'Architecture should be akin to a good story, film, music or art. There should be emotive points of interest amid a smooth flowy rhythm, finished off with details that enrich the senses.'
The location of the school is at Preston Road in Singapore .The site itself lies midway on a hillside on one end of a ridge. The rest of the hill is actually a park.The design breaks down the formal and institutional scale of the school typology and provides an alternative solution by viewing the school as a series of pavilions sitting within a garden setting. The feeling is more like that of a community village.
The location of the school is at Preston Road in Singapore .The site itself lies midway on a hillside on one end of a ridge. The rest of the hill is actually a park.The design breaks down the formal and institutional scale of the school typology and provides an alternative solution by viewing the school as a series of pavilions sitting within a garden setting. The feeling is more like that of a community village.
The strategies employed in the scheme are the inversion of the figure ground relationship, the use of movement as a device to initiate spatial and visual
relations between architecture and landscape, and shifts in relationship of the subject to the view.
The distribution of the program within the school precinct is also analogous to the in between condition of the site. Both building and outdoor spaces follow closely the
topography of the terrain. These site-planning strategies dissolve the ‘perimeter’ of the school precinct so that it becomes interwoven with its context.
The accommodation of architectural program into steep terrain creates leftover spaces that are typically left to absorb unreconciled building geometries. The design uses these spaces instead of being a by-product of the figure, generates the overall form of the building. Terraces, decks, ramps and informal pockets of
spaces are emphasized to become figure. These grounds, usually the passive repositories of buildings, are reconceived as figured voids that actively function to fragment
the volumes of the building, to create fissures, gaps, views, and passage between and through, in order to provoke its relationship with the landscape.
Conceptually the scheme uses the idea of progression and transition, and the path and the node to generate its programme. The canteen, library and hall are designated to be the focal points within the school. Their position along the main circulation path at the beginning, the middle and the end of the school serves as sculptural nodes to ‘pull’ the visitor through the school. From ground level, the visitor only sees these three elements standing out within layers of landscape walls.
The site results in a school that is part of the landscape, and in the process provides opportunities for exchange between
education and the environment via outdoor teaching spaces and ecologically sensitive design. Nature is integrated into
the school by putting equal importance into the spatial relationship between the trees on the site and the space they
creates.
The real beauty of the school lies in its 'incompleteness'. When the actual construction of the building is finished. Nature
and people will take over the next step of completing the building. Creepers and vines will be allowed to grow over the
walls and over the trellises to form natural roofs. Tables and benches will be moved and personalised to the students’
preference. Students can also take part in rebuilding or adding on new parts of building. Outdoor Roofs can be placed
where new need arises. The walls can be used to hang exhibits or artworks. Over time the school will be covered by
vegetation and it will disappear into its site.
It is hoped that the humble urban strategy of connecting education to the city and the park via a simple path will blur
the threshold boundaries between garden and city, in the process giving a richer definition to Singapore as the Garden
City of South East Asia.
*The project was awarded the Dean's Medal, and graded High Distinction, with a place on the Dean's List .
