AQUA RECREATION CENTRE: AN URBAN WATERFRONT ESCAPADE

Abstract

The objective of this thesis stems from the understanding that leisure and recreational pursuits are a dominant part of many lifestyles. As Singapore continues to propagate through urbanization, this process will transform the whole island into a city with excellent infrastructures. With the consistent weather conditions and good access to water, this thesis serves to provide a recreational node for the city as means of escape and leisure. It deals with the fundamental social issues of providing as escape for the people working and living within the city through water recreation. The vehicle chosen is an aquatic recreation centre which offers recreation in the form of water-sports. The architectural issues are mainly site driven. The various site analysis results in a typology which is sensitive to the urban context while respecting the water-edge. Through the stacking up of programmes, it produces a typology appropriate as an urban waterfront development, apparent in land shortage. The proposed site is Kallang Riverside Park which is at the fringe of the Central Area. The architectural strategies involves access into and through the building based upon pedestrian movements and future developments of Kampong Bugis Area. With the ground level incorporated into a porous recreational landscape, it minimizes any physical barriers to the water. The journey through the building will be conceived as an experience which draws people towards the water and encourage participation in the water-based recreation. This experience towards the waterfront displays the water-sports in act and ultimately produces a destination of informal spaces that capture the vantage views from the site. The channeling of river as a lagoon into the site serves to bring the water and the activities into the park and people. The lagoon also aims to optimize the use of the rivers for recreation. The architectural articulation of the building in the form of structural steel frames aims to signify a sense of weightlessness and lightness inspired from the buoyancy of the water. As such, each spaces will be conceived as a 'lookout' or a viewing point towards the rivers. Therefore, the Aqua Recreation Centre define the notion of a waterfront typology while reintegrating water and nature into the building to provide an environment as an urban escapade for water sports, spontaneous in generating a string of leisure and recreational activities through the day as well as the night.