DARKENED 
SPACES

The proposal, City of Darkness, critiques the over-conditioned environment of Singapore, from the excessive use of artificial lighting to air-conditioning. The intense light condition perhaps signifies a desire to monitor the population, associating light with surveillance and the dark with unseen, anti-social activities. The project hope to subtly inverts these assumptions, celebrating the dark by situating itself in one of the darkest Singapore island, Pulau Ubin, located north-east of the main island. It is where stars can be seen, and darkness can be felt.

 

The project proposes a night-time city where majority works at night and sleeps in the day, exploring architecture of the night. The city houses creative ‘‘night owls’’ (eg.artists, writers, film makers). The design proposal focuses on the first building of the city, the house of the mayor (a fictional artist-in-power who oversees the island). A place of work and display for architecture and art of the dark. Taking darkness as a material, revealing and concealing the architecture during the course of the night. The language and material palette of the architecture is based on the research of dark adaptation of our eyes. Boundaries of the architecture are defined by light and darkness instead of the structures. The use of subtle and carefully controlled lighting explores how fundamental activities can potentially function with little or no lights. The proposal is explored and tested mainly through the making of physical models with photography and film techniques.