THE ADAPTIVE GRID : DIVERSIFYING THE HDB LANDSCAPE OF SAMENESS

Abstract

This thesis explores on the possibility of a new organizational system, in which will began to transform Singapore’s Housing Development Board’s (HDB) precinct landscape. It begins on the investigation of the notion of ‘sameness’ of this landscape, which consists of contributing factors of non-adaptive rules, static programs and material. Imposed onto the landscape, the current precinct condition has resulted in monotonous, predictable, and replicable ground level spatial experience.

Using Ang Mo Kio as the site of investigation and simulation, the project envisions a grid system comprising of several sets of adaptive rules and programmatic arrangement, allowing intensification and diversity on the landscape, which would create variations through interaction and juxtaposition between the new intervention (the grid) and the existing HDB landscape. By imposing the new grid system onto the entire Singapore housing landscape and through the act of juxtaposition, opportunities would arise, spaces would be activated, in which people would be able to utilize and co-own the landscape, through the variations of programs and spatial experiences, which will be unique to each individual HDB precinct landscape.

Small scale vegetable and flower farming, hydroponics, organic local food stores, café and markets, day care garden, Traditional Chinese Medicine clinic, sports park and gym, open cinemas, senior citizens residential, outdoor retractable cafes and collapsible exercise facilities are some of the endless possibilities, in which through the act of juxtapositioning of the grid and the existing HDB precinct landscape, that can offer. What is truly magnificent is that through this superimposition, the architectural end product allows the residents to act upon their choice of lifestyles onto the landscape, in which they can truly start to co-own a part of Singapore.

The project entails as a commentary on the homogenizing effects due to the process of repetition and standardization in the initial development of HDB’s mass housing production, and moving forward, breaking away from the rigidity of that very system of sameness, towards a system of diversity, variations and mass customization.