The architectural Interior 03

Another project update. This time we are working on the interiors for a 800 sqft 2-Bedroom apartment in a newly built condominium of about 30 units.

The apartment is typical of many completed condominium projects here. Each apartment comes with standard white homogeneous tiled flooring and timber strips in the bedrooms. The kitchen comes fitted with standard corian countertops and finished in artificial wood or plastic laminate finish. Bedrooms have fitted designer wardrobes and fixed shelving. Nothing much really, from an architectural point of view. Till we saw the bay windows that extended outwards to the internal facade of every room in the apartment. Which still did not get us any more excited. In fact due to the heat radiating through the large expanse of window glazing in our tropical weather, I doubt this space would be used much, what with the white wash paint and plaster rendered finish on the ledge. That extra 500mm of space was there primarily to gain extra saleable area for the developers.

[Image from Google image search]

Bay windows are not an uncommon to residential development yet it was perhaps the most apparent condition in the apartment which we could respond to. Can bay windows form not only an extension of a room's space projecting outwards, but rather be deepened internally to create and embody functions? This became the typological thinking that informed the design.

Our client wanted to remove the bedroom walls and to create an open plan arrangement. This is not the first time we have worked with enlightened clients who bought standard apartment units but want to reconfigure interior spaces to suit their needs. It is an interesting paradox, perhaps a product of our rapid urban development and building guidelines, that the private apartment has reached levels of mass production not unlike the ubiquitous public housing solutions built and offered by the HDB. Perhaps this is the reason that led many homeowners to rethink their space and lifestyle needs and also the reason why we still have a job in these times.

[Images by PLYSTUDIO]

The larger question remains : to what extent can interior elements be designed as part of the architecture? In our local context, we call this 'built-up'. In the case of these condominiums, it refers to the fixed elements that come purchased. Not that it is anything new, for as described above the apartments already come fitted, but perhaps it can be done in a more interesting way.

Construction is expected to commence soon. More updates to come.

Viewing Walls

We have been busy recently with a project which got us spending some time seeing, looking and viewing at the airport. The subject of our stakeout was the viewing mall.

The viewing mall is a strange and peculiar landside phenomena created and built originally for the sole purpose of viewing aircraft. The viewing mall neither connects nor separates, leaving an ambiguous space in between you and the aircraft, between you and the projected image of flying, aviation. This is the conceptual space that the project in question attempts to address.

I don't know whether this is the case in other countries, but to many locals in Singapore the viewing mall in Changi Airport is viewed as a sort of destination in itself, a place to eat, shop, view, rest, even study or simply to enjoy the air-conditioning - a kind of public space away from the city, a getaway from the tropical heat. According to CAAS (the airport authority) the airport is Singapore's largest shopping mall in terms of sales. Shopping and dining are inexplicably tied in with the experience of the viewing mall. In all of Changi Airport's 3 terminals, shops and restaurants line both sides of the corridors leading to the viewing malls. Airport management suitably figured it would be profitable to tap into traffic generated by a desire to see and be close to aircraft. 'Dine, Shop, View', the tagline used by the airport, rightly proclaimed. Yet despite these, the current state of the viewing malls does quite live up to its expectations.

The design brief called for the design of an exhibition (on civil aviation history) with the viewing malls at Terminal 2 and 3 as the site. Our design began on the premise that 'viewing' is a condition intrinsic in the experience of the viewing mall as well as the exhibition. It follows then that the viewing of aircraft and the viewing of exhibition will inevitably become intertwined.

Our proposal seeks to redefine both individual experiences by emphasizing the dual presence of each program, by making a collision in such a way that the simultaneous experience of one becomes unique and enhanced through the presence of the other. As a two-fold iterative framework, the visitor's experience oscillates between both entities - the viewing mall with the backdrop of aircraft landing and taking off becomes the contextual reference for the exhibition. The exhibition in itself became a kind of typological construct designed in reference to and arising out of the airport's layout and organisational plan, one in which all of us would be familiar with. Viewers literally move through a series of layers resembling the various spatial zones experienced pre-flight, from arrival to check-in, the transit lounge and eventually to the aircraft, all played alongside the real context of the viewing mall. These layers are 'viewing walls' that defines and organises the functions for viewing, exhibition, rest/seating and interactivity.

