new port PART 2: University Campus

“ Brief: 3

This semester-long project is split into two part: the first part was a studio project, in conjunction with the Maritime Port Authority (MPA), to do a masterplan of the ‘third finger’ of the proposed Tuas port. The second part was an individual project to design a building as part of the masterplan where the students were free to design their brief. “

According to the Foreshore Act, any form of development of the coastline should be reserved for public access and use. This rebuild of the port is an opportunity to create a public spectacle, one where nature in the form of mangroves entwines with the machine-esque image of the port operations.

So as to not compromise the land required by the port authority, the original port organisation was questioned and redesigned to compact the operations. The resulting excess space is to allow mangroves to grow and thrive, juxtaposed against the landscape of machines.

To balance between both public accessibility and the strict off-limits imposed by the port activities, an elevated megastructure rises above the gantries and the containers. The infrastructure consists of a three-layer

space frame supported by circulation cores placed at intervals. Roads and the Light Rapid Train (LRT) system runs through it, and buildings and spaces can be injected into the space frame and be part of the spectacular landscape.

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ABOVE MANGROVE SWAMP AREA TOWARDS THE LANDSCAPE AND PORT

PERSPECTIVE 04

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Types of Port Organisation

Deriving length of one port berth from ships and cranes dimensions

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Plot ratio based on human traffic

Reorgansing port organisation to compact the space required

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Modularising port berth to insert mangrove landscape

Proposed Masterplan

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Ground & Core Details

PART II

This project is a critique of the campus life of Singapore’s universities.

Students are still largely treated like juveniles with restrictive campus laws e.g. prohibited to consume alcohol on most campus grounds, and to smoke within the campus. This sanitized environment is detrimental to students’ experimentation and freedom of expression.

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In bid to make sense of the site’s detachment from the mainland and the infrastructure’s detachment from the ground, a liberal art college is proposed where an alternative ‘beer pong’ campus life with unrestricted freedom is advocated.

This project uses the element of the wall. Fundamentally, the wall is meant to enclose and define a space; the establishment of an ‘inside’ and an ‘outside’.

Inhabitable walls surround the entire campus, shielding the campus activities from the public eye – and hence, scrutiny – giving the students the freedom to be chaotic. The elevation of the structure allows for the inner college spaces to be ‘dropped down’ and be freed from the claustrophobic grip of the enclosing walls, whilst retaining the privacy.

This project is an experiment in an extremely different campus life.

One where absolute freedom reigns; an underground campus, where love, experimentation, drugs, learning, sex, exploration, alcohol, open-mindedness serve as petri-dishes for the cultivation of the next generation of Singaporeans.

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The Wall and the Dorms

The Park and the Public

The Hidden and the Campus

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Longitudinal Section

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Library

Dorm

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02

BIG DATA AS A LOVER

It is almost an oxymoron to represent the Internet as a physical construct. The Internet is invisible, intangible and dynamic. Architecture, on the other hand, is heavy and static.

The Internet has barely pushed its boundaries beyond the screen to exist physically.

Moving along, one would enter the overlooking structure that contains the education facilities of the Internet Museum and a large viewing area, where one can look out to the maze.

At the viewing area, real-time data that controls the water of the maze is being exhibited. Here, a different form of data

Drawing from the narrative of immersion takes place in the form of Black Mirror’s episode of Be Right Back, learning, making and creating. the London Internet Museum creates a sensory datascape where people are

Water – and its many states – able to have a bodied experience with pressures architecture to be more 19 data, in the form of water. Water, as an dynamic and allows it to move along element, encompasses many sensory with the ebb and flow of data. interpretations.

The ground is converted into a sensory maze containing different pockets of ‘water spaces’. People wander around this maze, immersing themselves as they dip their feet into the pools, drink water from the fountain, and walk amongst the mist – unbeknownst to them that different aspects of Big Data are controlling the water. The gallery spaces are integrated into the maze, and are a part of this sensual journey.

April 2016 SITE

North Woolwich, London P RO G RAMME

Internet Museum B EE B REED ERS ’ I N T ERN ET MUS EUM CO MP ET I T I O N

HO NO RA B LE MENT IO N

Black Mirror ‘Be Right Back’ Episode

To deal with her grief over the recent loss of her partner, the woman provided a company with her lover’s email to create a replica of her dead lover, first on the phone via texts and calls, and then in the synthetic flesh; his responses and actions modelled out of his past social media output.

When his synthetic replica was first delivered, he came with instructions to ‘brew’ him. After a few hours, he appeared in front of her in the flesh. Apprehensive at first, she started to feel him, caressing his face and touching his fingers tips, commenting on how smooth he is.

She then kissed him. She guided him to fondle her breasts. They made love, which she commented that he – the replica – was better than the real person. “Set routine based on pornographic videos”. After sex, they said to each other: “I love you.”

