Singapore Prototypologies

media x design lab

SINGA PORE PROTO TYPO LOGIES EPFL / MxD master studio 2016-2017 lausanne/singapore

CONTENTS

1. INTRODUCTION: SINGAPORE PROTOTYPOLOGIES NETWORK CLIMATE NOISE SITE

4 8 10 12 14

2. EXPERIMENTAL PROTOCOLS IN SINGAPOREAN URBANIZATION

16

3. URBAN DESIGN: SINGAPORE AND THE INNOVATION DISTRICT ANALYSIS OF INNOVATION DISTRICTS URBAN PROCESSES AESTHETICS OF DATA

24 26 30 54

4. ARCHITECTURAL DESIGN: THE MEGA-INCUBATOR ANALYSIS OF INCUBATORS PROTOTYPOLOGIES DESIGN-DRIVEN DATA

64 66 70 102

6. PRESENTATION MEDIA x DESIGN LAB

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7. ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

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8. TEAM

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9. SOURCES

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10. INDEX OF STUDENT WORK

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INTRODUCTION

SINGAPORE PROTO TYPOLOGIES

Unlike a traditional architectural studio, the products of Singapore Prototypologies are not singular artifacts presented with the fetishized polish of the masterpiece. Our focus, instead, is designing processes: groups of algorithms to create and test series of many possible forms.

This shift in focus, from the individual artifact to clouds of possible artifacts, is provoked by the possibilities of computationally-augmented searching, testing, self-reflection and curation of architectural form.

Comparing families of possible forms allows to us to pose and test hypotheses, like scientists probing imaginary worlds. Singapore Prototypologies has been dedicated to framing hypotheses in one specific research

introduction

area: the possible links between form and innovation.

Bottling innovation is the aspiration of our site: Changi Business Park, a new mixed-use district in the eastern end of Singapore anchored by the Singapore University for Technology and Design(SUTD). But, can architectural form really instigate innovation?

Two tasks have dominated our work: the creation of digital models and the gathering (and manufacturing of data) to test these models. The question of what data to gather has varied depending on the hypothesized link between form and innovation. Whether it depends on convergent circulation patterns, promiscuous views, or sun-lit space for introverted reflection, a different mix of metrics has been gathered. Whenever possible we have sought to automate the loop between form generation and form testing- a condition that we describe as ‘data-driven.’

Our digital models do not create architectural form out of thin air; they are grounded in local typologies. From South-east Asian vernacular to Singapore’s office blocks and HDB housing, the insights to be gleamed from typology are both material and cultural. They describe ways to build and ways of living or working tested by hundreds of thousands of people over decades, if not centuries. To create of a typology-based digital model one must extract the embodied knowledge from local typology and make it explicit through scripted procedures. If this isn’t challenging enough it is also necessary to adapt the typology to new conditions and concepts.

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In this pamphlet, we provide a brief overview of how we have created digital models, how these models have been used to test hypotheses about innovation, and potential results of our search. Over the past year we have worked at both the urban and architectural scale. At the urban scale our site was a one-hundred-hectare study area of partially-vacant land with the SUTD at its center.

At the architectural scale we proposed 40,000m2 of incubator space on an 8,000 m2 site adjacent to the SUTD. As results extracted from an ongoing process of research we choose to call these proposals Prototypologies.

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introduction

ISLAND NETWORK Though well-integrated with Singapore’s mobility networks, Changi Business Park is cut off from direct access to other parts of the city. Changi Airport, one of the world’s busiest, lies to the north-east on an area of massive landfill. The MRT green line stops already at the site (EXPO) and a blue line stop is currently under construction. To the north of the site runs the Pan-Island Expressway (PIE) and to the east the East Coast Parkway (ECP).

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introduction

CLIMATE Humidity and temperature are constant through the year in Singapore; seasons are rather defined by different amounts of rainfall. Strong rainfall occurs during the “Monsoon Season�; the first one occuring from Mid November to early March, the second from June to September.

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Extreme Min

Monthly rainfall for Singapore (mm)

Extreme Max Mean daily Min

Average monthly sunshine hours, (Direct irradiance, at least 120 W/m2)

Mean daily Max

c D e

J a n

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D

e

J a n F

o

e

N

b

b

N

e c

v

o

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O c t

50 a p r

a p r

p S e

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p S e

O c t

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r M a

r M a

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M

g

a

a

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M y n e J u

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A J u l y

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y n e J u

A J u l y

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introduction

SITE A roughly 100 hectare study area, demarcated here by a dashed red line gave our innovation district a defined but maleable border. This area is bounded to the north by the PIE, to the west by the Upper Changi Road, to the east by Changi South Avenue, and to the south by the existing business park buildings along Changi Business Park Vista. The site shown in red is a suggested 8,000 m2 site for the development of the architectural intervention: the Mega-incubator.

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EXPERIMENTAL PROTOCOLS IN

SINGAPOREAN URBANIZATION

Innovation, creativity, cultural vibrancy- these words are only recently associated with Singapore. Before the second world war Singapore was an island of crowded kampungs, where as many as sixty people would live together in a single shop house. The departure of the British after the second world war, and the dissociation from the much larger state of Malaysia left the small island poor and isolated, albeit strategically placed with a port on the Strait of Malacca. Through a massive program of urban renewal, industrialization and militarization, Singapore emerged at the end of the twentieth century as a South-East Asia economic power-house. Around a glassy central business district, archipelagos of modernist housing and business parks flourished in an enthusiastically-manicured tropical landscape.

introduction

Queenstown, Singapore.1963.

