BISHAN COMMUNITY LIBRARY : A CONQUEST FOR PUBLIC SPACE IN BISHAN TOWN CENTRE

Abstract

This thesis sets forth with the recognition of Bishan town centre being increasingly dominated by privatization and commercialism. What was once a public domain for the community, Bishan town centre has now been degraded to a place where its usage implicitly requires the public to “pay”. The vehicle chosen is a community library. Community library is recognised as one of the last remaining public spaces having the potential to sustain and revitalize the diminishing public domain. Upon an investigation of existing community libraries in Singapore, it is realized that there are inadequacies of present community libraries. It is believed that these inadequacies have been and will continue to hinder community libraries from being a real public institution. This thesis purposes to deal with issues concerned with the realisation of the community library as a true public space for all. This attempt was executed at several levels: to engage sensibly with the existing network of public spaces on the macro level, to decipher and reorganize the different zones of spaces within a library on the micro level and to re-inject other diminished or even omitted communal functions to the library on the program level.