KK Women's & Children's Hospital: Between Milk & Blood
Atmosphere and Agency
Supervisor - Mr. Bobby Wong
The thesis circulates around a human milk bank and a blood bank while expounding upon the donation and processing procedures that serve to collect, screen and process the collected human milk and blood. In 2017, the first Human Milk Bank in Singapore was launched at KK Women’s and Children’s Hospital. Within a year of its launch, it had met with huge support with more than 400 donors donating their breast milk. The thesis presents itself firstly, as a commentary on the state’s attempt to harness the domestic resources in the reproduction of society. Secondly, as a critique on the institutionalization of the customarily intimate process between the mother and child, as it is being transformed into an apparatus and regulated into something machinic and mechanic. Fairly akin to the women, the blood bank embodies a similar process of giving between state and people.
Taking cue from the current podium form of KK hospital, an extension is created using a steel frame structure that envelopes the programs. The framing extends itself as a complement to the current infrastructure that was designed by Mr Tay Kheng Soon and to focus on his design mantra of line edge shade which allows the natural environment to flow into the urban environment. Hence, a framed system presents itself to the user as a contrast to the current curtain wall façade of KK Women’s and Children’s Hospital. As one approaches the space, one is greeted by the sight of duplicated breast feeding pods stacked upon one another. Inspired by the film Playtime by Jacques Tati and Blind Light by Anthony Gormley, the breastfeeding pods are fitted and laid in a grid pattern on stilts. The differences in personality, in body types, in race and in class are erased and laid bare to the visitors in pods stacked upon one another, thus igniting a consequential difficulty of differentiation between the users of the pod.
While the sterile pod is supposed to be a location of security for the users, the pods undermine it via the translucency of the glass panels and design of the roof. The user's activities are rendered into blurred silhouettes that appear to the visitor outside the pods. A sense of vulnerability thus ensues, whereby, the women have become the subject and a visual within the program. The ramps, situated within the framing system, guide the user up and pass the pods to the collection zone: elongated refrigerators stacked upon each other. An automated conveyor system then transports the milk bags collected from the lower floors towards the fridges for the day’s collection. Coupled with the pods, the visitor is then greeted with the sight of the fridges stocked with the bags collected from the lower floors. The processing portions, which are usually not made public to the visitor, is contrasted with the typical hospital layout where such processes are carefully cordoned off. Seated on a separate structure, the fridges extend towards the other end of the intervention.
Marking a distinct difference with the current KK infrastructure, the thesis presents a cautionary investigation on these sharing processes between the state and the people. It thus, hopes to open a discussion on the ethics amidst them; where these usually organic and intimate processes have been leveraged upon for the production of society, where mothers have been reduced to a certain level of sameness and where during these processes, made analogous to the industrial worker.
Links & Contact:
Portfolio - https://issuu.com/baoyutan/docs/portfolio_2019
Email - tanbaoyu.arch@gmail.com