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singaporean urbanization

This transformation was not without a measure of discomfort. The modernist housing block, deployed unrelentingly in the development of Singapore, was tellingly described by Rem Koolhaas as a ‘time machine’ for its new residents.(Koolhaas 1021) The block ripped the Singaporean people from their cultural and historical context and transplanted them into western modernist urbanism. An abject failure in Europe and North America, Koolhaas notes with surprise that this modernist housing and monofunctional urbanism somehow ‘worked’ in Singapore. (Koolhaas 1037) He likens this artificial urbanization to a fever-dream of scientific experimentation: “gigantic clearances, leveling, extensions, expropriations create laboratory conditions for the importation of social and architectural cultures that can be grown under experimental protocols, without the presence of anterior substance.” (Koolhaas1035)

Starting in the 1990s the ‘experimental protocol’ of Singaporean urbanization, its mission of housing and employing its populace largely fulfilled, shifted its focus toward tourism (‘leisurization’) and the cultural economy. Most importantly for the research focus of Singapore Prototypologies were a series of iconic architectural structures paired with new or reinvigiorated institutions initiated as cornerstones for the development of Singaporean culture. The National Library (Ken Yeang,2005), the LASALLE College of the arts campus(RSP, 2007), the School of the Arts (WOHA, 2008), the new campus for the Yale/NUS partnership (Pelli Clark Pelli and Forum Architects 2011-2015), the 19

introduction

Changi Business Park: today.

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National Gallery of Singapore (studio Milou, 2015), all are urban machines designed to artificially instigate a new creative culture.

Whole districts are now planned per the theme of innovation in Singapore: Jurong Innovation District planned for partial completion in the 2020s proposes 600ha and a 4 billion-dollar government grant dedicated to fostering creativity.(Ong Hwee Hwee) Official accounts give little detail on how exactly the physical environment, attractively rendered in official brochures, might induce its inhabitants to be (or become?) innovative.

Changi Business Park, the site for Singapore Prototypologies’ research, to some extent follows the pattern established by other Singaporean innovation districts and new cultural institutions.

The new campus for the Singapore University of Technology and Design(SUTD), designed by UN Studio and completed in 2015, echoes LASALLE, Yale/NUS and SOTA. Its situation, remote from the downtown in the industrial hinterland of Changi Airport, is distinctly different from these more centrally located institutions.

A massive EXPO hall and a loose cluster of introvert office blocks border the site to the south. To the north the Pan-Island Expressway establishes a hard boundary to the site and gives off a continuous low-level rumble. Beyond the expressway, above clusters of rain trees, the Changi Control tower is visible along with aircraft landing on its western runway. Warehouses 21

introduction

Jurong Innovation District: the imagined future.

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singaporean urbanization

and logistic centers dot the edges of the site along the north and east.

Without the density and diversity of the downtown, the prospects for vibrant urbanism in Changi Business Park are dependent on the new university and on the daily influx of students and office workers from the two MRT stations (one existing and one in construction.)

Managing flow from these hot spots was an instigator for our urban study of the area and subsequent proposals. How vibrancy or innovation might be kindled through the introduction of urban program and its organization into architectural form has been a continuous challenge, defying breezy sloganeering. Singapore Prototypologies has deployed its own experimental protocols in the search for possible responses to the call for ‘innovative space.’ While inspired by the bold achievements of Singapore’s 20th century urbanization, we propose in this new experiment to test proposals not by building first and asking questions later, but through the critical rigor of digitally-augmented process and the judicious extraction of promising design.

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URBAN DESIGN:

SINGAPORE andthe INNOVATION DISTRICT

Creating an innovation district in the industrial hinterland of Changi Airport, one of the world’s busiest airports, is a challenge in keeping with the audacity of Singapore’s urban history. Remote from the city center, isolated in a sea of highways, parking lots and warehouses, the Changi Business Park(CBP) nonetheless aspires to become a thriving creative-class enclave. With the new Singapore University for Technology and Design as its anchor, the design of the CBP must overcome its isolation to produce attractive shared spaces for exchange and cohabitation.

What mix of research, business, and living would best enliven this quiet urban island? How might vibrancy arise through new patterns of flow, microclimate, and typologies of urban form?

urban design

ANALYSIS: INNOVATION DISTRICTS The innovation district emerged as an urban type in the last thirty years as large scale urban actors, often city governments, have competed to attract the protagonists of a new global economy (tech, finance, design) to their cities. Our research into existing innovation districts identified major cultural anchors (for example, Elbphilharmonie in Hafen City) and transport hubs (often a train station or airport) for each district. From these major hubs, and around an architectural protagonist highlighted in red, we diagrammed urban flows and spatial distribution.

SIN

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Changi Business Park, Singapore Area: 66 hectares Population: >1000 residents, primarly students Cultural Anchor: Singapore University of Technology and Design, UN Studio Transport Hub: Changi Airport, Expo Station (MRT, east-west line)

analysis: innovation districts

New Songdo City, South Korea Area: 600 hectares Population: ~30,000 Cultural Anchor: Incheon National University, Songdo Global University Campus (SUNY Korea, George Mason University, Uni. Ghent, etc.)

