Incomplete landscapes presents a body of work that studies the act of coproduction in architecture. Sited on Pedra Branca, a rocky island 24 nautical miles off the East coast of Singapore, the design proposition looks at how architecture can be made, experienced, and designed together with humans and non-human actants.
Taking the form of a landscape, the proposition questions architecture’s relationship with nature. It passively engages with factors like heat, humidity, salt, and tides, elements which architecture often seeks to insulate against. In shifting the design to harness these “unwanted” elements, the project aims to shift the discourse of productivity, to challenge the understanding of productivity in an alternative (non-human) context. Here, the interventions look at how acts of “construction” and “destruction” often take on human centric perspectives. By framing ruination as a productive act, alternative typologies and construction techniques are proposed in the form of a Coccoolith Well, Weathering Perches and a Sunken Reef. These interventions are co-produced by humans, architecture and non-human actants for more than land mass on the island. The landscape further challenges the fetishisation of the architecture never truly is “complete”. Architecture and site thus are framed as a single entity - a dynamic construct that continually grows and evolves.
Speculating on this, the thesis presents a fictional narrative, where the site was produced with this coproductive method since Singapore’s independence in 1965. This narrative is presented as a spatial-experiential film, where the architectural intervention is explored at various scales, time frames, and through activity of multiple protagonists. By making the invisible landscape visible, the proposition imagines how a coproduction of architecture can lead to new forms of sustainable entertainment and tourism. Ultimately reimagining the way in which we understand land and assert sovereignty on Pedra Branca.
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Tutor's Notes // Eugene’s thesis wrestles with two contradictory ideas: on the one hand, territorial sovereignty’s penchant for extractive practices and accumulating assets, and on the other hand, the notion of territory as an organic, self-renewing landscape. Sited at the highly politicised Pedra Branca (or Batu Puteh), an island ruled by the International Courts of Justice (ICJ) in 2008 to Singapore for the latter’s continued ‘acts’ of productive intervention and maintenance taken over the last 180 years, Incomplete Landscapes asks us to reimagine a counter-history wherein acts of sovereignty might be redefined through architecture’s expanded field and agency. In place of built infrastructural dominion, the thesis envisions how architecture’s creative tasks might be shared between human and nonhuman agents. It demonstrates a future where sovereign power is exercised responsibly and sustainably. Provocatively suggesting that choreographed ruination and collaborative construction with fungi, birds, tidal shifts, humidity, wind, rain, and salt, will equal and subsequently exceed the measure of a sovereign’s productive ‘acts’, the thesis advocates “co-productive” reciprocity between landscape and architectural actions. Incomplete Landscapes produces a gentle and evolving geo-eco-political model of sovereignty for Southeast Asia and beyond.
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Pioneer Architects (Lim Chong Keat) Prize 2023
World Illustration Award 2023, Longlist
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