BETWEEN COMMUNITY AND SOCIETY : JURONG WEST STREET 81

Abstract

Architecture and urbanism form the physical of construct social space yet at the same time, they are constructed by the social fabric of the locale. The dissertation follows the work of Shannon Castleman, Jurong West Street 81, and unearths the existing nature of the neighbourhood of the four blocks that were subjects of the project. The way the film project had been conceived and crafted reveals the disparate relationships between the opposite neighbours being conciliated by the camera and the image at the window. Despite its separateness, the neighbourhood seems to have an undertone of a community that had been lost but still lingering in fragments. The social fabric of the four blocks is then investigated and aligned with the theoretical framework of Ferdinand Tönnies’ Gemeinschaft and Gesellschaft, which correspondingly explicate “community” and “society”. The dissertation presents a discursive work on the mutual existence of the two theoretical models that had been proposed as antithetical. There had been a primordial existence of community in the Malay kampong, urban villages and squatters in old Singapore. Over time, with a clear prescription for an artificial community and the rapid metropolitan changes of the city and its dwellers, the structure of society is intrinsic and powerful. As such, the community seems to be occluded. However, through Jurong West Street 81 and the groundwork of the four blocks, it is evident that both “society” and “community” coexist and are in a dialectical relationship, subject to external influences. Elaborating on the current realities of the inclination towards a Gesellschaft, an innate search for the Gemeinschaft surfaces through the study of Castleman’s project. This dissertation proposes that the community is constructed through concerted desire and effort, and because scarcity, need and contingency have become nonconsequential in our society that such a desire for interdependency is missing. Thus it seems that the framework in which architecture positions itself necessitates a contingency plan for perhaps, an irrational want for the Gemeinschaft.