Transport Hub: Incheon Airport

One North, Singapore Area: 200 hectares Population: 620 residents Cultural Anchor: Star Performing Arts Center, Aedas Transport Hub: One-North Station (MRT, circle line) Buona Vista Station (MRT, east-west line)

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Cornell Tech Campus, NYC, USA Area: 5 hectares Population: 2,500 students/faculty at full build Cultural Anchor: Bloomberg Center, Morphosis Transport Hub: Roosevelt Island Subway (F)

Euralille, Lille, France Area: 120 hectares Population: ~5,000 residents Cultural Anchor: Congrexpo, OMA Transport Hub: Gare de Lille, Flandres (TGV)

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analysis: innovation districts

Hafen City, Hamburg, Germany Area: 240 hectares Population: 2,319 residents (2015) Cultural Anchor: Elbphilharmonie, HdM Transport Hub: U-Bahn, Ãœberseequartier (U4)

Zuidas, Amsterdam, Netherlands Area: 420 hectares Population: ~2,300 residents Cultural Anchor: Vrije Universiteit Amsterdam Transport Hub: Amsterdam Zuid, train, metro

TRANSIT RAILWAY MAJOR ROAD MEDIUM ROAD MINOR ROAD WATERWAY SUN TRAJECTORY PUBLIC HUB

GREEN AREA

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URBAN PROCESSES

MICRODENSIFICATION CHANNELING LATTICING ALLUVIATION THREADING

urban design

MICRODENSIFICATION In response to a vibrancy index, the site is cracked into progressivelly smaller parcels- transitioning from the scale of logistic park to vernacular kampung.

above: site plan with micro densification depicted at three distinct vibrant centers opposite: vibrancy index of the site 32

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CHANNELING Pedestrian flow through the site is simulated step by step, first with only existing sources of public transport, and then testing the channeling effect of new urban and architectural interventions. Density is programmed around major channels.

above: proposed master plan with density linked to simulated pedestrian flow opposite: iterative flow tests 36

urban processes

initial flow test- open field

flow test of urban form

flow test with architecural form 37

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above: proposed master plan derived from pedestrian flow studies opposite: massing model, density accretes to major channel 38

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LATTICING A semi-lattice network begining with public transport nodes outside the site iteratively propogates within the urban study area. Tighter clusters of nodes and more intense connectivity are generated in proximity to the SUTD.

above: intial orientation and hierachy of nodes in the semi-lattice opposite: exploded axonometry of the semi-lattice and its built components 40

urban processes

urban massing

parcels derived from lattice

folded pedestrian walkway along semi-lattice

edges of the urban semi-lattice

nodes of the urban semi-lattice

existing site

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above: urban massing masterplan of semi-lattice opposite: massing/ public space conditions along semi-lattice edges 42

3 TYPES OF RELATIONS BETWEEN BUILDINGS AND THE SEMILATTICE: 3 TYPES OF RELATIONS BETWEEN BUILDINGS AND THE SEMILATTICE:

urban processes

Semilattice’s elevated street between two buildings Semilattice’s elevated street between two buildings

semi-lattice public space between two buildings Semilattice’s elevated plaza on building’s roof Semilattice’s elevated plaza on building’s roof

semi-lattice elevated public plaza Semilattice’s elevated street on one building’s roof Semilattice’s elevated street on one building’s roof

semi-lattice elevated public space on building roof

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ALLUVIATION L-system generated paths branch out from the SUTD and colonize the site.

Green space accretes to the paths, parcels emerge island-like in the interstices.

above: diagram of urban form generation highlighting the network of branching paths/ greenspace opposite: matrix of the typology variationfrom living to office, dense to sparse 46

urban processes

living

mixed use

working

low valence

low rise

thin plate

high valence

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deep plate

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THREADING Threads connect the programs at the periphery of the site, promoting mixity between residential, office, and warehousing/logistics. Significant intersections spawn new threads which interweave to create dense, vibrant public spaces.

above: site plan with urban massing arrayed along threads opposite: threading process diagrams 48

urban processes

initial threads

significant intersections

rationalisation

thread thickening

densities emerge

thread colonization

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above: urban massing overlayed by mixity index 51

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LIAM MOURITZ

AESTHETICS OF DATA

Liam Mouritz practices as a Landscape Urbanist in the London-based studio Groundlab. He is interested in issues of territory, urban design, landscape and architecture and the capacity of digital technologies within these fields. His work explores the possibilities a territorial practice, focusing on the inherently conflicted dynamics driving human occupation, be they urban or remote. As well as practicing, Liam co-teaches the architectural design studio ‘Fluctuating Archipelago’ at Leeds Beckett University.

Mapping is an aesthetic decision of selecting, distorting, and projecting data. Maps are thus a complicit tool towards the subjective agenda of its producer, part of a process of “creating and building the world, as much as measuring and describing it�(Corner 213).

This can be said of all maps, despite a common misconception of qualitative truthfulness suggested in a certain precision conveyed by the tools and techniques used to produce them. Even the earlier traditions of contemporary cartography, making use of accurate new surveying techniques, produced maps with the primary intent to delimitate, demarcate and control land and the resources within it.

urban design

Liam Moritz: Fisheries Production System in the Nile Delta

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aesthetics of data

This subjective quality of the map is perhaps even more widespread today, with the proliferation of various digital techniques. This is often concealed as an objective representation of harvested data ranging from an array of possible subjects be they geophysical, climatic, demographics, cultural or economic.

