Lost in Transit: A Tale of Two Cities

The notion of ‘Arrival City’ is not new in the case of Singapore. Historically a migrant city, Singapore is a culturally and ethnically diverse society that continues to be an attractive destination for many economic migrants today.

Labour city thus thrives and fills up the in between spaces of the formal city. It exists only in the leftover sites of the industrial estate, appropriates the size and the shape of these spaces.

Flowing along plot boundary lines, the labour city can expand and grow while staying connected to previous sites, enabling great flexibility and adaptability of the labour city.

Walls that expand to contain facilities or contract to form screens along circulation paths flank the labour city. The continuously flowing solid shields the migrant worker from the hostilities of the formal city. To the outsider, the wall ‘hides’ the labour city, yet its shear scale, in comparison to the low-rise industrial buildings acts as a visual reminder of Singapore’s dependency on low cost foreign labour.