NUS DoA M.ARCH1 OPTIONS STUDIO - RESILIENCE RESTORATION OF HIRAENOKI, ASAKURA (2019/2020)

YEAR 4 OPTIONS STUDIO COMPILATION OF SELECTED WORKS

2019/2020 M.ARCH 1 STUDIO TSUTO SAKAMOTO

RESILIENCE: RESTORATION OF HIRAENOKI, ASAKURA

IMAGE CREDIT: ONG CHAN HAO

MASTERS DESIGN PROJECTS

INTERESTS Masters Design Projects include those explored in two Options Design Research Studios (M.Arch 1), the Advanced Architecture Studio and the Thesis project in M.Arch 2. All studios may explore issues relevant to the interests of the Research Clusters, adjunct teachers and professors in practice. Students are encouraged to capitalise on faculty expertise in widening the scope of investigations which collectively strengthen the Thesis Project in M.Arch 2.

Essential and Elective modules are useful in underpinning your Masters studio investigations.

Although Options Design Research studios may be varied in content and method, students are advised to be selective and to use them as ‘learning runways’ to identify a Thesis topic and to apply accumulated knowledge there. The Advanced Architecture Studio preceding the Thesis may be used to explore thesis drivers in greater detail and focus.

It is expected that the Thesis project will be the most comprehensive and extensive study of all the Masters Design Projects. _______________________________________________________________________________________

DESIGN AS INQUIRY Masters projects can be research investigations where design forms a principal mode of inquiry.

Methods can be heuristic or empirical or in mixed modes of inquiry.

There are a number of research methods in design investigations leading to different outcomes but they are by no means exhaustive: • • • • •

textual/graphic analysis of theoretical concepts with investigations drawn from critical discourse using text references, works of art/representation quantitative analysis to verify qualitative hypotheses with simulation, physical experiment, prototype testing and mixed methods scenario-driven speculative design to suggest solutions to emergent need. The process in itself is a new way of seeing/thinking which generates many solutions. One version of a solution may be articulated spatially and in full materiality new research knowledge is interpreted in architecture as a new way of thinking/making/ experiencing existing practices, processes or existing technologies are applied to design and which produce ‘unprecedented’ outcomes

PROJECT ATTRIBUTES A good Masters project is one where: • • • •

the research process informs design strategy which can be followed through a coherent sequential process of explorations or iterations the research generates an underlying order giving rise to a number of architectural or urban propositions the research or issues engaged with, give rise to new solutions through design, some of which are singular, permutable or recombinant it addresses the contextual specificities of site, material, spatial, culture and program

and all of the above are communicated through architectural drawings, well-crafted models and annotations which curate a design process and outcome(s) that can be understood without a verbal presentation by the author Beyond a commitment to individual academic portfolios, Masters projects play an important role in characterising the discursive ethos of a design school. It is important that you do your best. _______________________________________________________________________________________

RESEARCH CLUSTERS

ASIA RESEARCH FOCUS The Department positions itself as a design and research think-tank for architectural and urban development issues emerging in South Asia and SE Asia contexts. Graduate coursework in design engages with key challenges in population growth, industry, infrastructure, housing and environment, climate change and rapid economic change with disruptive technologies. In engaging with trans-boundary economies and technological change, the Department addresses concerns with the environmental impact of new settlements and cities on the natural environment in the light of climate change and on the threat to heritage and cultural presentation. MArch studios anticipate planning solutions through design explorations at various scales of intervention.

The Master’s coursework are thus aligned to a core of five teaching groups viz. History Theory Criticism, Research by Design, Design Technologies, Urbanism and Landscape Studies. _______________________________________________________________________________________

I. HISTORY THEORY CRITICISM The History Theory Criticism cluster develops critical capacities to examine questions of architectural production, representation and agency within historical and contemporary milieu.

