Design Team
Tay
Kheng Soon
Robert Powell
Staff and students of the School of Architecture, NUS
In October 1988, the opportunity arose for Tay Kheng Soon to develop his ideas on the 'The Tropical City'. Ho Pak Toe, one of his erstwhile collaborators in SPUR, was by then Director of the School of Architecture at the National University of Singapore. Ho Pak Toe invited Tay to conduct a workshop with senior students on the theme of the Intelligent Tropical City (Tay 1988). The programme would explore ideas set out in a working paper by Tay which sought to advance the paradigm of the Intelligent Tropical City.
Tay Kheng Soon and Robert Powell devised a workshop programme to model
the concept. The theoretical and philosophical outline was devised by
Tay. Singapore's population will expand by 1.3 million people in the next
40 years. What kind of city would emerge if 500,000 people were accommodated
on the reclaimed land adjacent to Marina Bay? This was the proposition
explored, a proposition which would maintain those parts of the island,
as yet undeveloped, for recreation, nature reserves and forest reserve.These
reserves are presently threatened with reduction into mere tokens.
The programme extended over 16 weeks and involved 21 students, three full-time
members of staff and three part-time staff. In exploring the conceptual
framework provided by Tay, the student workshop developed specific guidelines
for:
o Landscaping
o Support structures
o Tropical design
o Community in high-rise dwellings
o Tools for conviviality
o Transport technology
o Building technology
o Information technology
The mathematical model and the fixed volume model initially looked daunting, but the gross plot ratios arrived at were acceptable at 12.5. The final spatial model of the concept had a delightful quality of urban spaces and immense vitality at the high densities proposed. The whole process was recorded on video. The workshop assisted in the formulation of the agenda for future research.
The results were helpful to Tay in modelling many aspects of the Tropical City which was subsequently published as a book, Mega-Cities in the Tropics by the Institute of Southeast Asian Studies (ISEAS, Tay 1989). Tay received support in his research from the late Professor Kernial Singh Sandhu at ISEAS where Tay was appointed Research Associate from 1988 to 1989 and at the Aga Khan Programme at MIT where he was appointed as a Visiting Scholar in 1986 and in 1989.
Text by Robert Powell