Holes in the Smoothened Sandwich
Atmosphere and Agency
Supervisor - Dr. Junko Tamura
The project draws on the maritime model of the Smooth and Striated - as introduced by Deleuze and Guattari, and posits how holes in the urban fabric have the potential to reconfigure the spatial structure of the city, through an execution of balance between Striated and Smoothened states. Singapore’s burial landscape as highly striated, politically charged holes, reveal the contentious economic and political imperatives of the State in opposition to smaller associations and their belief systems - as seen in the last Hakka Cemetery in Singapore, where even spaces for the dead have been compacted and organised to an extreme level. The project responds by introducing a supersized urban intervention which provides new burial grounds that not only formalizes a soon to be forgotten culture, but also integrates and associates the surrounding typologies of space into a connected network that transforms the site into a seamless urban system.
