Haw Par Villa Without the Hell
Conservation and Heritage
Supervisor - Mr Ho Weng Hin
Haw Par Villa has been increasingly associated with the Ten Courts of Hell nowadays. However, the original haw par villa was Aw Boon Haw’s pleasure garden and physical advertisement for his business empire, decorated with Chinese architecture and garden elements, enriched with literati artworks by famed poets and calligraphers. The garden embodied Aw’s philanthropic gesture to create a public leisure park, and his ambition to uphold the moral standards of the future generations, which were largely illiterate poor people. Those historical layers are totally obscured after successive changes of ownership and insensitive redevelopment. The project challenges the current misreading and presents a Haw Par Villa without the Hell.
Through architectural, landscape and curatorial devices, the project seeks to collect the fragmented landscapes and make the relationship between the fragments clear again. Without the need to compete space with the already overcrowded site, the proposal has made sensitive decisions to deploy new insertions on the peripheral. In overview, the experience starts from the boardwalk, which brings you through the different terrances and allows you to enjoy the garden in relative comforts under the shelter. The walkway follows the flowing water and ends at the signature garden. It then brings you to the villa museum on the original site of haw par villa. One can understand more about haw par villa through experiencing the 4 main collection, each featuring one aspects of the park on the first floor and then through the curated frame of views on the second floor. The visitors then climb up to the hill, pause at the teahouse for a drink and reflect before going down the bamboo trail and explore the park layer by layer with this new understanding.
The Boardwalk is covered with lightweight tensile structure, which connects to the past memory of Haw Par Villa sitting right in front of the coast, at a time the Pasir Panjang Terminal land has not been reclaimed. This tensile shelter covering the entire path leading up, introduces a comfortable walking experience in the current exposed site where it's intolerable for people to stay under the sun for too long.
On the left, vendor booth can come in from a separate path. It can be a daily operation or be set up during special events like Pasar Malam celebrating Chinese Solar Terms. The water flowing on the right side, leads people to see sideways into the park and the act of looking for the source of water which is located in the signature garden has a parallel meaning of looking for the creator of Haw Par Villa.
The entrance into each tier is accentuated with a circular stage and a featured tent structure, which can be turned into an impromptu performance space.
The design inspiration comes from the footprint of the original villa, which features a central dome flanked by 6 smaller domes. I adapted this language and play with the positive and negative space to create 4 thematic collections housed in each of the 4 domes and a gallery with curated frames of view into important objects in the in-between space on the second floor.
The museum welcomes visitors with an in-house café. Going sideways through a narrow path, visitors were led to a sunken atrium as the start of the journey. The staircase then leads visitors to the central hall with a reflective pool and the statue of Aw Boon Haw stands at the end. After taking a tour of the 4 major collection and framed gallery, visitors exit through the souvenir shop connected with the café.
In overall, the mammade left wing and naturalistic right wing creates contrasting experience. Each demarcate the historical boundary of the villa. It reinstate the atmosphere of Aw's car driveway and quiet back garden on the hill. And through introducing infrastucture change and new programs, the new experience provides the visitors a deeper insight into the multifaceted layers of the park.
In the actual conservation, one might need to accommodate to a certain degree the public's past memory with the hell. However, as a statement, this project endeavours to demonstrate that with sensitive intervention and curation, haw par villa alone without the hell has sufficient capacity to showcase the full spectrum of its historical, cultural and architectural heritage values, and therefore should be considered seriously for granting its conservation status.
Links & Contact:
Thesis Design Journal - https://issuu.com/zhouwentao/docs/zhou_wentao_thesis_design_journal
Email - wentaoathci@gmail.com
Instagram - @wentaoathci
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