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2026:
Supported by the Social Design Lab, CiRE, and FARM
Principal Investigators
Dr. AHN Chaewon (Walking Tour Lead)
Dr. CHEE Lilian (Co-Drawing Workshop Lead, Editor)
Dr. TANG Dorothy
Research Assistants
BISWAS Sen Pari
FONG Rachel
HUNG Joelle
GOEL Shobhit
HE Xinyi
Student Associate
LOH Jamie
BI Hongying
DIETZOLD Laura
REN YuKun
Partners
Civic Resilience Lab (CiRe)
Social Design Lab (SoDL)
FARM Architects
SCGS Alumni
DERC Reference Number
000990 (College of Design and Engineering)
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Image: REN YuKun
In 2018, it became clear that 37 Emerald Hill — once home to Singapore Chinese Girls’ School (SCGS), the country’s first secular girls’ school (founded 1899) — faced possible demolition to make way for higher-value commercial development. The school was relocated from the corner of Hill Street and Coleman Street in 1925 to this Emerald Hill site, where it operated until 1994. In that year, the cohort relocated to its newly built Dunearn Road campus.
Prompted by alumni who independently launched the Keep 37 Emerald Hill campaign in 2018, this research study was collaboratively conducted by the Social Design Lab and Civic Resilience Lab at the Department of Architecture, NUS (November 2025 – January 2026). We aim to explore the role of women in the built environment, and to develop appropriate methodological tools which could embed the datasets consistent with our research subjects. The Keep 37 Emerald Hill case study and the old school site served as our hypothetical site to propose an urban toolkit. Our question: Do places that hold a community’s daily life and memory count for as much as places that turn a profit? Our answer is that they do, and that good urban planning needs the right tools to prove it.
To answer it, we developed two complementary methodologies for surfacing the lived experience of the place. The first is a quantitative trajectory: GPS-tracked walking interviews recorded with action cameras, transcribed, and analysed with the help of a Large Language Model (LLM) to map emotions, themes, and stop locations across the site. The second is a qualitative co-drawing workshop in which participants produced spatial memory collectively and tactilely — through writing, drawing, and collage on a shared base map.
Together, the two tools translate community memory into evidence robust enough to inform design, and have produced a concrete set of design recommendations for what the site could become. The implications extend beyond 37 Emerald Hill: in any redevelopment where an older building of dense social significance is partially retained facade kept, interior life at risk of erasure — the same methods can surface what is genuinely at stake.
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Acknowledgements
This project builds upon the earlier advocacy and community efforts of Keep 37 Emerald Hill and the SCGS Alumni community, whose commitment to memory, heritage and collective stewardship laid the groundwork for this research.
Disclaimer
This report draws on work from a number of sources and has not undergone a full academic peer review. The views and recommendations in this report are based on available information and contributing authors will not be liable for damages of any kind arising from the use of this report.
About the Social Design Lab
The Social Design Lab (SoDL) at the NUS Department of Architecture (DoA) functions as a mode of inquiry to explore, question, and transform social relations and systems that shape our environments and collective futures. It is an interdisciplinary initiative that connects students and faculty with external communities and practitioners to form a network of socially-engaged design practices. Through workshops, exhibitions, symposiums, research publications, and artist residencies, the Lab fosters inclusive creative design practices across disciplines. We hope to establish the DoA as a leader in design-led socio-spatial innovation on a national, regional, and global scale.