Give its inherent subjectivity, it can be useful to understand the map as an aesthetic product. I consider aesthetics not in the reductive sense of the beauty of an object, but according to the broader social, political and economic context around the production and observation of that object. To rephrase, an object becomes aesthetically successful not based on a subconscious immediate sensorial affect, but through the discovery and revealing of the context, agenda and critical discourse from which it is produced and to which it is influencing.

The task of effective cartographic representation can be understood, at least within the disciplines of spatial design and planning, as a process of discovering the specificities of a site alongside the gradual development of a critical discourse and narrative. Through the application of a variety of possible representation and analytical techniques, the narrative can be both dramatized to form a sort of ‘activism’ around an issue, and also operationalised to suggest how the designer might intervene within the territory. Each cartographic technique has a particular influence on the viewer and the cartographer: below I consider several examples.

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Wind Flow Scenarios 58

aesthetics of data

Point density mapping or heat map represents a given condition as a gradient of variaWtion, not something which can be adequately demarcated or understood with a solid line. Examples of this technique are quite prevalent in artwork, mapping and architecture today, ranging from the “distributions” of the post-minimalist artist Barry Le Va in the 1970’s to the recent gradient-based depictions of energy atmospheres by the architect Sean Lally.

Classification is an entirely different technique, building upon traditions of taxonomy and typology. Through this techniques, the objects apparent in the previously discussed field have been extracted and reorganised entirely according to a classification system decided by the cartographer.

For example, a collection of buildings within a city block are organised based on size or height or programmatic distribution. The idea here is to understand how various objects, or types, compares with one another. Examples of this type include Armelle Caron’s collection of “unmaps” or Jenny Odell’s Data Centre Mural Project.

Network representation is crucial to understand the flows of matter around a territory. The obvious possibility here is the depiction of flows of people or vehicles. Flows of weather conditions, sand, mud, money, products, services or anything else in transit can also be represented with this technique. Furthermore, 59

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Agent Flow Scenarios, Channelisation Gradient.

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network depictions need not be simply a collection of linear paths, but can be over-coded with extra information using line-weights, colours, etc.

This over-coded information can indicate for example flow volume or the shortest paths. Various digital tools exist to provide a numerical evaluation of networks including Space Syntax or the UNA toolbox. The calculations produced by these tools are powerful, but it is in the representation and dramatization of the data it can become useful for the designer.

Projection, the act of changing the frame or the projection of the map (ie the distortion of the spherical planet into a 2d drawing) has a significant effect on the map’s reading. The choice of a map’s projection impacts its spatial accuracy and even its ethics.

Panoramic cartographies which eschew any defined mapping projection can provide a useful way to depict a landscape, in particular those with dramatic topography, as most obviously seen in the common map of skiing route maps. Here, the distorted projection or perspectival viewpoint allows the cartographer to be free of the plan-view representation and pursue a panoramic, layered or exaggerated viewpoint to emphasise key pieces of information.

These techniques form a range of possibilities which the designer can draw upon to create activist or operationalized cartographies. Each makes use of computational technique, and the proliferation of publicly-avail61

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Urban Network Density Visualisation.

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aesthetics of data

able data. Indeed, the collection and sharing of data is today at least as relevant as the representation of data.

Public Lab or the artist Jeremy Woods, for example, use simple devices such as kites or handheld GPS to document their communities and landscapes for issues that are important to them.

Their data collection techniques are low-tech and easy to use but have a profound potential for designers, who can move beyond the current model of service in which the brief, the site, and the data is provided to them by the client. This way of operating, common in the architecture profession, can be reversed to allow the designer to define their own issues and projects.

Collecting one’s own data within an open community and distilling it into maps which in turn shape the community and wider territory embeds the designer a profound cyclical process of observing, advocating, and acting.

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THE MEGA INCUBATOR

ARCHITECTURAL DESIGN:

A Singaporean public-private partnership wants to build a mega-incubator: 40,000 m2 of office, co-working, and fab-lab/ garage space.

The client requests first and foremost an innovation prototypology- an overall strategy of organizing space to permit innovation. This prototypology should work specifically for the Changi Business Park site, but be generic enough that it could be applied to many other sites as well.

There is also a catch: to thwart a local tendency for stifling hierarchy (over-grown bureaucracies) and address climatic concerns (minimizing AC, maximizing natural ventilation), the mega-incubator should be broken down into a multiplicity of separate, yet interconnected spaces. This approach is tuned to Singapore’s equatorial climate- a cracked, porous or multiplicitous form opens itself to natural ventilation by maximizing surface-area to volume ratio. How can architectural form reconcile the need to maximize connectivity while opening space to natural light and air?

What affordances can space provide for creativity, cooperation and exchange?

architectural design

ANALYSIS: INCUBATOR DESIGN A business incubator is a space that provides basic infrastructures for new companies as they start up. We opened our research up to a wider range of building types where working and learning have a novel relationship to the deployment of architectural space. Students were asked to conduct a human-centric analysis, focusing on how occupants would move through the space, interacting with each other and architectural features. How does the layout of space produce hot-spots of interaction, or places of relative isolation?

EPFL Rolex Learning Center SANAA 2010

Lausanne, Switzerland 37,000 m²

Dominated by two major access points, interaction occurs most regularly as a result of entering/exiting. Paths through the space are highly varied, and many moments of quiet isolation occur near the rectangular perimeter.

