Current Current

Current Current amplifies the agency of on-site runoff, transforming the grassland within the former Kranji Army Barracks Reserve Site into an enclosed garden for runoff. The grassland is surrounded by layered traces of historical human activity and the 4 nature narrative of the nation. As the surrounding dense tropical forest around the site lacks ground cover, allowing runoff to freely pool and flow across the site. The temporary runoff exhibits emergent agency through processes of flow and stagnation, and continually sculpts the site’s present landform and ecology. The footprints of the runoff overlap with each rainfall, revealing the layers of the past while also sculpting the future ground.

The first strategy reconfigures the once easily waterlogged grassland into an enclosed garden, defined by water’s footprint. The garden is conceived as both an apparatus that intensifies flow and stagnation, and a theatre orchestrated by runoff and historical traces, with water as the primary actor.

The second strategy responds to the site’s terrain through micro-landforms that guide and amplify runoff and by using existing ballast blocks to make water’s processes more legible. The ballast blocks function both as stepping stones and as materials intentionally exposed to erosion, breaking down over time into history-bearing fragments that extend the layered past.

In sum, Current Current redefines the presence and temporality of the reserve site and its landscape identity within urban landscapes by amplifying and visualizing the behavior of runoff. Through the dialogue between runoff and historical footprints in the tropical context, the project positions itself as the Fifth Nature: a dynamic tropical landscape paradigm driven by water, shaped by historical traces, and orchestrated by a More-Than-Human network of agencies.