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Water for the maze is drawn from the adjacent riverbank, which is then filtered before being pumped back as clean water. The maze also acts as part of the filtration process.

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Sectional Perspective

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Unfolded Section Journey through the sensory datascape

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03

THE COLLAB-ORATORY

TUTOR

Swinal Samant P R OG R AM M E

Mixed Use Development VERTICAL CI TI ES ASI A COM P ETI TI ON HON ORABL E M EN TI ON TEAM: ISA B EL L A ON G , TAN W EN J UN , SEREN E WON G , D AN I EL TAN

“ Competition Brief: 27

To house 100, 000 people on a 1 km2 territory where they would live, work and play. The site is the Paya Lebar Military Airbase, where the land is slated for future redevelopment after the military relocates its airbase operation in 2030. The theme is ‘Everyone Contributes’. “

As technology becomes more commonplace (with the advent of

“The right to the city if far more 3D printing, Arduinos, laser-cutting than the individual liberty to access etc.), it brings manufacturing out of urban resources. It is a right to change its traditional factory context and into ourselves by changing the city. It is, homes, and the distinction between moreover, a common rather than an living and working spaces is dissolved. individual right since the transformation Jobs are created and employment is inevitably depends upon the exercise localised. of a collective power to reshape the processes of urbanisation. The freedom This creates a landscape of to make and remake our cities and multiple realities where one might be ourselves is, I want to argue, one of the studying algae walls while another most precious yet most neglected of might be tinkering microbial waste our human rights.” treatment for their homes; their realities diverse, yet part of the collaboration - The Right to the City, David Harvey cloud. In The Collab-oratory, all the parts are moving and the city is

Learning from the Maker’s constantly morphing as people make, culture, this project blurs the do and learn. distinction between the Resident and the Architect. It calls for the residents themselves to engage in a two-way conversation with their own environment. Fuelled by the domestication of technology and production, residents are constantly learning, experimenting, growing, testing and crafting their own living and working spaces.

KM

Paya Lebar Air Base, Singapore

A Living Laboratory with Multiple Realities

4.89

S ITE

49 M 18 M INS INS

Year 4 Semester 2

11.35 KM

6.87 KM2 2.89

KM 21 M 10 M INS INS

113.5 MINS

42.6 MINS

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Sectional Zoom Ins The multiple realities of residents making, experimenting, collaborating, brewing, exhibiting, learning and crafting their own environment together

Site Strategies

SITE New York

Barcelona

+10 - 15m Autonomous vehicle Goods mover

Ground Floor Cycling, water taxi, lido line, kayaking

TOWARDS CIRCLE LINE INTERCHANGE

Basement Mass Rapid Transit Underground Frieght Network

SENGKANG

TPE

Circular Economy

Resources

HOUGANG

SERANGOON

Storage

Material Network

Resource Processing

Goods Mover

Air Cargo

TOWARDS THE CITY

Distribution Centre

Highway

KPE

Hi-Tech Industries

Pod Car Mover

Product Manufacturing

Sea Port Underground Freight Network Road Network

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Dwelling Drones

RESOURCE BELT

Next Life Sales

Bio-Waste Incinerator

UNDERGROUND FREIGHT NETWORKS Transportation

Consumption/ Pro-sumption

Solar Energy Park

PASIR RIS

UNDERGROUND FREIGHT NETWORKS

Retail/ Green Business

Commercial

TAMPINES

TOWARDS THE AIRPORT

Car parking

Waste Shops

MRT

SMEs

F&B

Makers

Repair Cafe Co-Work Launchpad Pro-Amps

Amenities

Cycling

BEDOK

Office

Community

Pod Car

CIVIC BELT Fab Labs

Water Taxi

Recycling

Culture

Education

Sports & Recreation

Elements

Ecology Fauna

Biodiversity

Bio-Waste

Grey water

Rainwater Collection

DISTRICT

Bioswale (Grey Water Treatment)

Transportation

Cycling

Lido Line

ECOLOGICAL BELT

Water Taxi Kayaking

Micro-Garden Micro-grdens can easily be created out of scrap materials: potatoes grown in trash can, wooden pallets into a herb garden

Urban Farming

Lean-to Green House Attached to houses as an extension.

Bio-Waste Incinerator

Compost

Recreation

Exercise

Local Food

Fishing

Water sports

A-frame Vertical Farm High-tech farming that integrates water system with A-frame farming system.

Estimated to produce 4.76kg of vegetables a day.

Recycling

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Design Strategies

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Precinct Design

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Ecological Belt

Precinct Design

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Living Arrangement Studies

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Section through 1km site

Resource belt, Civic belt, Ecological belt

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04

PANOPTICON INN

Jeremy Bentham’s Panopticon allows a central watchman, hidden within a watchtower, to observe inmates without them being able to tell if the watchman is present. The peripheral cells are bathed in light while the watchtower is hidden in the dark. This creates an asymmetrical surveillance where there is a physical sense of exposure to authority. Inmates, then, have this constant awareness of the threat of being watched, and each one polices over his own self.

