A Love Story of Radical Ambition in the Face of Ecological Catastrophe.
The Modern Dreams Return Saving Singapore from Catastrophe
Or does the Corporate Modernist Office Park come back with a vengeance camouflaged in Mangrove Environmentalism?
Bucky would be envious. He didnt imagine it would be so big!
Imagine a city of equilibrium rather than restriction.
A city of embracing its hydrological past as a beginning for a new future.
Imagine a city embracing its almost theme park like, ever-changing, culture as shopping, with prostitution, where everything and everyone is on the market, in the city’s search to produce the most economic space on earth.
Imagine a city where the best of everything is available, where innovation happens as a product of the best shopping market practices. A city that everyone likes but maybe does not immediately love. But eventually does.
Imagine a city where in the extension of this thinking is taken to its logical conclusions, where we find a city like no other, a city that in fact becomes the most amazing, constantly changing fantasy, securing its relevance, if only due to its ambitions, and massive ability to change
Imagine a city where change is the norm, where architects live out their fantasies, where the Tower of Babel exists… though rather than reaching for the sky, it reaches out to the sea.
Imagine the solution to Singapore’s impending irrelevancy is found precisely in Singapore’s unique history of Transformation. Imagine a perfect Gated Community, a continuation of an amazing history of Additions.
A massively engorged island
Could it ever get so big?
Only if the price is right.
The topography has been continually removed
Imagine a 3 meter flood.
Imagine a 5 meter flood
Where will all the heartlander’s go?
Preserve the important things. Preservation is always economic in Singapore
Singapore could follow its most famous student Dubai… where teacher finally learns from her student.
Is a New Mangrove the Answer in the shape of palms?
Or does Singapore head out on its own…in the vast blue tabula rasa that surrounds this small nation, creating its own vision?
To love is fight for survival:
Two acts of survival must take:
1. Singapore Floods itself
2. And Singapore floats herself.
Singapore does both
In this crazy almost plausible story.
And of course on a massive scale.
Flooding insures Singapore's hydrological security. It also put its interior in equilibrium with the rising sea level change.
(We already know what happened in New Orleans due to its defense…)
Floating future Singapore thrusts new development in equilibrium with its surroundings – albeit an ocean one.
A short term expense insures long term viability.
In tough economic times: a new engine for growth.
Keppel Shipyard couldn’t be happier. An urban form meets ocean technology at a colossal scale.
Singapore is already surrounded by the world’s largest moving structures.
And the Government maybe is in on it already… but where are the Architects?
Only the engineers seem to care.
Self Flooding: A ‘New Water’ landscape
Flooded Interiors vs. Floating Exteriors
Self Reorganization:
The ocean currents have their way.
Density is the way to go.
Singapore shops for the best of everywhere.
A Grand Architectural Sampling: Co-opt City Strategies rather than invent new ones –
Displacement always forces innovation
Floating Ideal Cities: The Best of Anyplace
A Deformation for Maximum Frontage: Perfect Calibration of Real Estate and value.
A Dramatic Form –
A Continued Safe Haven for Shipping.
A city of interiority and exterior looking escapism
A city of Architectural variety.
Dubai can’t even come close.
A nation protected with international limits.
An ideal state...
Floating in the sea, protecting by its own ambitions.
A landscape of maximum frontage, minimum impact.
The Perfect Gated Community on a National Scale.
A return to the defensive city where everything is inside the gate.
A city of leisure and internalized pleasure.
A city of exclusivity and luxury.
A city of self imposed interiority with maximum view.
A city of cruise ships going nowhere but changing all the time.
A city where Singapore's love affair with the mall becomes all there is.
Where perpetual motion is replaced by perpetual change.
Where the promise of Le Corbusier is finally fulfilled.
Where the “void” in the “void deck” returns to the sea: a sea of selfconstructed New Water.
Where Singapore finally returns to its ocean faring roots embracing its uniquely Singaporean history.
A City where its manufacturing talents are retooled for self preservation.
A City of contrasts and contradictions of big things
And small things.
A City of manufacturing and shopping: friendly, efficient and massive.
A City of objects in a glistening blue sea.
A City of HDBs embracing their typological lineage.
A City of Dormitories for Everyone
A City of Canopies and Connectors – there is no other option.
A City of absurdity and logic.
A scenario of a City that OMA is already building.
The MRT is already designed for flooding
A City of Containers and Tides
A City of piercing verticals and floating horizontals.
A City of individual sea faring farmers
A City of horizontality and density
A City where Wal-Mart IS the Port
A City of Greenpeace resting on Exxon Mobile
City of Oil and a City of Abalone Farmers support one another
A City of Monsanto and floating Rice plantations.
A City of an Architectural dreams
Waiting to be realized.
A City in love with all cities.
A City like no other.
An Exuberant City.
An Exuberant Singapore.
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