Matthew Goh XinZhi
phone. +65 91732618
email. matthewgohxinzhi@gmail.com website. matthewgohxinzhi.com
MGXZ
Matthew Goh XinZhi phone. +65 91732618 email. matthewgohxinzhi@gmail.com website. matthewgohxinzhi.com address. 1E #03-26 Pine Grove, S594001
education
Masters of Architecture | National University of Singapore 2022 – 2024 GPA 5.0/5.0 (Top Thesis)
Bachelors of Arts (HONS) Arch | National University of Singapore First Class Honors | 2019 – 2023 GPA 4.52/5.0
Bachelors of Arts (HONS) Arch | Czech Technical University 2022 Exchange Semester - Winy Maas Studio: The Why Factory Bioworld.
experience
Research Assistant | NUS College - Oxford Brookes University | Aug 2023 – Aug 2024 |
Fellow, Architectural Intern | Shade Institute And Dean Sakamoto Architects | Feb 2023- July 2023 |
Research Team Lead | National University Of Singapore, Office For Metropolitan Architecture (OMA) | May 2022- Aug 2022
President (Elected) | The Architecture Society | Sept 2021 –Sept 2022 |
Exhibition Director (Elected) | The Architecture Society | JanDec 2021 |
Architecture Intern | Hyphen Architects | Nov - Jan 2021 |
Architecture Intern | DP Architects | Nov - Dec 2019 |
awards
(In Progress) RIBA Silver Medal Nomination (Nominated by NUS) | RIBA President’s Medals | 2024 |
Pioneer Architects (Lim Chong Keat) Prize, Best Thesis (Masters of Architecture) | National University of Singapore (Architecture) | 2024 |
Dean’s Award (Urbanism) | Czech Technical University | 2023 |
Dean’s List | National University of Singapore (Architecture) | 2021 |
competitions
Scanteak Headquarters Competition (Arch) | 2nd Place | 2022 |
“Charmingly Changi” Changi Point Ideas Competition | 1st Prize Open Category | Urban Redevelopment Authority | 2021 |
International Built Environment Week (IBEW) Building Design Competition | Finalist | 2020 |
competencies
Rhino Grasshopper Adobe Photoshop Adobe Indesign Microsoft Office
Autocad Sketchup Enscape V-Ray Revit
In Search of Alternate Time | M.Arch Thesis
House M | M.Arch Studio
DefuLand | B.Arch Studio
Archival 2022 | Exhibition
N*thing is Possible | Research, Work
Ascending to the Sky | Competition
Tuloh | Competition
In Search of Alternate Time
Negotiating Nomadism and Sedentarism
Location:
Project Type:
Thesis Work
Supervisor: Semporna, Sabah, Malaysia
Level:
Date:
Year 5
August 2023 - April 2024
Professor Tsuto Sakamoto
I have always been fascinated by the life of buildings. Not human’s inhabitation in them, ecology, or any other living thing but the building itself. A building’s relationship with time is often labeled as an antagonistic one, a battle of endurance of sorts. We do not often think of how it will endure the passage of time much less render concern for its mortality. Thus beckons, how could a different conception of time change the way we conceive and construct architecture?
The thesis finds its setting through the eyes of sea nomads, speculating on an architecture that is formulated with the Bajau Laut’s sense of time, a negotiation between their nomadism and the sedentary state. The first act was decolonising mapping, unlearning notions of completeness and continuity of cartographic maps through the lens of the Bajau Laut. Through a series of drawings and models a complex relationship with the coast emerged, anchored around clear water. The design centres around first cleaning the coastal waters. As the waters gets cleaned the architecture begins to submerge into the ocean, obeying the sea nomad’s sense of time. Lastly, acknowledging architecture’s mortality the design moves beyond its functions and investigates the value of architectural death as a landscape.
Models of Time
To observe the passage of time on architecture, these 3 models were created displaying 3 different points in it’s lifespan. The mortality of materials and architecture is fundamental in the discussion of a time-conscious mode of thinking.
Fragments of the Coast
A series of 36 collages accompanied by 20 models. Created individually to capture the moments and events of the sea nomad’s coast. The models made tactile and with true materials. These were then rearranged into a nonhierarchic shelf, inviting the viewer to experience the coast in its multiplicity without privileging any order of events.
A Sea Nomads Coast
A re-drawn map of Semporna Town and surrounding Kampong (village) settlements (Bajau Laut Village). Elucidating the textures of the ocean and structure. Viewed both in high and low tide.
^ Images of the Coast : Through the medium of fragments, ethnographic text, analytical drawings a series of 36 collages was conceived.
^ Fragments of the Coast : Physical models were made to create a haptic way of interfacing with the fragments.
^ A Sea Nomad’s Coast : These discrete fragments of the coasts amalgamates together into a singular map. It takes the form of a pseudo-cartographic map that is viewed in both low and high tide.