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Shifting from a transcendental to an immanent mode of surveillance, this project enlists every inn guest to supervise the ensemble of other guests – while at the same time being supervised himself.

Instead of a centralised point of surveillance, the ‘watchtower’ is dispersed in the form of an elongated common area. Enclosed with a oneway mirror, it stands, on one side, the whole length of the building; reflective on the outside, transparent from the inside. Guests on the inside will be able to watch over the movements of the guests on the other side – the Watchman.

Year 2 Semester 2

On the other side, the mirror reflects every action of the guests passing by. Here, people have an acute awareness over their own visibility, either through the sight of their own reflection or through the awareness of the presence of people on the other side.

All circulations are condensed in this in-between space, and weaves in and out of the mirror façade, the role of each guest oscillating between the ‘watched’ and the ‘watcher’. The temporality of the guest’s position (hidden inside or exposed outside) heightens the sense of his ability – and thus, others’ as well – to watch and be watched.

Though directly borrowing elements from Bentham’s Panopticon – light/dark, exposed/hidden, transparent/opaque – the backpacker inn creates a more subtle form of surveillance instead of the harsh spaces of his prisons. Here, guests share intimate living spaces with strangers with a subliminal sense of security.

SITE

Kandahar Street, Singapore T UT O R

Chaw Chih Wen P RO G RAMME

Backpacker Hostel

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View from outside

The enclosed common area is kept darker to allow for an exposure from the outside in. At night, the headlights of cars driving in and out of the adjacent carpark creates random occurrence of exposure of the ‘watched’ space. From the inside, this random burst of light creates almost like a spectacle for the late sleeper or the guest checking in at 3am.

Longitudinal Section Transparency

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Longitudinal Section Reflection

1F

2F

3F

4F

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TRANSMATERIAL II July 2013

S ITE

Grimshaw Architects, Melbourne TUTOR

Paul Nicholas, Tim Schork P R OG R AM M E

Social Weavers Workshop

A design-and-make workshop to explore how digital practices can be integrated into the process of materialisation. With the aim to replicate social weavers’ nests, a series of pre-calibration of the 43 material’s bending limitation was carried out to be collected as design data inputs. A final design form was generated before being built at a 1:1 scale.

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EMPOWER SHACK September 2013

SITE

Khayelitsha, South Africa CO L L AB O RAT I O N

Swisspearl, the Brillembourg & Klumpner Chair of Architecture and Urban Design, the BLOCK research group at ETH, and South African NGO Ikhayalami

P RO G RAMME

Replicable Shack Prototype

Empower Shack was a twoweek design and build workshop aimed at developing a replicable shack prototype for a site in Cape Town.

Using an actual site in South Africa as a model, 24 international students and participants from the Department of Architecture at ETH Zurich explored the complexity of living conditions in informal settlements, and the social role of architects in helping to address the economic, ecological and security challenges faced by residents.

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07

MURMURATION Year 2 Semester 1

S ITE

East Coast Park, Singapore TUTOR

Adrian Lai P R OG R AM M E

Dining Pavilion

A design-and-construct studio into the materiality of plywood, and building a 1:1 scale dining pavilion for public use in East Coast Park.

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As a studio, we explored the form of the arch as a construction principle, using interlocking modular pieces of plywood for the entire structure.

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MATERIALS

A year 1 exploration into the design of fabric as spatial skin, using translucent materials to create volumes.

01 - 04

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02

A group exploration into create a 1m X 1m replicabale concrete breezeblock for a building facade.

05 - 06

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CODING 2016

GITH UB

github.com/floatonok WE B AP P P ORT F O LIO

www.isabellaong.me LAN GUAGE S

Javascript, HTML, CSS, JQuery, Ruby on Rails, NodeJS, ExpressJS, EmberJS, Canvas

After architecture school, I did a 12-weeks web dev bootcamp under General Assembly Singapore. During 47 this time, I picked up both front-end and back-end skills, and designed and built a few web applications.

JQuery, AJAX, Mapbox A simple front-end project to consume NASA’s (EONET) API, which maps out events based on the geoJSON coordinates called from the API.

Do check out my github repositories for my codes, and my personal website to view the demos of these websites.

HTML, CSS, Javascript, A minimalist game design for snake with geometrical Canvas obstacles that the player can activate. For every obstacle level activated, a sound loop will be layered.

Ruby on Rails, Bootstrap

An open-source wiki on sake, using CRUD.

Rails API, EmberJS

A gamified dashboard for the future where participatory design allows resident to move and expand their homes using a software interface.

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NodeJS, ExpressJS, AJAX

Using Diffbot, Readr cleans up any online articles submitted and generates a standardised format with a TL;DR.

Ruby on Rails

An open-source platform for visual designers to collaborate with others on projects by sharing images, visuals, and files.

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