ADAPTATION OF INDUSTRIAL ECOLOGY: CLOSED LOOP CYCLE FOR MULTI-TENANTED FLATTED FACTORIES IN SINGAPORE

Abstract

This dissertation examines the multi-tenanted flatted factory which is one of the industrial infrastructures under Jurong Town Corporation (JTC)'s planning in Singapore. As a multi-storey development, it is a typology to congregate small yet dynamic and constantly growing industries for quick set-ups under JTC's facilitation. These diverse industries are stacked up in order to optimize land-use that inextricably linked to Singapore's foremost challenge of land scarcity. However, such effort to manipulate land resources has been 'wasted' due to JTC's quantitative pursuits. They focus on economy of floor area leased out, space allocation according to high GDP contributing industries and thereby mis-cluster the industries in the flatted factory planning. In recent years, the multi-tenanted flatted factory biases towards clustering of single dominant industry, such as biomedical science and medical technology. While this arrangement optimizing land by stacking similar companies up, it foreshortens other key variables in the industrial system. These variables may range from resource flows, collaborative consumption, potential synergies and infrastructure sharing, that can be better matched in diversified clusters. Eventually, all these will have the efficiency and dollar-and-cents implications. Therefore, this typology should be reconsidered as to react against the issues of land optimization, interdependent and synergized system, design against obsolescence and timely technological integration, in order to effectively manage waste to resource cycle. With the adaptation of Industrial Ecology (IE) theory, it offers insights on effective resource flow. Since IE focuses on environmentally informed design of industrial manufacturing processes in a concert with the larger surrounding systems, it adds values to the examination of this dissertation. The case studies demonstrate in details the instrumental projects, in formulation of IE concept. This helps to deliver a new framework as a way of recommending the future organization of multi-tenanted flatted factory development.