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analysis: incubator design

Facebook Headquarters Gehry Partners 2015

Menlo Park, USA 40,000 m²

Publicized as the largest open floor plan building in the world, FB Headquarters deploys office furniture and pod-like rooms in a semi-random bĂźrolandschaft. Circulation is concentrated along a serpentine path that loops through the center of the building, which is likely to be the site of most serendipitous interaction and also a divider for different functional units of the company.

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architectural design

Centraal Beheergebouw Herman Hertzberger 1972

Apeldoorn, Netherlands 30,500 m²

The regularity of the square module that makes up this building belies the complexity of the void spaces that aggregate between the modules. Views from work areas extend horizontally and vertically across the atrium voids. Interaction in the atriums was encouraged with builtin furniture.

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analysis: incubator design

The Hive Heatherwick Studio 2015.

Nanyang Technological University, Singapore 14,000 m²

Design to promote new ways of learning, the Hive eliminates the corridor in favor of a large cental atrium with a peripheral walkway. Access from one of the vertical cores to a give classroom requires a circuitous path around the atrium, making the experience one of seeing and being seen. The classrooms themselves are introverted with no exterior view.

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PROTO TYPOLOGIES

AXIAL FIELD MODULAR AUTOMATON VAULT FOAM RAMP-UP DROPLETS

architectural design

AXIAL FIELD Open space and corridor are combined into a unique system, within which different type of spaces are generated by sinuous walls formed through attraction to three cores. Greater deformation leads to dilation, allowing collaborative spaces to appear, while lesser deformation leads to spatial tightening, generating controlled and private working spaces.

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MODULAR AUTOMATON A script that functions as an optimized booking system, inspired by Conway’s The Game of Life. Five different units are referenced in the script’s library.

The script attempts to assign every unit a specific position in the grid, based on a desired overall level of porosity, mixity, and volume for the grid, until optimization is achieved.

HLET N.1 ___ PAMPHLET N.1 IGN LAB

SING

Run-Matrix Run-Matrix Run-Matrix MIXITY MIXITY MIXITY

HLET IGN LAB N.1 ___ PAMPHLET N.1

density

SING

Run-Matrix Run-Matrix Run-Matrix

mixity

HLET N.1 ___ PAMPHLET N.1 IGN LAB

Run-Matrix Run-Matrix Run-Matrix

SING

DENSITYD DENSITY

DENSITYD DENSITY

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DENSITYD DENSITY

prototypologies

VAULT A vault generated by testing varying heights and a U-force opposite to the gravity force. Light behavior, vault strength, and number of floors were also deciding choices.

Structure = Weak Light = Excellent

30 m

36 m

48 m

28 m

40 m

44 m

Structure = Good Light = Good

Structure = Good Light = None

28 m

40 m

44 m

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FOAM Agents simulating wind path, sun path, and human movement in 3D are unleashed within the site from relevant points. The trail these agents map defines a carving path that subtract mass from an initial volume. The carving continues until a sufficiently porous object is created; one that lets in enough wind and sun to create a climatically-friendly environment. The adventurous inner landscape of the object becomes a stimulating playground to discover by the users.

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3 agents + 3m carving radius

3 agents + 6m carving radius

3 agents + 9m carving radius

6 agents + 3m carving radius

6 agents + 6m carving radius

6 agents + 9m carving radius

9 agents + 3m carving radius

9 agents + 6m carving radius

9 agents + 9m carving radius

prototypologies

DROPLETS Starting points generate shapes of varying radiusses and connections, forming a cluster of droplets.

radius

density

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RAMP UP

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DROPLETS

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MODULAR AUTOMATON

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AXIAL FIELD

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FOAM

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VAULT

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MODULAR AUTOMATON

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AXIAL FIELD

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DROPLETS

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RAMP UP

+48.67

+45.33

+46.00

+42.67

+48.67

+45.33

+42.00

+48.00

+46.67

+47.33

+46.67

+48.00

+47.33

+46.00

+48.00

+48.67

+45.33

+46.00

+46.67

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+45.33

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FOAM

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VAULT

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MODULAR AUTOMATON

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AXIAL FIELD

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DROPLETS

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RAMP UP

+46.00 +48.00 +48.67

+47.33

+45.33

+48.00

+46.67 +45.33 +42.00

+48.67

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FOAM

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VAULT

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DESIGN-DRIVEN DATA

Architecture in Singapore- like everywhere else, but more so- is expected to be optimal: to make the best use of scarce land and resources and to provide the greatest return on investment. The art of building in this context depends on an ability to articulate the value of design to groups of people outside the architectural realm: real-estate developers, civil servants, accountants, community stake-holders. These actors come to the table with quantitative demands: FAR, gross square-meters, efficiency ratios, current and expected market values. When these metrics become the primary determiner of design, especially when hard-coded in design software, architecture has entered the realm of data-driven design.

architectural design

Micro-climate mapping of Changi Business Park.

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design-driven data

A handful of persistently unquantifiable conditions, however, undermine the solidity of the data-driven condition. (Vitruvians may recall the word venustas).

The goal of attracting and fostering the creative class in Singapore has engendered a new class of slippery unquantifiables; vibrancy and innovation are generating particular buzz. This shift in the priorities of the market suggest the possibility for a judo-like flip to design-driven data: a condition where the critical apparatus of efficiency and optimization could be redirected toward new architectural ends.

Over the last year our teaching and research has developed a set of methods that might make this flip possible, including manufacturing data, indexing desire, and mapping iteration.

