ON-DEMAND MEGA HIVES: ALTERNATIVE DWELLINGS FOR HYPERDENSITY IN SINGAPORE �S MASS HOUSING DEVELOPMENT

Abstract

Bees create hives and bats live in caves, predetermined by Mother Nature. Hives can be regenerated accordingly to the changing climate and social needs of the colony, but caves are singular and immutable spaces ready to be abandoned when circumstantial forces mutate beyond habitable conditions. The need for all creatures large and small to create and to occupy a space imbued with identity, belonging and changeability with the needs to adjust accordingly to the passing of time, has always dominated the meaning of our spatial existence. In this dissertation, ‘Hives’ refer to a mutable but easily perishable spatial typology that exhibits adaptability and the propensity to change according to the communal needs of its colony of inhabitants, and ‘Caves’ refer to a contrasting spatial typology that is pre-designed but remains a more immutable permanent enclosure, that provides its occupants a prescribed place for settlement. Due to the nature of the ‘Cave’ typology that allow ease and governmental control of land use and planning, efficient organisation of labour and the speed of construction, numerous residential projects in Singapore (as in other parts of the world) easily subscribe to this method in the mass housing of communities in increasingly hyperdense cities. As architects stand at the turn of the 21st Century, Rem Koolhaas’ polemic “Potemkin Metropolis” on the 30 years of Tabula Rasa in Singapore serve as a timely and exigent reminder to all architectural practitioners: “How can the future of urban housing renewal take place without incurring the painful costs of clean-sweeping our collective socio-cultural identities, sense of belonging and more importantly, a Singaporean sense of place” when circumstantial forces mutate? How can civic-rootedness be achieved when accumulative socio-emotional investment that have incrementally been bonded to the places we knew so well be erased in an instant, and its inhabitants urged to take refuge in another cave typology? This research argues for an urgent need for future hyperdensity housing solution in Singapore to closely examine the pertinent rapid social and demographic profile changes through consideration of a new urban imperative that embraces both the ‘Hive’ and ‘Cave’ spatial typologies in the future dwelling needs of its people.