Strange Energy

My enclosed garden project, Strange Energy, is located beside Singapore’s Ministry of Foreign Affairs (MFA) and three embassies— China, Australia, and the USA. The broader site holds a quiet tension: it feels simultaneously public and prohibited. This atmosphere may be a legacy of its former use as the colonial-era Tanglin Barracks.

During my visit, I observed ‘wild-looking’ mature trees, likely remnants of the barracks’ landscape infrastructure, alongside a temporary park composed of wooden stakes, tall fenced boundaries with surveillance monitors, and an open lawn. These elements suggest its current status as a reserve site. As a result, the site exists in a state of hybridity, shaped by subtle unease: the sensation of being watched, and the ambiguity of whether one is meant to linger or simply pass through.

A large tree entwined with winding vines was interesting as it embodied a kind of spontaneous ecological vitality and magnetic appeal. Conventional practices of greening—understood as the reduction of place into a uniform aesthetic or colour—struggle to engage with such complexity.

In response, the enclosed garden foregrounds two contrasting perceptual conditions: being watched and being wild-looking. It explores how these tensions can be amplified into a new form of enclosed garden, one that maintains security while attracting visitors. The garden operates as an energy field, encouraging the proliferation of ‘wild-looking’ vegetation and inviting a broader range of human and non-human presences. Within this field, these agencies interact continuously, producing subtle shifts in how the site is perceived and navigated.

Ultimately, the project suggests that nature-cultures emerge not from standardized acts of greening, but from the forces that move through a site, in this case, the layered histories of Tanglin Barracks. By staging these forces in public view, the design transforms an uneasy site into one where tension becomes visible, legible, and even magnetic.