Instructor
Carlos Bañón
Program: Mixed-Use High-rise Development
Site: Punggol, Singapore
Scale: 20k – 40k sqm
Brief
The concept of height conceals a wealth of possibilities. This Option Studio will search for new visions of relatively low high-rise developments, in which different public and private spaces will have to coexist within a holistic and Sustainable Design.
The site consists of fifteen plots with an estimated area between 5.000 to 10.000 sqm; it has a plot ratio of 4 ( which makes 20.000 – 40.000 sqm of built surface ) with a limited footprint area, within singular boundary conditions, and specific regulations that will shape and bias the designs. Housing developments will be merged with different types of public spaces to produce new and unitary solutions of mixed-use designs.
High-rise construction will be reformulated from bottom up, tackling the problematics of densified constructions dealing with the ground plane to create new pieces of city fabric instead of disconnected icons.
Active and passive energy systems will drive the designs in parallel with social and tectonic inputs. By applying essential principles in energy and thermal knowledge we shall seek for not only more efficient but more relevant typologies targeted to a tropical climate.
As such, we will rely on a hybrid model that is based on a combination of active (clean, technified, parametric, artificial and seasonal ) and passive systems ( energy saving, elementary resources, daily-based cycle) that will determine programmatic, structural and technical decisions at different stages and scales. A balanced sum of the two different knowledges will enable designs to respond to climate demands at different scales of time.