Taking architecture and urbanism in Asia as its primary focus, members work in interdisciplinary and transnational modes. We explore a range of topics relating to colonial/postcolonial and modern/ postmodern Asian cities; aesthetics and technopolitics of tropical climate and the built environment; affective media including film, contemporary art and exhibitionary modes; heritage politics and emergent conservation practices. We develop discursive fronts through a variety of media and scales. The cluster research encompasses scholarly, creative and advocacy activities. Output includes monographs, edited volumes, research papers, architectural reviews in professional journals, curatorial practice, conservation work, film and photography, objectmaking, and policy-influencing advocacy work.

II. RESEARCH BY DESIGN The Research by Design cluster performs translational research through the practices of making as research rather than through traditional forms academic research. It links the importance of creating, drawing, and building with rigor, originality, and significance to produce innovative and creative designs that shape the built environment. Located strategically between the NorthSouth axis of rapidly urbanizing Asia and the East -West line of the tropical equator, the Research

by Design cluster performs research through practice in three main themes: • • •

Novel aesthetics of climatic calibration and performance; Contemporary architectonics of fabrication, material, and resources contingent on South East Asia; and Emergent spaces of inhabitation and production surrounding the equator.

III. TECHNOLOGIES The Technologies cluster investigates environmentally performative/sustainable building forms and systems,and generative-evaluative processes for designing liveable environments. Its research employs traditional and emerging technologies contributing to a new understanding of the human ecosystem, and emerging computational methods and techniques for discovering the relationships between form and performance. It researches on the relationship between human and natural landscapes, at every scale, from the building component scale to the urban scale.

Special emphasis is placed on the context of high density Asian cities and the context of the Tropics.

IV. URBANISM With a comprehensive understanding of the complexity and distinctive characters of emerging urbanism in Asia, the vision is to develop sustainable models and innovative urban strategies to cope with various environmental, social, economic and technological challenges that Asian cities face today and in the future. Emergent urban issues related to community & participation, conservation & regeneration, ageing & healthcare, built form, modelling & big data, and resilience & informality are investigated from multiple perspectives and inter- and transdisciplinary collaborations to question conventional norms and conceptions and establish new visions for a sustainable urban future.

V. LANDSCAPE STUDIES The Landscape Studies cluster undertakes research to generate new knowledge of landscapes as socio-ecological systems and promotes the use of knowledge in governance systems and landscape design that improve the well-being of humans and the ecological integrity of the environment. The geographic focus is primarily high-density urban regions in Asia, but members of cluster also work in the transitional zones within the rural-urban continuum, where urban regions are expanding at a rapid rate into rural landscapes. The overall research approach is both interdisciplinary and transdisciplinary — we are concerned with not just advancing theoretical concepts and knowledge, but also applying the knowledge in practice and public policy to shape the environment. Our research areas cover a wide spectrum of socio-ecological dimensions of landscape, from landscape science, landscape management, to design research and sociobehavioural studies.

STUDIO TSUTO SAKAMOTO

RESILIENCE: RESTORATION OF HIRAENOKI, ASAKURA Torrential Rain in Northern Kyushu, Japan in July 2017 recorded an unprecedented instantaneous precipitation in the region. Rivers in small and medium sizes in mountainous areas flooded in a short period of time, and villages along the basin were hit by inundation and sediments. The rapid current of the rivers gouged the slope and mowed down numerous trees. The driftwood attacked wooden and concrete buildings on the basin. 42 people died and 2 people were missing. 1,000 houses were fully or partially destroyed, while 600 houses were flooded above floors. 2,303 refugees (in the peak period) were accommodated in the temporary shelters in the region.

Taking this disaster, a restoration and preparation for future disasters as research subjects, the studio explored architectural design that are integrated with these three processes in terms of function. Considering a natural disaster as an issue to be accommodated as a part of everyday life, the studio pursued a significance of the whole cycle of these events and theoretical and cultural meanings implied in the cycle. Furthermore, engaging with problems of depopulation and aging of Hiraenoki villages – the disaster site, the studio attempted to overcome such problems by introducing alternative programs, new way or perceiving the situations and producing an alternative form of economy.

