PLAY! A Guide to Architecture for Resilience
![](https://cde.nus.edu.sg/arch/wp-content/uploads/sites/32/2020/07/Row-A_Fixed.jpg)
PLAY! Final Panel
PLAY! A Guide to Architecture for Resilience by Tan Xin Yuan
Name: Tan Xin Yuan
Thesis Supervisor: Ar Tiah Nan Chyuan
Site: Tanglin Halt, Singapore
Project Cluster: Speculative Environments
Reference Link: xinyuantan.com/play
The Singaporean game of life models Freudian theory – the objective of the game is to earn titles through fame, happiness, money, recognition. The first player to achieve or exceed this success formula is the winner of the game. The Singaporean life timeline and one’s enduring identity– or the lack thereof – involves the loss of the id, (read: innate passions and desires) through habits of compliance to social construct as one grows older. Conversely, the ego and superego, which are the other 2 concepts of the tripartite composition of I, focuses on societal means of success, and are transient, gone when one retires and when one’s predecessors move out of the house. The remainder – an empty nest, a hollow shell, a loss of socially ‘prestigious’ titles, and a stark loss of identity.
Singaporean Adapted Game of Life Model
Hypothetical Singaporean Lifeline based off Freudian theories
From early years of providing basic housing to enable the growing population to today’s design guidelines focusing on communal identity, the ubiquitous HDB landscape creates formal landscapes that champion pragmatism and community identity.
This thesis posits that the housing landscape holds the pivotal role as the spatial and physical construct in shaping a Singaporean’s core identity, through the retention of one’s id throughout one’s lifetime.
It calls upon the MND and HDB, which shapes 70% of a child’s development, to fulfil its role of shaping a future resilient generation. It distills the various title classifications and memories that can be created in the everyday neighbourhood, creating a vehicle that is reactionary to the longevity and permanence of one’s identity. Ultimately, it appends a PLAY! guide to creating housing spaces that build meaningful identities based on permanent qualities like resilience, independence, self-awareness, empathy – values beyond the traditional pedagogy of what a school can teach.
The guidebook comes coupled with 20 examples of deconstructing formal ‘play spaces’ into everyday banal items along journeys, which are practical and simple to be implemented. They bring meaning to the everyday, regardless of place or age. The resultant hyper-neighbourhood consist of a plethora of opportunities of 4 varying spatial types – secret passages, centre stages, hideaways and out-of-bound areas – a step into the solution for lasting memories, individual and communal titles; a rootedness to the self and to the community, and towards a generation of resilient characters; a wholesome id, ego, and superego; and a more meaningful, lasting and fulfilling game of life.
Envisioning the HDB Design Guide Appendix
Envisioning a Journey filled with Identity Making Possibilities
Inspired by Atelier Bow-wow’s rendition of da-me architecture of Japan, the PLAY! guidebook serves a relatively prescriptive version of banal architecture possibilities in everyday journeys. It aims to create spaces in the daily Singaporean neighbourhood geared towards the 4 characteristics of spaces (creating secret paths, centre stages, hideaways, out-of-bound areas). This is guided by a child’s favourite actions — activities like to run, hide, seek, aim, lookout, trap, hide, hand, sail, climb…akin to how this list is endless, the guidebook is non-exhaustive, providing a mere semblance of examples of deconstructing formal ‘play spaces’. Such spaces are no longer a fixed state-designated confined node, but daily occurrences and choice destinations.
Whilst Volume 1 of the PLAY! guidebook is tailored towards the Tanglin Halt neighbourhood, the essence of this book and the entire thesis is not geared toward a specific site — instead, the main takeaway its author aspires for the reader is the necessity of such spaces to be placeless, such that identity is no longer confined to a neighbourhood collective title, but about both individual and community titles that can be derived from the 20 projects. The nameless neighbourhood, which affects 65-70% of a child’s identity, memories and titles, becomes the key factor in creating resilient titles.
20 Individual Examples of PLAY! in Tanglin Halt
Sequence 01: Secret Paths
Sequence 02: Centre Stages
Sequence 03: Hideaways
Sequence 04: Out-of-Bounds