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Healing Strip

Part 2 Project 2009
Firus Faizal
 National University of Singapore | Singapore
In 50 years time, the projected Singapore population growth to 6.5 million inhabitants would exert its toll on our current resources. One of these resources that are critical to sustain our growth, is our requirement for more energy. Yet, as studies point out that we may have passed the world’s oil peak output, the paradigm shift of fossil fuel dependence to a renewable resource calls for a new exploration of possibilities to empower our nation.

To pursue this, we entertained harvesting energy from biological solutions that continually self-regenerate in the form of algae culturing to produce bio-fuel. We begin colonizing our unwanted dead urban spaces- our expressways as cultivation alga-culture grounds. Singapore's longest highway, the Pan-Island Expressway (PIE) provides us with limitless supply of CO2 that nourishes these microphytes, while we reap cleaner bio-fuel. This intervention has a theoretical potential to meet our energy demands, [equivalent to 2 Tuas power station’s fuel oil requirement] upon conversion of the algae cultures into bio-fuel. Thus, a series of nerve centres along the highway spine provides opportunistic programmatic functions and are connected to one other above the PIE expressway as alga-farmlands.

The first nerve centre, which is explored in this thesis, is intended as a research village to cross-breed native algae species into super alga-strains suitable for mass commercialization. Concurrently, the intervention is also designed to heal the reserve by means of stitching the currently cleaved Central Nature Reserve with Bukit Timah Nature Reserve together, to encourage animal crossings and floral dispersion.

This perseverance for greener energy spearheads our city’s metamorphosis from an industrial to an ecological one, simultaneously healing our environment.


This is a thesis that penetrates beyond the ordinary and discusses the extraordinary role of the architect through a frank excavation and contestation of the deficiencies of modern day dystopia. Maturely, Firus acknowledges the present limitations of Singapore’s capacity to support its projected boom in population and questions its terrifying wholesale dependence on fossil fuels. Cities have long depended upon fossil fuels to power the economy, but it is also true that renewables can offer an alternative empowerment. If so, how can we harness our natural capital that benefits both the environment and human beings concurrently? And how do we articulate these new technologies to a habitable paradigm?

Firus’s response was excellent from the outset. Starting with the cultivation of the detested green algae as promised energy resource, he balances the qualitative side of the project by quantifying numbers to breathe convincing believability in the scheme’s realism before pointing out a radical choice of site-the motorized highway. His choice of colonizing Singapore’s longest expressway to grow algae for biofuel, the Pan Island Expressway, proved to be a brilliant move; it converts a brownfield site to a productive urban farmland, it accesses to solar abundance without a need to clear forests and importantly, carbon dioxide gases released by the motor highway is sequestrated as the main microphytical growth requirement.

From this, he envisaged a selfless, healing vision when the old highway cleaves apart the island’s last natural heritage-the Central Nature Reserve. Sensitively designing the first nerve centre as a research village to recuperate the environmental violations done, the architectural response gradually nurse the severed reserve by allowing animal crossings to occur, allowing its wild inhabitants an undisrupted access to food, potential mates and continuity of their indigenous habitats.

Firus represents a rare breed of selfless architect who does more than the mere poetics of space by giving generously back to the environment and society, concurrently ameliorating the invisible wounds cutting through the urban fabric. He is brave or skilled enough to take on the challenge of technological postulation-leading to the crafting of a prototypical space-and make something beautiful that heals.

Tutor(s)
2009
The thesis driver begins with the need for additional energy to sustain a projected population increase of 6.5 million inhabitants on Singapore. Alga-culture to produce biofuel was chosen to harness the abundance of the tropical solar energy and a decentr
At the macro-level, out of the numerous nerve centres (algae collection-biofuel processing centres), the thesis focuses on the first nerve centre that takes on a research facility function to cross-breed a superstrain that could be mass-commercialized to
To allow cross-breeding of the alga strains, scientists need to map 70,000 unkwown tropical algae species, thereby encouraging the first incursions to understand our last natural heritage, the Central Nature Reserve. The mappings, in collaboration with Ra
Giving back selflessly to the natural environment, a purposeful stitching of the cleaved nature reserve through a series of bridges, allow animal crossings for unrestricted access to more food, potential mates and continuity of their habitats. The crossin
On the meso-scopic scale, the intervention investigates a prototypical
The vertical skinning of the intervention behaves as an algae nursery that allows easy access from behind the skin while the horizontal bridging surfaces are the main growing medium for the mass production of algae that would eventually sprawl throughout
The stimulation studies the optimal geometries suitable for growing algae by capturing the longest duration of sunlight possible (yellow surfaces) without self-shading (blue surfaces) while occupying the smallest footprint possible. Eventually the study
The vertical stimulation study is critical to hatch an understanding of the geometry that vertical walls need to adopt to ensure the alga-photosynthesis process is not impeded. The vertical wall forms the nurseries for newly cross-strained algae species t
Eventually, those studies are directly translated architecturally as performative surfaces. The horizontal stimulation study influences the bridging element while the vertical study informs the form of the vertical towers. The exposed skin system are livi
At the micro-level, the recovery strategy of the intervention is to recover the cleaved nature reserve as well as to recover natural daylighting. The bridging strip is porous and the skin tiling design is as seen to allow the optimal recuperation of dayli
This investigation is to ellicit the minimal amount of natural daylight required to safely illuminate the highway for high speed driving, yet maximized for bridging coverage for alga-cultivation and the passage of fauna crossings above. The study is done
The skin tiling geometry is probed. What tiling design deflects direct light and allows diffused light to enter the interiors, at the same time allowing the skin to host the algae plasma growth culture? The result is a triangular bi-concave tiling system.
The building prototype integrates the 3-step process of processing algae into biofuel as architectural devices that recovers daylighting and heat. The "Grow' and "Drying" process allows daylight to enter into the interiors by means of a sunshade/sunshelf
The skin system, behaves like "blooming algae", which is as a metaphor for the alga eutrophication process upon access to favourable growth conditions. The skin tilings literally bloom by expansion and contraction. The mechanism is an environmentally-resp
The intervention consists of 5 main towers where the 2 largest ones are the research facilities and the 3 remaining smaller towers are lodging for the hikers. An expedition into the great nature reserve is promoted for an immersive and educational experie
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