THE LIVING DROME : AT OLD BUKIT TIMAH RACECOURSE

Abstract

This thesis addresses the unsustainable relationship between economy and ecology and attempts to provide an experimental urban solution that cohesively merges the two isolated systems as one. As a continuation of the dissertation report written for the Master’s of Architecture program, the project intends to provide a testing ground for ecologists’ proposed disturbance theory where constant change results in stimulated adaptability and increased stability; promoting and preserving biodiversity as a key theme that merges both economy and ecology.

Located at the Old Bukit Timah Race Course, the site provides the juxtaposition of ecological and economic memory of horse racing and its proximity to the Bukit Timah Nature Reserves serves as a strategic location for on-site research. Capitalizing on the recurring site elements and memories, the urban intervention is an overall masterplan of the site; a disturbance landscape that facilitates for the monitoring of interactions between economy and ecology, fostering greater biodiversity of the existing activities and programs and safeguarding the continuity of the indigenous identity the site has cultivated over the last decade. The disturbance landscape is conceived as an open system, where economy and ecology contests and invades the site in stipulated points of intense interactions, breaking down barriers of the two traditionally closed systems.

In the detailed design for an initial testing of the project, the experimental architectural elements of the Living Drome mimic the nature of seeds that are placed on site. Each building is individually distinct and is constantly shaped by market forces and environmental changes according to varying degrees that are predetermined in the project. At the small scale, the buildings are subjected to accelerated disturbances, thus collectively allowing for the monitoring of short social experiments at the larger scale of the masterplan. Altogether the disturbance landscape functions as a reflection of our societal changes while simultaneously supporting the potential to develop a pattern that is independent of the existing modus operandi.