THE SPACE SCAVENGER : RECLAIMING SPACES FROM TRANSPORT INFRASTRUCTURE

Abstract

This paper aim to redress the dead spaces left by existing urban road infrastructures and explore the opportunities for new architecture intervention to intensify these “leftover” spaces. The hypothesis is that urban planning, together with the changes in technology and culture of mobility has resulted in a large amount of land pre-empted by transport infrastructure (bridges, flyovers and viaducts etc). Much of the road infrastructures had been lifted above the ground as bridges, unintentionally creating vast amount of barren non-spaces that lurk under, over and along these infrastructures which these spaces have rarely being recognized or considered worthy of design attention. With the selected proposed site and appropriate proposed programme, it seeks to create a new design paradigm to integrate transport infrastructure with the urban built forms. At the same time, scavenging waste spaces/land to perform the critical need for land usage to be multi-functional and multi-layered, in the process providing better value to the community.