Rethinking Singapore Sports Spaces | Final - Chua Bing Lun - Architecture and Sustainable Design (ASD)

Sportscapes: intertwining sports, work and nature together

Partner: Chew Cheng Wee

Our site is located at the end of Tengah beside the lake, and only connected to the town via a green park connector and two streets, making our site very disjointed.

As humans, we tend to take the shortest path to reach our destination. This would result in humans cutting through our site, and we would influence the human flow by designing a Sports Hub that would attract people to come and use its program spaces.

Site plan with places of congregation such as:
Place of worship, public transport stations, community centers, Farmways green strip

Iterations of Kangaroo’s minimal path algorithm to optimize human flow within our site boundary

From our site plan , we began by using places of congregation such as places of worship, public transport stations, community centers, farmways and green strips as starting nodes as these places have a high volume of human flow. From our site analysis, we triangulate these nodes using lines within our site boundary. After which, we use Kangaroos’s minimal path algorithm to iterate and optimize human flow within our site. These iterations will subsequently define the paths taken and connecting the various sports facilities together within the sports hub.

As our Sports hub aims to integrate sports into the everyday experience of a Tengah resident. It offers satellite offices in close proximity to sports programs which encouraging workers to lead an active lifestyle. The satellite offices also serve as essential spaces for residents who find it hard to work from home during this Covid pandemic and these offices helps them to focus on their work away from their distractions. Hence, the programme spaces that we plan to introduce would be offices rooms, sport courts, water facilities and rock climbing. We further defined our 4 main programme spaces into spaces of different scale and size as shown below.

Further segregation of our office rooms and sports courts based on size and scale

Further segregation of our water facilities and rock climbing walls based on size and scale

Next, we proceed to sort and group our programme spaces based on certain characteristics such as hybrid spaces, unmixed spaces, private spaces, public spaces, dry spaces and wet spaces as shown below on the left. As we found that we had 3 main groups, based on our final kangaroo iteration, we took 2 main paths, split the site boundary into 3 zones and place our sorted programmes into our sports hub as shown below on the right.

After which, we optimize our path networks from the latest kangaroo iteration based on the number and size of the various programme types that we planned to introduce within our site as shown below on the left. We also optimise the spatial arrangement of our programme types based on the sorted groups shown below in the middle. After which we combine both the path networks and the spatial organization of spaces into the 3 main islands( rock climbing and office, jacuzzi and lap pool and basketball and volleyball) as shown on the below right.

Sorting of programme spaces according to characteristics

Sorting of programme within our sports hub

Paths Network Iterations

Spatial Organization Iterations

Exploded Axonometric Diagram showing both path networks and programme spaces

3 island iterations

We then created the roof and slope the roof according to the height requirements of the various sports spaces and have a walkable path based on our kangaroo path network. We then extend this walkable landscape to the surrounding HDBs as show in the below iteration on the left. The second iteration was to redesign the HDBs according to our path networks shown in the below middle. The last iteration was to introduce more urban farming and smoothing out the cliffs below right.

Ground Condition Iteration 1

Ground Condition Iteration 2

Ground Condition Iteration 3

This drawing shows the landscape condition of the site and the sports hub. It also shows the main entrances to the sports hub and the connections to the streets, the water body and the nearby HDBs. Multiple activities such as urban farming and sports courts can also be seen, where users can cut across our site to experience these activities.

Axonometric Diagram showing flow and landscaping condition of the sports hub

The long section shows the 3 different zones within the sports hub and how these path networks weave above and underneath to connect the different sport facilities together. Some of these paths are elevated as grand stands for people to watch these matches while some of these paths serve as ramps and staircases for people to cross the sport hubs vertically.

Long Section showing the 3 different zones within the sports hub and how these path networks weave above and underneath to connect the different sport facilities together

The sports hub has multiple sustainable systems. Photovoltaic panels are place on cliffs surfaces that are inaccessible by pedestrians. The slope of the landscapes enable surface runoff into the urban farms, reducing the need for physically watering. The urban farming irrigation system draws waters upwards from the water retention tank and the surrouding landscapes have subsoil drainage that draws water into the water retention tanks.