UNEARTHING HILLVIEW: THE LAND RECORDS & THE DESCENT INTO HUME STATION

Abstract

The thesis research takes a survey of what had past, asking questions for the histories that remain, and the histories that are erased. It recognises the importance of both development and conservation, and the relationship between them. This thesis looks at land as a record of its own history. It seeks to unearth the ground beneath us of its architectural past, of hidden, decades old factories amongst new gleaming condominiums and of demolished buildings that are long gone. It attempts to make obvious, the fact that land bears witness to time and its own development, accumulating layers of history as development spreads across it.

Change is a constant, though now faster than ever, which gives us good reason for the foray into the past. Progress’s endless trawling across the seabed of time picks up bigger pieces of history that are then either shined, curated and presented, leaving smaller pieces behind in its wake, forgotten. Land develops, according to the market and government planning intentions, and while some pieces are redeveloped into a new state, others remain in an older state. Noise remains in the pixels and parcels of land, and it is never a single, pure colour. Fragments and pieces of different times coexist among the patchwork that is the land.

By framing the land as a physical record of history, and hence looking into the stories made evident in the land’s connections, patchwork and fragments, the thesis hopes to look for an answer to the display of land’s identity, and the ways in which architecture can remind ourselves of our past. The thesis research process observes development over time in Hillview, Singapore. Bound by Upper Bukit Timah Road – a main trunk road dating to before Singapore’s colonial past, and the Rail Corridor on one side, and Hillview Avenue – a relatively new road that was built as industrial development occurred, the site catalogues changes in the urban environment since the 1800s from forest to plantation, to industry and to residential.