A village’s organic configuration in the city invigorates the life of a podium-block typology once conceived as a microcosm of a city. Inspired by the fluidity and agency of Co-Living Commune in Yogyakarta and the utopic Auroville, Playground seeks to uncover a core unifying architectural spirit that may rejuvenate Bras Basah’s identity as a creative artist residency and an imaginative testbed for boundless experimentation.

 

Conceiving the podium as a constellation of activities, I explore how urban networks are shifted into a vertical system where transient fluidity of various S,M,L,XL scales of architectural typology create unique stages of encounter and spaces of indeterminacy for co-authorship. Proposing a structural lattice as an addition to the existing block, the site is conceived as an artist residency. Traces of usage and domesticated patterns of everyday rituals in embodied life forms delve into material typologies and atmospheric scenography through the lens of Actor-Network Theory.

 

My intervention eventually seeks to argue for an alternative paradigm of Creative Companionship by uncovering the tensions between the conflicting commercial typologies with the fluidity and accessibility of knowledge exchange, where knowledge encompassing the work/live agents such as architects, budding creatives and designers, tenants and residents, can potentially form parts of a self generating system of creative capital. Playground recasts the architect as a mastermind and facilitator of architecture as a social process - where spaces and creative companionship unravel, linger and embody subjectivities. A space to be and to become.

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