PROJECTS
Image courtesy of SIT
are no trade-offs spatially to achieving energy-saving targets. On the other hand, there is a higher initial investment for more efficient M&E and sanitary systems. However, buildings last for generations of people, and the more important consideration is the long-term value and cost savings they bring.”
Alina Yeo, Director of WOHA, described the concessions involved in incorporating energy efficiency as “the capital cost to implement certain strategies and the potential need of training to implement new technologies”. “High-energy saving measures are not always design-driven, and there can be a potential trade-off between functionality, performance and design,” she shared.
Set in an existing secondary forest within PDD, Plot 1 proposes a ‘Campus- in-a-Park’ identity, in which academic blocks are organised as a series of buildings centred around a 1.7-hectare forest courtyard that becomes an accessible community park, ensuring that learning, interaction, recreation and rejuvenation come together. Plot 2 directly faces the waterfront and Coney Island with its coastal forests, grasslands, mangroves and woodlands, allowing biodiversity to thrive. A much-needed green lung for Punggol—one of Singapore’s densest towns—the park is a stepping stone for wildlife making its way from the Punggol Waterway to Coney Island and beyond, and an ecological corridor is designed to link Plot 1 to Plot 2.
SIT has conducted various community outreach programmes since 2017 to create a borderless campus, without gates and fences, that facilitates the free movement of people and community interaction. As the public may roam
freely on the lower levels, other students in the Punggol New Town or anyone seeking a conducive studying space may make use of publicly accessible areas. The design capitalises on the site’s undulating terrain to create two public ground levels separating vehicles from pedestrians for a car-light campus, therefore promoting the use of public transport and bicycles. The park is interspersed by public thoroughfares that are breezy and well shaded by the blocks above, and the lush greenery is extended vertically through communal planters, green walls, sky terraces and roof gardens in both plots.
As part of the district’s Collaboration Loop interconnecting SIT’s Plot 1 and JTC’s Business Parks to encourage exchange between industry partners and students, Canopy Walk link bridges, combined with informal study and social pods overlooking the treetops, provide mid-level, sheltered connectivity between blocks. They are expressed by corrugated metal cladding and broad horizontal overhangs for shade, natural ventilation and rain protection, which recall vernacular rubber factories, thereby hinting at the site’s history as a former rubber plantation. Suen said, “Being co-located with the industrialists within PDD creates a platform to facilitate closer collaboration between the industry and academia for innovation to take place. Consolidation of the campus allows for shorter travelling times between the collaborators, reducing the carbon footprint of their travel. Being adjacent to the Punggol New Town also offers a shorter commute to work, study and play. SIT becomes part of the solution to decentralise the city centre to reduce commuting, and a greater identity can be built around new towns.”
1 The Joyce Centre communicates the principles of engineering by transparently demonstrating them 2 Rendering of the Heritage Trail in the Community Park in SIT’s Plot 1
FUTURARC 21
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