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The Bustling Theater

Part 1 Project 2009
Ke Yang Voon
National University of Singapore | Singapore
In process of enhancing the urban experience, my proposal illustrates the integration of lively bustling areas with a performing art center, (consisting of the main theater, back of house, studios and gathering spaces.)

The main setting of the Indian performing art centre echo the streetscape of Little India: groupings of activities at the adjacent sides have formed an internalized (spine) street in the center. Along with, it established a visual connection between the internal activities and the exterior. This space, responses to the compact urban built form with distinct programs. Rather than becoming a unified whole, it manifests as an accumulation of the various presumed activities.

The form of the building reflects the street quality, leading the users from one space to another. Enchanted by the immediate activities, one can take a leisure walk in the performance art center while experiencing the urban scape.

Ke Yang VOON



In this project, proportions and scale, texture and density of the existing urban fabric of Little India, the subject site, form the design palette from which the student assimilates and synthesizes these elements as a sum of parts into the design of a contemporary Indian Performance Art Centre.

Adaptation of contextual features such as back lanes, five-foot ways, shop house internal courtyards, are expressed within a central internal arcade. This central connective element within the building presents a street-like quality, through which the sense of the familiar becomes an important connection for its users to the architecture. Sensitive selection of facade materials and colours sits the performance centre respectfully within its context and contributes to the evolving urbanscape of Little India.

The strategy of employing the shop house bays to alternate enclosed programmatic spaces and circulatory space along the internal street within a compact urban site is to maximize both visual connection throughout the building and ground level porosity to reveal and celebrate a multiplicity of events from within and without. A richly textured marketplace quality akin the vibrant `bustle’ of Little India is achieved in this project.

Alvin Foo

Tutor(s)

2009
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