Exuberant Singapore

Wednesday

Singapore's Reconstructed Archipelago

A Perfect Gated Community of Districts

Spatial Equality insures Equality of Lifestyle

An improvement on a empty dream.

Future Projections

Infrastructural Fantasy, Architectural Employment,
Floating Idealism.

An Inverted City: Figure becomes ground or in this case Water.
Ground (Water) becomes Figure.

Only the upper levels survive.

Thursday

Monday

A Continuous Monument For Coastal Defense

Friday

The Modern Dreams Return

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!

The Fortress City: A New Landscape of borrowed typologies: All in the name of hydrological Defense

Wednesday

Territory and Area

Food and Area: A New Strategy For Autonomy

An Old Typology Given New Relevance in A Linear City

Tuesday

Singatopia

The First Hydrological Nation State.
Sir Thomas More 1516

The Most Complete Hydrological Nation State.
Singapore 2009

Singapore's Most Important Real Estate isn't Land
It is her Territory of Water.
The largest and most perfectly functional, fanatical, and flat Tabula Rasa.

The Ideal Site for all Future Ambitions

A Hydrological Landscape-Urbanism: Singapore modifies Olmstead's Glorious Vision -- An Architectural Mangrove

Saturday

Additions + Subtractions --- a New Future!

Tuesday

A New Singapore Story -- The Original

Wednesday

Exhuberant Singapore Hydrologically Rubanized

Tuesday

Singapore's Crisis: 2097, 2053, 2009...and yet a promise of new beginnings

Singapore 2097: 5 meter rise in Sea Levels

Singapore 2053: 3 meter rise in Sea Levels

Singapore 2009: preparing for the next 44 years

Singapore 1957...The beginning of the Odyssey

Singapore 1957

Utopia: Sir Thomas More 1516

A Hydrological Urbanism: The Return to the Cruiseship

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Copyright

All Content, images, ideas, and designs on this Blog are Copyright by Erik G L'Heureux, AIA LEED BD+C AP

A Singapore Metropolitan Region Adventure.

Ideas and Images on this blog have been developed between 2005 and as of Today. The partial presentation was presented in public in Singapore on June 13th 2009 at Rojak 14. Preliminary research was noted in the Distinguished Alumni Awards Ceremony on March 29, 2007 at the School of Architecture, Washington University in St. Louis, Missouri, USA. A transcript has been published in the October 2009 issue of SA Magazine #253. The love story has been presented to Singapore Delft Water Alliance on November 11, 2009.

An Exuberant Story

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 – We even like what we see from Google Earth

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.

To be continued…

Exuberant Singapore

Wednesday

Singapore's Reconstructed Archipelago

Future Projections

Thursday

Logical Conclusions

Monday

A Continuous Monument For Coastal Defense

Friday

The Modern Dreams Return

Wednesday

Territory and Area

Tuesday

Singatopia

A Hydrological Landscape-Urbanism: Singapore modifies Olmstead's Glorious Vision -- An Architectural Mangrove

Saturday

Additions + Subtractions --- a New Future!

Tuesday

A New Singapore Story -- The Original

Wednesday

Exhuberant Singapore Hydrologically Rubanized

Tuesday

Singapore's Crisis: 2097, 2053, 2009...and yet a promise of new beginnings

Singapore 1957...The beginning of the Odyssey

A Hydrological Urbanism: The Return to the Cruiseship

Copyright

An Exuberant Story

Disclaimer