MARITIME MUSEUM, A

Abstract

The island of Singapore has a distinguished maritime history and has owed its existence to the free-port status of her harbor. However, this heritage is not widely known or deeply appreciated by today's Singaporeans. In recent years, with the promotion of holiday cruising and the implementation of more waterfront living, people are getting more aware of what's lies along and beyond the waters of Singapore Straits. Thus there is a need for a maritime museum to provide such information and educate the people of the maritime world. The Keppel Harbour was chosen as the site for its location due to its strategic geographic location (deep waters) and presence of rich maritime background - the Singapore Cruise center. Thus the thesis investigation is twofold: 1) to re-look into what a maritime museum should be and 2) the contribution of the museum in relation to a waterfront context (Keppel Harbourj. The main idea here was to envision the museum as a place rather than an inward looking building. A study into the relationship between the public, the museumgoers (private) and the exhibits in the water environment context (keppel harbour). The circulation movement of the various user groups at the existing site thus become one of the generator of the design. By using framing of views and the immediate pedestrian connections around site to generate voids and solids, creating the feeling of floatation over the water. A variety of spaces are created to house the boats ranging from real life sizes (on the floating platform or the cruise ship) to the small models to primitive boats (within the building). It is not a conventional educational center where one follow strict learning but rather a variety of options from real life boarding of ships to fun and games at the floating decks (event spaces) to serious study of the historical development of ships etc. The intention of the architecture is thus to create an environment that people are always in their subconscious mind aware of the maritime ships around them. The architecture ultimately serves as an infrastructure where various groups of people meet and interact in the neutral ground of the nautical world.