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Urban Tarzan

Part 1 Project 2022
Ryan Kun Hao Quah
National University of Singapore | Singapore
The Urban Tarzan responds to the increasingly hostile urban environment of Singapore. It opposes the conventional typology of maximising floorplates for commercial and monetary culture. It also criticises the lack of physical play zone in the downtown district, where work and transaction dominates as the anchor programme. Hence, Urban Tarzan attempts to break the monopoly of the concrete jungle and display the heroic return of wilderness and fun in the city.

This project proposes an alternative typology of a high-rise tower that combines the operations of the public realm, ecological habitat and the climatic environment. The composition of the tower examines a computational discrete assembly where the components is initiated and constructed through a bottom-up, peer-to-peer approach. The discrete construction is appropriated by the relations between aggregates, structural efficiency and spatial effectiveness - activating what seems to just-so be a structural element into a device of spatial experience and system of ecology. The inconsistent composition of the structural element negotiates and shapes the creation of architectural experiences - yielding a circulation path that dances around columns and beams, fragments floorplates and decentralises service systems.

The Urban Tarzan challenges the naturally horizontal park typology as a vertical tower. It re-imagines how nature could be re-experienced in a modern superstructure setting that would provide sense of freshness, wilderness and bionomics. Leveraging on the architecture form, an ecological system (as programme) is curated between human, plants as well as native and migratory bird species. The seemingly leftover site is revitalised and returned to nature - ingraining itself as a fundamental part of Selegie Road’s ecological and urban habitat. In prospect, the Urban Tarzan forwards a proposal to inspire a paradigm shift in the attitudes and methodology towards high-dense development and commercialism.

Ryan Kun Hao Quah

Tutor(s)
Assc. Prof Joseph Lim Ee Man
2022
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