ORCHIDTOPIA

Abstract

The thesis is a critique on Singapore quest and obsession towards a perpetuation of idealized and a-priori image which is oriented towards a means of spectacle.

Singapore has constantly gentrified its national land to increase its marketable value and to perpetuate its myth; the city in a garden. The grand scenery of crafted vistas of high-rise living next to beaches and parks by the sea dramatized through an expressway successfully expresses its economic development and perpetuates the myth. Recently, this obsession has taken a new turn in form of Garden by the Bay, a 54 ha park which will launch Singapore into the realm of distinctive global cities as a city in a garden.

This overwhelming photogenic spectacle has boosted its superficiality through the perverse usage of orchid, which is Singapore national flower as the main element for the design. In addition, the emblem of this new form of spectacle which is the Super Trees, an engineered structure 30-50 m will be 80% embellished with orchids, specifically from Singapore national flower species which is the Vanda Miss Joaquim.

Instead of this superficiality of spectacle, the thesis instead hopes to reveal the ‘real’ which is the underlying process of in between this orchid-idealized image, the one emphasizing on perpetuation of change which works in a logic of efficiency. The flower auction market, harvesting stations, nursery laboratories as well as orchid nurseries will deal with the mode and process of knowing, the physicality of which aims to connect to the real beyond the cosmetic patch up of spectacle-idealized image which in turn will provide an alternative reading of spectacle.