ARCHITECTURAL FILTH

Abstract

My thesis is an architecture of filth. This thesis stems from a critique of Singapore’s obsession with hygiene, exemplified by her compulsion to be always in a state of absolute control. Filth is defined as an accumulation of entities that are disregarded or rejected by modernism. Singapore’s planning proposal is largely inspired by Tony Ganier’s Cite Industrialle. This modernist system is one of legibility which is a result of classification by its form or function, and segregation through ordering and organization. Therefore Modern filth is what that is rejected by modernism, conversely, it forms a resistance against modernist system of classification, function, economy, hierarchy, ordering and organization. Presently, what then, on an urban level, is this filth found in Singapore? I have identified a peculiar phenomenon that exhibits the qualities of filth found in the kitchen – the pasar malam. They are able to disregard the boundaries by overlaying, that is to say, trespassing from one surface boundary to another, going against zoning practices by appropriating public spaces for private commercial ventures, and occasionally, for public entertainment. They accumulate to congest, they leech outwardly from corners of buildings, and lastly, they fill in between the seams of two surfaces. However, this filth is necessary. This filth is good and legitimate. To live is to Filth. But, Singapore’s hygienic practices cleanse away the filth, that is to say, making spaces devoid of all vitality, of all life. Therefore, the thesis proposes an accumulation of pasar malam into a single building that resists every notion of modernism, and on another aspect, contests against the hygienic practices that Singapore has ever been so preoccupied with