The Disaster Body by Tan Yi-Ern Samuel proposed a new form of tourists or residents’ life in and out the village by introducing “nomadic body” - that are closely integrated with an ecology of persimmon, deer and bee in the village, while blending such a body with a natural and artificial landscape.

Of Timber and Dragons by Ong Chan Hao proposed a way to use cyders and cypresses on the site for a “warning system” that alert the encroaching danger by destructing itself.

The aesthetic experience of the destruction of structures and primitive life in the refuge-camp were synthesised with Shinto tradition and a local myth in a sophisticated manner.

The Designing Atmosphere by Low Jo Ann, using production of Shiitake mushroom as a land-re-enforcing element and a catalysis for new culture in the village, proposed a non-human-centric ecological sphere where people dedicate themselves for a discovery and maintenance for the sphere.

The Debriscape by Lim Jia Yi, Amelia, by identifying routes for drafting woods, debris, soil and sands during a landslide, attempted to accommodate them as landscape clue and turn these unwanted wastes to aesthetic elements for the natural landscape.

A/P Tsuto Sakamoto

DISASTER BODY TAN YI-ERN SAMUEL

Disaster Body

On the multi-scaled body of man, beast, dwelling, biome, and disaster

by Tan Yi-Ern Samuel To me, Hiraenoki is one of the many children man has borne of his perpetual obsession with domestication. His distaste for the discomforts of the wild and constant competition with beings that would otherwise be his equal drove him to exert control and alchemy upon what would have been a system in perfect balance. First, he took seeds and created the field. Then, he killed that which challenged him in predatory primacy.

Centuries on, he would cull that which his old rivals preyed upon. And decades later, he would clothe the earth to keep it from falling apart.

This tale of a disciplining of the body is what begins my investigation into Hiraenoki, where a body consisting of different members at different scales (all bodies in their own right) are affected in a phenomenon we call ‘disaster’. This is not merely a matter of climatic misfortune, but of man’s undoing unto himself, brought about by this very compulsion to domesticate. This is what I call the ‘Disaster Body’, a way of thinking through disaster as one would the nested finitudes of Hyperobjects to reproach man and his culpability in the creation of disaster.

And so, the response I saw befitting of such a problem was not one of building, one of man’s chef-d’oeuvre of domestication, but one of garment, the most primitive and intimate form of shelter. This would be the instrument I used to topple the essence of the problem, of agricultural and sedentary normalcy that we in the 21st Century have become accustomed to, in aspiring towards the lessons we can garner from the hunter-gatherers and nomads long since relegated to extinction.

The project proper consists of four garments that respond to different speculative roles in a contemporary hunter-gatherer society set in Hiraenoki, anchored upon the production of Kaki and reaping the benefit of its secondary resources. The project does not relinquish the agricultural product entirely, on the contrary, it seeks to build a parallel world to the practices that command it, questioning the efficacy and more importantly the stability of such systems.

You have beekeepers, disaster bodies that cultivate wild bees to feed the Kaki with pollen and to propagate flora across the site, and beyond. You have gardeners, disaster bodies that cultivate the trees in the orchard, protecting them from parasites and other manner of localised pests, ensuring their healthy growth. You have gatherers, who harvest both these cultivated resources as well as wild ones that might arise out of serendipity. And finally, you have hunters, replacing the role of wolves once removed from the ecology, to take lives out of reluctance in preservation of the fragile system.

But these garments do not remain at the scale of this human body. They are deployed and re-deployed, scattered across the Disaster Body to from settlements, both sophisticated and primitive; the garment is to the individual disaster bodies as much of a skin as it is to this collective, titanic Disaster Body - a spatial device. DISASTER BODY then is not just a project about the continuity between garment and architecture, or hunter-gatherers and nomads, nor even disaster, but of design itself.

BEEKEEPER BEEKEEPER

GARDENER

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Studio Tsuto Sakamoto

GATHERER GATHERER

HUNTER

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DISASTER BODY emaki : full sequence 353mm x 2500mm

Resilience: Restoration of Hiraenoki, Asakura

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OF TIMBER AND DRAGONS ONG CHAN HAO

Of Timber and Dragons

by Ong Chan Hao

Of Timber and Dragons is a project that deals with the anxiety of landslides and depopulation in a village (Hiraenoki) situated in the mountainous region of Asakura City, Fukuoka. Recognising the manmade aspect of landslide disasters, which are the tall overgrown Hinoki and Sugi monoculture surrounding the village, the project’s ambition is to invert their presence - from a source of anxiety to become a source of hope for the village. Using timber as a material to deal with landslides opposes the norm in Japan, where concrete is used mainly to control movement of the earth. Through material exploration, qualities that were before deemed undesirable in architecture, such as weakness, smallness and mutability, are used by the villagers in a positive manner, eventually transforming the natural and cultural landscape of Hiraenoki and beyond.

01 - Of Timber And Dragons

02 - Landslide

03 - How to Make a (Hiraenoki) Stool

04 - Death of the Village

DEBRISCAPE LIM JIA YI, AMELIA

Debriscape

by Lim Jia Yi, Amelia Located in the disaster-prone village of Hiraenoki, Asakura City, Fukuoka, where there are frequent torrential rains. flooding and landslide disaster, this project, Debriscape, questions: How do we live with disaster? How could we possibly rethink the locality and typology of the house, that is responsive to and interacts with the disaster, while respecting the villager’s attachment and ownership of the land? And what is the relationship between the house, the people and the landscape?

This project looks at the physical matter of the disaster, the debris. Through understanding the physical properties and movement of the debris and water on site, through physical and digital experiments. A system of sorting and collecting the debris is formed using a series of architectural elements - the stilt, grid and wall. The debris harnesses the energy of the disaster and is then moved, collected and left in its organic form, reflective of the forces of nature, as a new form of landscape and aesthetics, that draws values from the Japanese Ryo-anji garden and the values of Wabi, as part of the house. The house uses these elements as its foundation - to create open spaces on the ground floor, while the rooms on the upper floor which serves as a life line for the community during the disaster and recovery period.

This project serves to redefine the locality and typology of houses in disaster-prone Hiraenoki, in terms of 1. Debris, 2. Water, 3. Community, 4.

Time-scale, to establish new relationships between disaster and living.

DESIGNING ATMOSPHERE JO ANN LOW

Designing Atmosphere

by Jo Ann Low

This project introduces the concept of designing a curated atmosphere for the natural growth of mycorrhizal Matsutake fungi. Important relationships with the Pine trees, the Persimmon plantation, and with the Hiraenoki villagers are brought to the forefront of understanding the site’s ecological complexity. Atmospheric conditions, such as humidity, drainage, and rainfall, start to form relationships with the cultural and traditional facets of Japanese ways of living and community. Designing from the perspectives of the proud Pine tree, or the humble fungi, requires a fundamental shift in understanding our role as man, as architect, and as object within the vastness of the web. Relationships between non-human and non-human objects are understood to be just as important as those between human and non-human: the raindrop and the root has just as much place and far-reaching consequences as the villager and the persimmon plantation.

HIRAENOKI, KYUSHU, JAPAN PRINT F-01

HIRAENOKI, KYUSHU, JAPAN PRINT F-02

Harvested from Wild

Tricholoma matsutake MATSUTAKE まつたけ

Average Dimensions: 5-20cm (diameter); 4-15cm (length) Ectomycorrhizal x Average Price/KG: SGD$126-SGD$2801 Saprotrophic x Average Growth Period: ~6-14 months Dense Clusters / Sparse Clusters / Individual Associated Ecologies: Akamatsu (Japanese Red Pine)

Harvested from Factory (Bottle-grown)

Flammulina velutipes ENOKITAKE エノキタケ

Average Dimensions: 1-3cm (diameter); 10-15cm (length) Average Price/KG: SGD$7.24 Average Growth Period: ~1.5 months Dense Clusters / Sparse Clusters / Individual

Ectomycorrhizal x Saprotrophic x Associated Ecologies: Kaki (Japanese Persimmon)

HIRAENOKI, KYUSHU, JAPAN PRINT T-02

HIRAENOKI, KYUSHU, JAPAN PRINT T-03 (a)

Diospyros Kaki KAKI / PERSIMMON カキノキ

Quercus acutissima KUNUGI / SAWTOOH OAK クヌギ

Deciduous Fruit-tree Soil Conditions for Growth: Well-drained; Full Sun; Average Dimensions: 4.5-7.5m (spread); 6-9m (height) Loam, Sand; Average Growth Rate/Year: ~300-914mm Acidic - Alkaline pH Dense Clusters (Plantation) / Sparse Clusters / Individual Associated Ecologies: Enokitake

Deciduous Hardwood Average Dimensions: 12-16m (spread); 12-18m (height) Average Growth Rate/Year: ~330-600mm Dense Clusters / Sparse Clusters / Individual

Soil Conditions for Growth: Well-drained; Full Sun; Chalk, Clay, Loam, Sand; Acidic - Neutral pH Associated Ecologies: Shiitake

HIRAENOKI, KYUSHU, JAPAN PRINT F-03

HIRAENOKI, KYUSHU, JAPAN PRINT T-01

Lentinula edodes SHIITAKE しいたけ

Pinus densiflora AKAMATSU / JAPANESE RED PINE アカマツ

Average Dimensions: 10-20cm (diameter); 5-10cm (length) Ectomycorrhizal x Average Price/KG: SGD$14.68; SGD$61 (Oita) Saprotrophic x Average Growth Period: ~10-20 months Associated Ecologies: Hardwood Trees - Kunugi (Sawtooth Oak), Dense Clusters / Sparse Clusters / Individual Kuri (Chestnut), Arakashi (Blue Oak), Irohamomiji (Maple)

Evergreen Hardwood; Longevity >150 years Soil Conditions for Growth: Well-drained; Full Sun-Partial Shade; Average Dimensions: 4.5-7.5m (spread); 9-15m (height) Clay, Loam, Sand; Average Growth Rate/Year: ~609-914mm Highly Acidic - Slightly Alkaline pH Dense Clusters (600mm spacing) / Sparse Clusters / Individual Associated Ecologies: Matsutake

HIRAENOKI, KYUSHU, JAPAN PRINT T-03 (b)

HIRAENOKI, KYUSHU, JAPAN PRINT T-03 (c)

Castanea crenata KURI / JAPANESE CHESTNUT クリ

Quercus glauca ARAKASHI / JAPANESE BLUE OAK アラカシ

Deciduous Hardwood Soil Conditions for Growth: Well-drained; Semi-shade to No shade; Average Dimensions: 9-12m (spread); 10-17m (height) Clay, Loam, Sand; Average Growth Rate/Year: ~600-914mm Very Acidic - Neutral pH Dense Clusters / Sparse Clusters / Individual Associated Ecologies: Shiitake

Evergreen Hardwood Average Dimensions: 3-4.5m (spread); 15-20m (height) Average Growth Rate/Year: Slow Dense Clusters / Sparse Clusters / Individual

Soil Conditions for Growth: Well-drained; Full Sun; Clay, Loam, Sand; Acidic pH Associated Ecologies: Shiitake

YEAR 4 OPTIONS STUDIO COMPILATION OF SELECTED WORKS

2019/2020 M.ARCH 1 STUDIO TSUTO SAKAMOTO

IMAGE CREDIT: LIM JIA YI, AMELIA