Manufacturing Data uses interpolation and simulation to generate plausible data at spatial and temporal scales relevant to architecture design and permits the formulation of explicit judgments or polemics about the site. Site research is notoriously passive - often determined only by the available hodge-podge of generic measurements of climate, mobility and economy at scales irrelevant to architectural design. Design-driven data would first identify an area of interest- vibrancy, for example- and then decide what data are necessary to formulate an argument within this context. The scarcity of relevant data may require interpolation to fill in data between existing data-points, or using simu105

architectural design

Vibrancy index of Changi Business Park.

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lation to manufacture plausible new data. Our students this semester used overlays of wind and solar analysis to speculate on how urban micro-climate may influence vibrancy in Changi Business Park. Agent-based simulation allowed another student to investigate how office layout might impact flow and interaction of workers in Facebook’s new Gehry-designed headquarters. Simulation, though originally applied to known precedents or existing conditions can then later be applied to proposed design interventions.

Indexing Desire uses the techniques of urban data visualization to represent a desired future condition for the city and provides the basis for evaluating proposals on the designer’s own terms. Building within the city is rarely done with the intention of maintaining the status quo. Almost inevitably there is an expectation that new building will lead to new socio-spatial circumstances, even if these expectations are only vaguely expressed.

Design-driven data imaginatively transcribes the expectations for the transformation of the site into a detailed index that may be temporal as well as spatial. A vibrancy map, showing the spatial distribution of active public space across Changi Business Park with new centers emerging at strategic areas acted as a catalyst for one student project. Another student imagined new timelines for the NTU Hive building based on the introduction of connective elements- a vision for how a new building could create affordances for interaction. The 107

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Agent flocking simulation in Facebook headquarters.

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index of desire transcribes design intent into an explicit layer of data, against which design proposals can be evaluated in addition (or opposition) to the barrage of other tests which the design must undergo.

Mapping Iteration transforms the process of testing multiple design variants into a visual document that represents the space of design search and supports the choice of a final version. The process of iteration in design is universal- no one ever stumbles on the ideal design with the first sketch. Trial and error maps out a space of possible designs which the designer navigates more-or-less haphazardly following hunches, experience, taste.

Each iteration supports the choice of the final design, but often the only record of this process is in the mind of the designer. Digital design software has over the last three decades greatly multiplied the number of iterations any one designer might make, and also made it possible to preserve and evaluate this array of possible designs. Design-driven data explores and maps out the space of design iteration, making explicit and legitimizing the path the designer takes toward a final proposal.

The map of these iterations allows outside stakeholders to follow the design process and recruits them into the logic and argumentation of the designer. Faced with a seemingly endless array of possibilities for the 109

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Evaluating possible vault forms.

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creation of a vault, one student created a matrix of possible scenarios graphed out along several dimensions. With a mix of quantitative and qualitative metrics he defined the area of the solution space that best met his objectives for the design. Mapping iteration works to aid the designer in navigating the variety of options afforded by digital design as much as it works as a legitimizing tool for advocating design to clients and stakeholders.

For all its strengths, the deployment of design-driven data should be shrewd enough to retreat from the language of data at strategic moments: to surprise with the provocative image of heretofore unimagined urban experience, but also to preserve the ability to think architecture in terms other than the quantitative.

Cross-training between the discipline of architecture, and the growing world of urban data and urban science is an undeniable challenge. The rapidly evolving context of the data-driven city, however, justifies the effort to empower the architect and legitimize the architectural artifact.

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PRESENTATION

MEDIA X DESIGN LAB

The advent of new digital technologies has had a twofold impact on architectural thinking and urban design, transforming, on one hand, the processes for form generation and design production through algorithmic and parametric technologies, and on the other hand, enabling an escape from the static fate of the built environment by facilitating dynamic interaction between inhabitants and their surroundings.

The Media x Design Lab, established in 2007 at the intersection of the school of architecture and the school of computer science at the EPFL examines these effects of digitalization on architectural, urban, and landscape design. One of the major research thrusts is in “computational urbanism.�

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Over our first five years, from 2007 to 2012, we conducted within this research area a series of design studios entitled Organicities which explored the use of computer code and algorithms borrowed from biology (such as plant growth algorithms) to drive novel form-finding processes in architecture and urbanism.

This work was sponsored by a research grant from the Swiss National Science Foundation.

Course Overview & Research Aims This studio is the first in a planned series of design research projects focused on the theme of data-driven urbanization in equatorial cities. While developing a base of digital evidence specific to each site, each studio will explore novel means of deploying this data to support design and generate form.

The aim of this research is to expand the scope and methodology of data-driven design, while questioning the extent to which the data-scape can artificially generate urban form. Our research is directed to the decoding and recoding of two distinct domains of knowledge: exteriority which represents a many-layered geographic condition and anteriority which represents the embedded knowledge of local architectural typologies and systems. While the exteriority of geographic data is crucial to our research, we place a primary emphasis on the generative potential of typology- what we have called ‘growth typologies’. Decoding anterior form 114

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and then recoding and deploying it across new territories allows us to challenge the role of architecture in urban developments of increased scale and complexity.

Studio Abstract In 2016/17 our studio site was Changi Business Park in Singapore, a rapidly growing island-nation that has evolved from a port city to a logistics, service and knowledge hub. The site is located at the eastern edge of Singapore, directly adjacent to the Changi Airport; which ranks among the busiest airports in the world and a primary economic force in the nation. In this strategic area Singapore has recently founded the Singapore University of Technology and Design in part to act as an anchor for a new innovation district.