^ Mortality of Architecture : The 3 models shows the lifespan of group of houses under the new technical systems. It both displays the progression of construction of systems but also weathering across time on materials and architecture.
^ The Act of Cleaning Water : A distinct relationship with the coast emerged, anchored around clear water. 3 primary systems were devised to clean the surrounding waters. Allowing the Bajau Laut to fish, manoeuvre and live in this layer of space in their unique way.
^ A New Coast
As the new system slowly decentralises the village the coastal area of Semporna town, it begins to take on a new arrangement. Dispersed across a field the Bajau Laut now reclaim the coast as their realm.
< Submerging Architecture
As the water gets cleaned the architecture begins to submerge into the ocean, now operating distinctly on the sea nomad’s sense of time.
House M
In Praise of Tropical Shadows
Location:
Project Type:
Level:
Supervisor: Mt Sinai, Singapore
Date:
Individual Academic Work
Year 5, Options Studio
August - November 2023
Professor Tsuto Sakamoto
The studio delved into understanding the ethos of a building in Japan and transposing it into Singapore. The intial research surrounded House T by Suppose Design. Tanijiri’s House T expressed integrity through designing a canvas that expresses the elements of age and weathering through the medium of darkness, moisture and nature. Through these mediums he accentuates details of the architecture’s age. Lines creating shadows, raw materials showing subtle imperfections. A reflection of “In Praise of Shadows” by Junichiro Tanizaki.
As Tanizaki ascribed a Japanese aestheticism in his book, how could my translation to Singapore reflect a new Singaporean aesetheticism. Through a small research project “In Praise of (Tropical) Shadows” I began to unpack this aesthetic as that of a relationship with moisture. Focusing on the moments it creates based on what surfaces it is able to interface with. Later crafting these moments in the architecture.
House M is a canvas for moisture to perform. Echoing House T’s integrity of age, material and element.
^ In Praise of (Tropical) Shadows
Split into 6 moments in a tropical day, each beginning with a written reflection on the tropical aesthetic. This book attempts to unpack the phenomenological aspects of the tropical shadow, an extension of Tanizaki’s “In Praise of Shadows”. A foray into tropical aestheticism.
Morning Cool - Hiding in Shadows - Revelling in Gloom - Then it RainedThen it Abates - The Comfort of Nightfall.
^ The Window and Rain
Referring to the moment during rain where the window becomes a faint mirror.
^ The Cool of Night
^ Performance of Moisture
^ Kitchen in Nature
^ The Fleeting Puddle
^ Presentation Boards
Model Stands
Model Stands
DefuLand
Celebrating the Recycling Event
Location:
Project Type:
Level:
Date:
Supervisor: Defu Industrial Estate
Individual Academic Work Year 3, Design 5
August - November 2021
Professor Thomas Kong
DEFULAND was conceived as a radical solution to a rapidly changing waste landscape. Moving towards a digital future the issue of e-waste and other integrated products continues to grow exponentially. These integrated systems require a change in infrastructure surrounding its recycling, a more dispersed smaller-scale operation. Paired with the need to adapt, a weak architecture that is an antithesis of this new waste, which is less composite, more enzymatic, traversable, and fluid. A completely new typology to recycling whom’s key agency is the general public. A non-sequential theme park that celebrates the recycling event as spectacle. Bring the new agency on a didactic journey through an amalgamation of bottom-up infrastructure through the tectonics of scaffold.
Following the footsteps of the recycling veterans, the public traverses the site as Karang Guni spurred on to spectate, participate and finally create. SPECTATE : to observe and marvel at, a cursory relationship. PARTCIPATE : to take part and journey with, palpable understanding.
CREATE : the last act, the agent becomes the enterprise, achieving the recycling apex.
^ Site Analysis
Assemblage | Karang Guni | Recycling
Looking towards assemblage to inform a new understanding of the site. Could this possibly inform a way of looking at the site differently from the empirical means of analysis?
> A High Tech Favela?
Interim 1
^ A Turn to Spectacle
Can the recycling experience be reimagined as a spectacle?
< Diagram of Process
From centralised systems towards decentralised spectatorship.
^ A Turn to Spectacle
Can the recycling experience be reimagined as a spectacle?
< Collection of Decentralised Spaces Event spaces spread accross the sprawl of the Defu Industrial Estate.
< DEFULAND Brochure
A play on the traditional theme park brochure, an alternate vision of an event led, non-hierarchal themepark.
< DEFULAND Manual
A comprehensive but not definitive guide on how to build a recycling theme park.
DEFULAND Model >
An infinite model, an ode to Andrea Branzi’s No-Stop City
Exhibition: ArchiVal
The Hybridisation of the Digital and Physical
Location:
Project Type:
Level:
Contribution:
Date:
Supervisor:
4 Architecture Dr, Singapore Exhibition (Student Work)
Year 3
Co-Director Jan - Dec 2021
Ar. Richard K F Ho
ArchiVal was conceived as a two week design exhibition, coupled together with a series of online and physical programmes, showcasing the works, stories, and emotions of the architecture and landscape architecture school community during the period of transition. Moving away from the formalities of the exhibition, this festival hopes to adopt various creative mediums and multimedia platforms to engage with the industry, public and students.
