Weaving Kreta Ayer Group

Our strategy implements a multi-nodal system within Kreta Ayer by engaging the existing community and the new crowd with the proposed interventions such as mixed-use developments, green squares, public plazas, pedestrian links, and tourist hotspots. The strategy aims to unravel the area’s entanglement and revive the shophouses and modern development by weaving livable spaces, public and private, into the precinct and transforming it into a thriving neighbourhood.

Our strategy for weaving spaces of similar nature is to build connections on an urban landscape level. Our strategy is to provide Well Connected-Links which can seamlessly connect to the surrounding movement network and generate a street layout and hierarchy of streets. From a macro perspective, we interweave spaces with similar programs to introduce better connectivity in the neighbourhood. In several important spatial nodes, we proposed several urban interventions at potential spaces. For example, at Luckytown Plaza, the intervention proposes new underground developments such as shopping malls and parking spaces for tourists and locals and also the area above the ground level can be made into an open and interactive green square that attracts crowds from the MRT and bus stops and allows them to disperse into the back lanes of the shophouses.

This part is about the new intervention to a more detailed extent on connecting the different ends of Kreta Ayer for a more livable and walkable neighbourhood. The New Kreta Ayer Avenue starts from the proposed open plaza adjacent to the Buddha Relic Temple and ends on the other side by Pearl Hill, therefore connecting a big stretch of various spaces that enables activities such as sports, play, entertainment, shopping and business. Along this route are many newly proposed urban landscape elements such as ramps, staircases and a new garden bridge that allows a transition that is interactive and well-connected.

Back lanes, unlike the busy streets of traffic, are on the other side of Kreta Ayer. In the long block design of the Straits Settlement shophouses neighbourhoods, the planners separated the block on two sides, with buildings back-to-back and closely juxtaposed on both sides of the street. Such a plan resulted in a long, thin back alley in the middle. From our planning perspective, the back alleys can be altered from their former (and current) utilitarian function into a private green space tucked in between the shophouses.

The idea of the plan is to break down the components of the backyard and expand it into a green lane that accommodates different activities throughout the day. The degree of intimacy between the public and private spaces is mediated by the shophouses and the back lanes. Introducing levels to cover and connect the linear lanes to the nodes, and also to function as a place to gather.

Group 4 Strategy: