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To The Lighthouse Pedra Branca Tan Qian Rou (M Arch\ Assistance Professor Lilian Chee and Zdravko Trivic) The idea of the fragment- of memory and image, as being more powerful than the actual entity of the lighthouse reflects the sort of territorial identity which can be discerned from Pedra Branca. Horsburgh Lighthouse, much as the lighthouse in Woolf’s description, becomes primarily empowered through a collective cultural image. The lighthouse becomes significant because it is a allegory; of place-memory, of familial relationships, of growth, and of territory. It acquires
importance beyond itself because of the narrative that is used to perceive it, and thus in turn becomes a tool to engage concepts which concern those narratives. Horsburgh Lighthouse hence becomes an allegory to describe not only Singaporean territory, but the role of architecture in territorialisation as well. Named for Woolf’s novel, this thesis demonstrates through the same starting point of a lighthouse that architecture is not only a tool to territorialise, but that through instances of image, representation and the allegory, multiple territorial definitions may be ascribed to architecture. In its endeavours, this scheme looks to the lighthouse for both architectural and territorial context; in doing so, suggests a structure which is simultaneously architecture and territory. Where for Woolf the image becomes the architecture, for the thesis, the image becomes the architecture, becomes the territory.