This project is situated in the Simpang area of northern Singapore, encompassing established HDB estates in Sembawang.
Formerly a military training base, Simpang is now reserve land covered by natural vegetation, with traces of past human activities remain in the form of bare lands and dirt roads.
On the opposite side of the Simpang Kiri canal, the naturally regenerating Simpang contrasts with the developed Sembawang HDB estates.
Over the next century, rising sea levels caused by climate change will pose significant flooding risks to this area.
Tracing its transformation reveals that rapid urbanization and human-centered development have replaced vegetation, habitats, and waterways with roads and housing.
The human-centered design approach has marginalized the ‘more-than-human,’ shrinking their living spaces and creating an estrangement between humans and the more than-human world—once part of an interconnected community.
This project envisions a future community where humans and nature share equal rights through Shared Growth Evolution, a design approach distinct from traditional one-shot planning.
By prioritizing time and space for the more-than-human, Shared Growth Evolution seeks to bridge the physical and spiritual gap between human and non-human entities.
With the guidance of the concept, the first strategy is river excavation and redirection. Transforming canals into systems that detain, treat, and interact with stormwater, enhancing human-water connections.
The second strategy is to use mangroves to help tackle rising sea levels. Mangrove roots can trap sediment, offset sea level rise, and the ability of mangroves to spread their seeds by water could also interact with the previous river excavation strategy.
In Simpang, the site is categorized into living canopy, shared wild, and sanctuary core based on predicted ecological conditions, fostering a coexistence between human and more-than-human communities.
Eye-level scene of living canopy In the new living canopy, people are more exposure to the more than human elements, and feel like being part of them.
Eye-level scene of Sembawang HDB eatates Residents of Sembawang HDB visit their old house and discover that the house had been demolished and the foundation converted into a reservoir.
Eye-level scene of shared wild Rather than just walk or ride along the canal, people are able to go kayaking in the river and get close to simpang which used to be mysterious.