PARAMETRIC IDEATION COMPETITION 2020

Secured First Position in Parametric Ideation Competition 2020 held during December 2020 and showcased Outstanding Design in Sustainability Targets category.

TEAM MEMBERS : Ng Jia Suen, Janice Lim Pei Rou, Teoh Zi Ying

THE ARCHIPELAGOS

Design Issue

Global warming has caused rising sea level on the Earth. The residential housings in Singapore are in high-rise settings and human density is growing vertically due to the low amount of land in Singapore. The site chosen is the water body in Pulau Ubin due to its vicinity to the sea and the villages on land which allow connection to the public. We decided to move away from the land and design with intention of a water-based community. Instead of packing people in dense, high-rise settings, the water body allows the horizontal expansion of dwelling units to be more flexible and allows the users to live among nature, away from the hectic city life.

Our target users for our design are couples or singles. Due to its location on the sea, a big community with tranquil environment will be an ideal living place for couples or singles to spend their life at when they retire. Young couples and singles are also welcomed to try on a different lifestyle. In the community, users can live, work, play and exchange ideas with each other without much assistance from the outside. Self-sufficiency are also highly deployed where the users can meet their own living demands and earn incomes at the same time.

Design Concept

Through our research on biomimicry, we have looked into the Amazonian water lily on how it can be translated into the design. The water lily's wide span and surprising buoyancy contributes to its ultimately fascinating ecological purpose: a floating community. They span up to 3m. These features enable it to serve as a bridge for interactions between aquatic and land-based animal species. The water lilies have ribbed porous veins on its underside that stem from the core to create modules. Air is trapped in the veins and in bubbles in the modules, making the lily buoyant. The modules also follow a certain morphology, decreasing in size while increasing in frequency as it approaches the edge.

Design Development

Strategies

Under master planning, the platforms towards the periphery will be fully residential (5-sided lily pads), fully communal (4-sided lily pads, and half residential-half communal (6-sided lily pads). The expansion would be horizontal. Plugin, the wasp was used to generate the possible configurations of water lily pads. Instead of packing people in dense, high-rise settings, it seeks to spread them outwards and allow them to live among nature.