Shiying Teo

Born in Singapore and now living in London, Shiying Teo graduated from Oxford Brookes University with her Bachelors Degree. Her professional work ranges from architectural design, urban planning, master planning and interior design, working mainly in Singapore.

In Shiying's personal practice, she is constantly in search of expressing the metaphysial aspects of architecture and its ability to touch all the human senses. Working across mediums of digital, physical and time-based designs, she attempts to converge her interests in the cinematic, politics, identity and mental health to address how architectural language and symbolism can affect societal conditions beyond the scope of our current understandings of architecture and the built environment.

Earthly embodiments

Modern day life in an urbanised city-state has radically transformed our spatial domestic typologies. A communal living spirit, “gotong royong”, Malay for the “joint bearing of burdens”, has slowly disappeared within the urbanisation of Singapore. Trauma now exists in the people and the state, insuring lost memories and a disappearing national identity, through the taking away of the last village.This project seeks to understand Singapore’s position as a city, looking towards the uprooting of villagers the last village in mainland Singapore, Kampong Lorong Buangkok, to be demolished in 2030 as per Singapore’s Masterplan.

Earthly embodiments is a spatial syntax of mental trauma of the village’s removal and tactile care based on the lives of the communal living spirit of the villagers. Utilising the lush nature of a tropical country, the sounds of nature it produces and layered immateriality to produce a design language that grounds users within the deinstitutionalised sanctuary, a hideaway from modern city life. The project investigates whether natural materials and a tactile care language towards mass urbanisation can devise a blueprint for the ever evolving cultural identity of urban Singapore.

The project is based on the timeline of a traumatised individual and the aftermath of sending off these traumatised memories, crafting a ritual of material sensibilities of nature and the sounds produced. Experienced in a non-hierarchical manner, users go through each space picking up materials within their cloak, creating their own imprint within the sanctuary. The culmination of the experience lies in the fabric passage where materials are deposited to grow, a comment on Singapore’s growing identity. Embodying the earth, a sanctuary of memorialisation, time and growth. The architecture lives beyond its physical realm surpassing sound and time, engaging the village, designer and user in an ongoing relationship of growth and understanding.

Over time, the fabric passage will be taken over by plants, growth, moss, weeds and wildlife. What does it mean for the future of Singapore’s growth?

Four key moments — entrance, water pool, water cremation, fabric passage detail

Entrance — the water pattering across the stones marks your arrival

Admitting room — admitting offices above give a sense of security and users pick up their cloaks to be worn around the sanctuary

Refreshment room — the water trickles from the rain chain and into this pool forming a new sonic experience within the space

Refreshment room — nature seeps into the building, a view to the fabric passage, capturing the time of waiting and pausing

Water cremation room — flickering fabrics, a pool where users can dissolve affects on their past within

Water cremation room, therapy suite above — flickering fabrics, creating a soundscape of bamboo leaves rustling in the wind

Float therapy — a study on how water can change atmospheres as a design tool

Fabric passage — facade detail, sounds of nature, users deposit the natural materials collected throughout the project

Fabric passage — donned by the cloaks of the users, the fabric passage activates the human experience

Plan 1:350, Site Plan — The apex of the project lies between the urban cityscape and Sungei Punggol Reservoir.

Longitudinal Section 1:250 — The landscape's contoured vertical heights and horizontal longitudes provide different intimacies of encounters with nature and water.

Roof plan, Axonometric Studies — Roof hatches documenting the interchanging materials of Kampong Lorong Buangkok, studies of different levels of transparency with found materials used in residential building.

Layered physical model — based on the methodology of transparency studies

Embodied cloak — An extension of the bodily form through layers of fabric

Embodied senses — A cloak lays on the grass as one tries to remember what the village once represented, a traumatic removal, the loss of memory, it has now become part of activating the symbolism of the user and breaking the typical relationship between space and user Made of coffee beans, mung beans, rice and corn

Shiying Teo

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Royal College of Art