^ Exhibition Opening event and exhibition setup
^ Module Stands Reused for Play Pavilion Archifest 2022, Co-Designer
^ Module Stands Process Co-Designed with Choy Rui Zhi and Sarah Wong
^ Module Stands Reused at College Alice and Peter Tan 10th Year Anniversary Exhibition
^ Module Stands Reused at HealthCare 2030 Exhibition at National Design Center Singapore
N*thing
is Possible
Journey Towards Zero Waste
Location:
Project Type:
Level:
Contribution:
Date:
Supervisor:
National Design Center (SG) Research Collaborator
Year 4
Head of Research Team
May - July 2021
Dr Ho Puay Peng
The “N*thing is Possible” Exhibition was curated by the Office for Metropolitan Architecture (OMA) for Potato Head. Potato Head is a company centered around building a more sustainable approach to the hospitality industry. The exhibition centered around showing their journey to zero waste. The research team that I led provided the research for the waste landscape of Singapore to compare against what Potato Head Bali has achieved at their resort.
The research required coordination with national agencies, waste companies and on the ground documentation. The collaboration went on for three months and was a engaging learning journey with OMA, EcoMantra and Potato Head Bali.
The eventual work was exhibited at the National Design Center Singapore.
^ Main Exhibition Area
N*thing is Possible at the National Design Center Singapore
^ Research Exhibits Research conducted displayed alongside statistics from Bali
WASTE FACTS
Sample of Work
NUS Are there plans beyond prolonging the “lifespan” of Semakau Landfill “beyond 2035”?
NEA The Resource Sustainability Act (RSA) was enacted in 2019 to impose upstream regulatory measures on the three priority waste streams, namely e-waste, food waste, and packaging waste.
One example is the Extended Producer Responsibility (EPR) scheme for e-waste, which was introduced in July 2021, where producers of regulated products are required to pay for the collection and recycling of their products at end-of-life. Such upstream regulations will send economic signals to producers to account for the cost of environmental externalities, and to redesign products to require less materials, last longer, and be more easily recycled.
To encourage more people to switch from disposables to reusables, the “Say YES to Waste Less” campaign by the NEA raises awareness of simple everyday actions that the public can adopt to reduce waste.
We have also conducted public consultations on a charging model for disposable carrier bags handed out at supermarkets.
We are developing innovative ways to close our waste loop. For example. NEA is conducting trials to turn incineration bottom ash into NEWSand, which can be used as construction material, so as to divert waste away from Semakau Landfill.
Together with other initiatives under the Zero Waste Masterplan, we will work towards extending the lifespan of Semakau Landfill beyond 2035.
#HIDESUWUNG #SAVESEMAKAU
Ascending to the Sky
Old Changi Hospital Ideas Competition
Location:
Project Type:
Level:
Contribution:
Date: Old Changi Hospital Ideas Competition Year 3 Team Member May - August 2021
Aviation|Nature|Astronomy Observatory
Expanding on the building’s relationship with aviation both in history and physical elevation, the design is an ode to the sky.
The proposal is a series of vertical experiences, whose links are made through components that slowly reveal themselves through the journey to the skies. Re-establishing links to the surrounding aerospace environment in a family friendly learning experience.
This takes place in the form of viewing platforms, educational resources littered throughout the building and facilities such as the observatory. The design takes advantage of the neighbouring park connectors establishing the building
THE FORTRESS AND NATURE
The building peeking ever so slightly above the tree canopy watches over the sleepy coastal area. The building’s relationship with day and night is inexplicable,
< Axonometric Drawing Detailing the 3 Experiences
Tuloh 别有洞天 , A Different Space
Location:
Project Type:
Level:
Contribution:
Date: Geylang, Singapore Architecture Competition Year 3 Team Member Nov - Dec 2021
The heritage of Hakka is a history of anti-fragile - a term coined by Nassim Nicholas Taleb to describe the emergence of positivity in the face of adversities and uncertainties. The heritage not only survived a long journey down south, as Huang Zuxian read in his poem, but also innovated countless craft, food and buildings, amongst many others, through encounters with unaccustomed environments and other societies.
The proposal intends to pay homage and perpetuate such a philosophy in the contemporary urban fabric and climatic condition of Geylang, Singapore. Taking close reference to the Tulou, we propose a truly anti-fragile architecture that sustains the essence of heritage through the innovation based on such specific context.
Matthew Goh XinZhi
phone. +65 91732618
email. matthewgohxinzhi@gmail.com website. matthewgohxinzhi.com address. 1E #03-26 Pine Grove, S594001