The studio challenged students to imagine how urban form can contribute to the vibrancy of this new district.

While students were asked to craft a personal vision of vibrancy, as a group we investigated specifically how variations of urban form impact flow and micro-climate and by extension influence the development of vibrancy. The design of flow and micro-climate formed the basis for the deployment of groups of re-coded growth typologies each with their own socio-cultural affordances. We encouraged our students to consider the problem of vibrancy as an opportunity to explore alternative and novel urban experience.

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Parametric Methods In alignment with the goals of the morphogenesis orientation, the studio explored meaningful form generating processes by the use of algorithmic and parametric tools and introduced the notion of growth typologies in architectural and urban design thinking. We examined the potential of responsive morphogenetic design to explore intuitive form finding processes that address bio-climatic and socio-economic challenges.

Digital Tools Enable the Research Agenda: We assert that it is precisely the new wave of digital tools (scripting, parametric modeling, and associative geometry) that enable the type of approach which is forwarded by the studio’s research agenda. The ability to organize and leverage information permits the architect to approach projects of new scales and complexity. The logical management of variation allows the architect to avoid repetitive solutions and to maintain an equally high level of conceptual rigor across the entire project, to engage with that complexity rather than reducing it. An additional aspect is the ability to quickly and accurately produce quantitative information during the design process which can be used to strengthen the argument or inform the decision-making process.

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ACKNOWLEDGMENTS Fall 2016 Students: Anna Saryusz-Bielski, Amanda Eliasson, Valentin Schmid, Elliott Houssiaux, William Dodin, Charles Legrand, Jakob Hallquist, Erik Widell, Marc Reymond, Julia Sandgren, Alexander Karpushov.

Spring 2017 Students: Anna Saryusz-Bielski, William Dodin, Charles Legrand, Jakob Hallquist, Julia Sandgren, Alexander Karpushov.

Guest Lecturers: David Gerber, Frven Lim, Liam Mouritz, Calvin Chua, Daniella Leon.

Singapore Contacts: Erwin Viray, Chee-Kien Lai, Trevor Patt, Carlos Banon, Calvin Chua. Special thanks to Monique Amhof.

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TEAM AUTHORS: Jeffrey Huang is the Director of the Media x Design Laboratory and a Full Professor at the Faculty of Computer and Communication Sciences, and at the Faculty of Architecture, Civil and Environmental Engineering (ENAC).

He holds a DiplArch from ETH Zurich, and Masters and Doctoral Degrees from Harvard University, where he was awarded the Gerald McCue medal for academic excellence. He started his academic career as a researcher at MIT’s Sloan School of Management (Center for Coordination Sciences). In 1998 he returned to Harvard as an Assistant Professor of Architecture and was promoted to Associate Professor in 2001. In 2006 he was named Full Professor at EPFL in Switzerland where he holds joint professorships at I&C and ENAC, and heads the Media x Design Lab. He was also a Visiting Professor at Tsinghua University, a Visiting Fellow at Stanford University’s d.school, a Honorary Visiting Professor at the University of Sheffield, and a Berkman Fellow at Harvard University (Berkman Klein Center for Internet & Society).

In collaboration with Muriel Waldvogel, he heads Convergeo, an award-winning, international strategic and experience design firm. From 2013-2016, while on leave from EPFL, he led the creation of a revolutionary new school of architecture in Singapore (Bachelor’s, Master’s and PhD programs), as the Head of the Architecture and Sustainable Design Pillar at the Singapore University of Technology and Design (SUTD), a new university established in collaboration with MIT. F. Peter Ortner is a doctoral candidate and lecturer in architecture with the Media x Design Lab (EPFL).

His doctoral research explores the evolving formal basis of architecture in the data-driven city. He holds a Master in Architecture from Harvard University where he was recipient of the Faculty Design Award, and a Bachelor of Arts in Architecture with distinction from Yale University. His professional experience includes work at SsD Architecture, Safdie Architects, and SOM New York. He maintains an architectural practice in Geneva.

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TEACHING STAFF: Jeffrey Huang F. Peter Ortner Immanuel Koh studied at the AA and practised at Zaha Hadid Architects (London), before starting his doctoral and teaching work at the Media x Design Lab (EPFL). He has taught internationally, including the AA, RCA(London), The Bartlett (UCL), Masterclass Studio Hadid at Die Angewandte (Vienna), Strelka Institute (Moscow), Dessau Institute of Architecture (Bauhaus) and Harvard GSD. His own academic research and professional practice investigates the creative and generative potential of machine learning, specifically within the context of architecture, design and art.

Frederick Chando Kim is an architect and instructor based in Zurich. His professional experience includes work at agps architecture, Safdie Architects, SOM San Francisco, and Gensler Los Angeles.

Frederick Kim holds a Bachelor of Science in Art and Design degree from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology and a Master of Architecture degree from the Harvard Graduate School of Design.

Frederick is currently teaching at the Prof. Jeffrey Huang’s Media x Design Laboratory at EPFL and for the chair of Prof. Dr. Marc Angélil at ETHZ. He has previously taught at Boston Architectural College.

