EMERGING IDENTITY

Abstract

This thesis is a critique against prescribing a national identity by signifying a building or place as a ‘landmark’ or an ‘icon’. The underlying principle is that the ‘national identity’ of a country is not necessarily identifiable as the ‘personal’ identity of a person living there. The place in question is the sultanate of Brunei, and the landmark chosen is Jerudong Park Playground – a theme park built and funded by the Bruneian government in 1994, featured no admission fees and free rides for all when it was first opened. It was hailed as Brunei’s greatest tourist attraction at the time.

Over time, the maintenance costs proved too extravagant for a country in which government revenue is generated solely from dwindling oil reserves. Many of the rides were auctioned off and sold to other theme parks in the region, and the park, though still ‘open’ is in a state of abandonment.

Having been prescribed as a national landmark and failed, what can the decaying state of Jerudong Park offer in terms of identity? What sort of confrontation occurs when a new development is placed on an old ‘landmark’ which has been stripped off its glory and left to rot?

Jerudong Park proved to be unsustainable because it was ‘prescribed’, therefore it can be speculated that the prescription of anything works against the emergence of identity, and not for it. Therefore, this project is intent on not prescribing anything. The project will, instead, deal with the confrontation of various conditions between the site and a new development.

In hopes of allowing identity to emerge, the proposed ‘new development’ is one that is a priori i.e. derived by or designating the process of reasoning without reference to particular facts or experience. A grid of 24m by 24m is superimposed on to the site, and is intended to be merely an infrastructural backdrop for future developments. What is envisaged is not a definitive design of how this abandoned ‘landmark’ should be used, but instead, one of continual metamorphosis based on the natural conditions of the site, and how people choose to respond to it with regards to the intended use.