The Big Bloom: Confronting Biophilia as an Urban Construct in Singapore
Atmosphere and Agency
Supervisor - Ms. Wu Yen Yen
Singapore’s take on biophilic urbanism is an idiosyncratic one. We have gone to great lengths in establishing our City in a Garden mantle by planting many (exotic) trees, but this has morphed into the haphazard greening of building roofs, facades and even indoors, in the name of bringing people closer to nature. Our obsession with such conventions of nature, which has manifested in spaces like Gardens by the Bay and the Zoo, neglects the naturally occurring gardens and zoos that already exist in our concrete jungle, in the form of emergent species. My thesis seeks to establish a new framework of biophilic urbanism that embraces these emergent trends, by acknowledging the equality of man and nature. Unbeknown to many, this test site at the F1 pit building is closely tied to nature, and its background narrative as the host to a nature-unfriendly event grounds the necessity for a framework that truly exemplifies our City in a Garden.