DESIGN: Anna Saryusz-Bielski received her Bachelor of Science in Architecture in 2017 from the University of Montreal. She completed her 3rd year of Bachelor as an exchange student at EPFL, where she was part of the Singapore Prototypologies Studio for the fall and spring semester. She worked as a lab assistant at EPFL’s Media x Design Laboratory during the summer of 2017.

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SOURCES The literature list comprises the sources mentioned in the texts as well as additional readings assigned during studio.

Alexander, Christopher. “A City is Not a Tree.” Architectural Forum, Vol 122, No 1, April 1965. 58-62.

Alexander, Zeynep Çelik. 2014. “Neo-Naturalism.”

Log, no. 31: 23–30.

Banham, Reyner. “Environmental Management.” The Architecture of the Well-tempered Environment. 2nd ed. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1984. 18-28.

Banham, Reyner. “Functionalism and Technology.”

Theory and Design in the First Machine Age. 2nd ed.

Cambridge: MIT Press, 1980. 320-330.

Carpo, Mario. “Breaking the Curve.” Artforum International 52, no. 6 (2014): 169-70,172-173.

Carpo, Mario. The Alphabet and the Algorithm. Writing Architecture. Cambridge, Mass: MIT Press, 2011.

Corner, James. “The Agency of Mapping: Speculation, Critique and Invention.” Mappings. Ed. Denis Cosgrove.

Reprinted ed. Critical Views. London: Reaktion Books, 2002.

Eisenman, Peter. “Diagrams of Interiority” Peter Eisenman : Diagram, Diaries. London: Thames & Hudson, 1999. 49-93.

Evans, Robin. “Figures, Doors, and Passages.” Translations from Drawing to Building and Other Essays. Vol. 2. AA Documents. London: Architectural Association, 1997.

Gehl, Jan. Life between Buildings : Using Public Space.

3.ed. ed. Washington, DC: Island Press, 2011.

Hwee Hwee, Ong. “Singapore Budget 2016: Jurong Innovation District to Be Set Up; First Phase Ready by around 2022.” Text. The Straits Times. N.p., 24 Mar. 2016. Web. 20 July 2017.

Koolhaas, Rem. “Singapore Songlines: Portrait of a Potemkin Metropolis, or Thirty Years of Tabula Rasa.”

S,M,L,XL : Small, Medium, Large, Extra-large. Koolhaas, Rem and Mau, Bruce. New York: Monacelli Press, 1995. 1008-1089.

Kwinter, Sanford. “The Cruelty of Numbers.” Far from Equilibrium : Essays on Technology and Design Culture.

Barcelona: Actar, 2008. 92-99.

Lee, Christopher C.M. “Dominant Type and the Developmental City State.” The Fourth Typology; Dominant Type and the Idea of the City. Faculty of Architecture and the Built Environment, Delft University of Technology, 2012. 261-374.

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Lee, Christopher C.M. Typological Urbanism. AD; vol.

81. Chichester: Wiley, 2011. 16-23.

Maki, Fumihiko. Investigations in Collective Form. Vol. Nr. 2. St. Louis: The School of Architecture, Washington University, 1964.

McHarg, Ian L. “Process and Form.” Design with Nature. Garden City/New York: Doubleday, 1971. 162-173.

Moneo, Rafael. “On Typology” Oppositions Reader : Selected Readings from a Journal for Ideas and Criticism in Architecture 1973-1984. edited by Hays, K. Michael, and Agrest, Diana. New York, NY: Princeton Architectural Press, 1998. 22-45 Trummer, Peter, and Leach, Neil. “Morphogenetic Urbanism.” Architectural Design 79, no. 4 (2009): 64-67.

Wigley, Mark. “Network Fever.” Grey Room 4 (2001): 82-122.

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INDEX OF STUDENT WORK Amanda Eliasson p. 15,16 - noise mapping p. 31 - precedent analysis: one north p. 35,36 - siteplan and axonometry p. 37,38 - urban site model p. 109 - vibrancy index of changi business park.

Alexander Karpushov p. 15,16 - noise mapping p.81 - prototypology model p.90 - prototypology floor plan p.96 - prototypology section p. 107 - agent flocking simulation Anna Saryusz-Bielski p. 13,14 - singaporean climate mapping p.51,52 - site plan, urban morphogenetic process p.53,54 - urban site perspective p.55,56 - urban site model p.72 - incubator research: precedent analysis p.85 - prototypology model p.91 - prototypology floor plan p.97 - prototypology section p.99,100 - urban site and prototypology model p.107 - micro-climate mapping Charles Legrand p.43,44 - urban morphogenetic process p.44,45 - siteplan p.46,48 - urban site model p.71 - incubator research: precedent analysis p.84 - prototypology model p.88 - prototypology floor plan p. 94 - prototypology section p.103,104 - urban site and prototypology model Erik Widell p.39,40 - urban morphogenetic process p.41, 42 - siteplan, urban model p. 63 - agent flow scenarios Jakob Hallquist p.80 - prototypology matrix p.82 - prototypology model p.89 - prototypology floor plan p.95 - prototypology section

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William Dodin p.49, 50 - urban morphogenetic process p.78 - prototypology matrix p. 86 - prototypology model p. 92 - prototypology floor plan p. 98 - prototypology section p.111 - evaluating possible vault forms Julia Sandgren p.13,14 - singaporean climate mapping p.77 - prototypology matrix p.83 - prototypology model p.87 - prototypology floor plan p.93 - prototypology section p.107 - micro-climate mapping

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