[All images and photographs from PLYSTUDIO]

Do check our website soon for the detailed project descriptions.

Bedok Court : residential avant garde or ?

[Image : thanks to amorphity from here.]

Any endeavor on residential design in the post modern discourse of architecture inevitably begins with the perennial question of how to manifest the relationship between the living spaces of a dwelling unit and that of its environment. A dwelling cannot be seen in isolation to its own interior space containing insular functions but rather in relation to changes in environmental qualities of time, light and shadow, greenery, views and open spaces that in turn contribute to the overall qualities of the living space. This is especially so in a highrise, high density context where the conditions for relief are very much determined by the provision of voids within the building massing.

[Images of I:I Island Book by PLYSTUDIO]

Bedok Court is a residential condominium development in Singapore comprising of 3 linear medium to high-rise blocks arranged around a central space. It is an example of a residential development that provides generous relief spaces in the form of balconies and terraces as part of the private spaces of apartment units on a large scale. The floor plan is organised by single loaded vertical circulation cores with horizontal circulation in the form of corridors serving 280 apartment units. Each apartment has access to a double volume garden space, sometimes open to sky, from the entrance corridor side. Typically, the entrance of each apartment unit is from this garden space, bringing the notion of 'landed housing' upwards to a high-rise situation. The units are organised in clusters with vertical slits in between for added ventilation which appear as gaps to break the massing from the Living Room side.

[Images : PLYSTUDIO]

In Bedok Court, the relationship between the interior and exterior spaces are exemplified in a typological experiment of finding relieve in high density housing through the adaptation of the organisational arrangement and social network of public spaces of a malay cultural village (kampong), where "streets have been translated into vertically-stacked walkways and common corridors, and garden compounds into staggered private open terraces and courtyards." [extract from Singapore 1:1 (Island)]

[Images : PLYSTUDIO]

If you are familiar with designing in the Singaporean residential context, you will most definately be familiar with Gross Floor Area (GFA) computations. With the development and refinement of the GFA computation as a mechanism to control and measure the physical mass and built-up quality of developments invariably leads to the lack of developments such as Bedok Court in recent years. As circulation ways, large terraces, covered yet open spaces and other forms of relief spaces have come under the need to be accountable as GFA, local urban and physical fabric of residential buildings has also ceased to the embody the very qualities that characterised Bedok Court.

Are these relief spaces successful? Do they serve to enhance the quality of the interior units and contribute to the exterior building form through the proliferation of greenery? Do they allow the building to become more breathable by pulling apart, lengthening corridors, enlarging service and circulation cores, all at the expense of incurred GFA? Would commercial developers trade off the potential to sell say 5 to 10 more residential units translating to thousands of square footage and amounting to hundreds of thousands or even millions of dollars (when property prices peaked in 2007) in return for these external luxuries which, no doubt can be designed as saleable spaces, but run the risk of being well received by buyers?

Inside Singapore 1:1

[Image : URA]

We recently picked up a copy of the box set containing the 2 volumes Singapore 1:1 (City) and Singapore 1:1 (Island). Singapore 1:1 (City) is a catalogue of the exhibition of the same name which was held at the URA Center between Nov 2005 to Mar 2006. The exhibition "features a selection of significant architecture and urban design of the city built over the last 40 years". As a follow up, Singapore 1:1 (Island) brings together further architectural projects of merit across the same timeframe completed island-wide, outside of the city centre.

The result is a vast collection of information and knowledge that brings awareness to the buildings that shape our physical environment. Old buildings of significant interest are given a new lease of life in these 2 volumes which are graphically coded in red and green to reflect our national colour (red) and our national obsession (green).

Perhaps what got us excited most were not so much the photographs of the buildings themselves but rather the rare plans, sectional drawings and the odd sketch that accompanied them. For they capture the true modes of production and the fact that they never left the architectural office that produced them, meant that we, the general public could get inside them.

[Images : URA]