The project is a 170,000 sqm innovation campus supporting the Singapore’s growing Maker’s economy. The brief requires housing and workspaces, as well as public spaces and areas for private market.
The emergence of the “high-tech factory” and global shift of the manufacturing industry calls for an urgent revalidation of the factory and its relationship to the city. Singapore, the quintessential developmental city presents a relevant and significant opportunity to once again remake the city’s image through the transformation of its dominant types and the integration of tropicality that embodies the ideologies of the nation. Our proposition for the Woodland development gives Singaporean citizens an experience of spatial continuity between spaces of leisure framed by the marvel of production. Through the remaking of the “city room” podium, we take it’s true essence of “bringing people together” and use it as a binding medium between working and living. The future of industry is no longer described as the tech campus, logistic city or industrial park, but is an intrinsic part to city life and is the model for a new metropolis that will bring production and making back into the city fabric.
The master plan framework accumulates an irreducible architectural unit made up of a housing slab and the factory podium. This sequential transformation through the use of the high-rise represents a commonality that serves as a rule for the progression of the nation, an architecture that constitutes an effective organizational tool for the city that Singaporean citizens identify with.
What is conventionally perceived as a heavy and impenetrable base, the podium is elevated opening up the ground plane. A series of light wells and structural cores will then perforate the elevated podium to bring in light and air to the spaces below and establish an interface between the factory and public realm. The high-rise is a point access slab with cores housing services, allowing for sufficient light and open plan for the living spaces. This basic architectural unit applied to a 60m x 60m grid, creates a system that frames a variety of landscapes and public spaces. The ground plane is then transformed into a space where light, air and sight freely passes through. On the ground floor, the staggered structural service cores supporting the podium serves to organize shaded open spaces and functions.
The patchwork of landscapes are defined by the edges of the architectural unit, where some edges are porous and allows people to intersect and interact with the factory, while other edges promote movement along and through the elevated podiums and into leisure spaces. Each landscape offers different uses and benefits. For instance, the rain tree plaza which is framed by the retail and housing slab protects the space underneath from the sun. While the productive palm fields make economic use of the landscape and the wild tropical terrain allows space for local flora to flourish. The civic squares are available for independent development.
