A rush of sweeping moves I s transforming Singapore into a city I n a garden to allow residents to find repose.
A rush of sweeping moves is transforming Singapore into a city in a garden to allow residents to find repose.
On this cool morning in Rosalind Tan’s garden along Bukit Timah’s Watten Heights, she is delighted to catch sight of a rare species of butterfly, a fitting visitor to this abundant garden of more than 500 thriving plants. Ever so often, Tan blends the leaves from her moringa tree – a “miracle plant”, she calls it – into a healthful blend. Says Tan, who is also chief gardener at Khoo Teck Puat Hospital (KTPH): “I give carbon dioxide to the plants, and they give me oxygen. This pattern seems to suit my lifestyle.”
A new age of greening the city might make such renewing experiences more accessible in Singapore. Up until the last five years, the country has been sprinting down the road of “quantity”, greening the city as quickly as possible, without much attention to nature’s interactive, visual and therapeutic dimensions. Now, a different vision has emerged: designing quality living environments that tap nature’s potential to enhance well-being. Singapore is transitioning from a Garden City into a City in a Garden. Damien Tang, president of the International Federation of Landscape Architects Asia Pacific, explains the difference. “In the past, we built the city first, then we started to plant. Now it’s about letting our city emerge out of nature, and out of a garden. We want to make sure our environment and social infrastructure allows people to be healthy.”
With cities such as San Francisco and Portland in the US, Oslo in Norway and Wellington in New Zealand gravitating towards biophilic design – simply, the idea that a city emerges out of nature, and not the other way around – Singapore, an island-city with limited land space, is placing itself ahead of the game.
At the last official tally in 2007 by the National Parks Board (NParks), 47 per cent of Singapore was reportedly covered in greenery. By 2030, the country plans to create 0.8ha of green park space for every 1,000 persons; greenery in high-rise buildings is also set to increase to 50ha.
A SOCIAL GLUE
For Franklin Po, principal of landscape architecture practice Tierra Design, Singapore’s City in a Garden movement gives impetus to landscape architects here to develop projects with deeper connections to the environment. Designing the city as a landscape, where people have an ongoing relationship with nature, is a key to making the city liveable. “Singapore is aspiring to become one of those great cities in Asia that speak about liveability,” says Po, winner of last year’s President’s Design Award. “It’s the environment that you have to start with.” His firm most recently won the bid to design the upcoming Rail Corridor with a master plan titled “Lines of Life”, featuring community-centric lifestyle spaces and plans to enhance the corridor’s natural vegetation.
Singaporeans have been thirsting for more involvement with the natural environment. You might have heard of young professionals abandoning cushy corporate jobs to reconnect with the soil through urban farming, or the rising voices of environmental groups, like the Singapore Nature Society, lobbying for the protection of Singapore’s green corridors.
Community gardens have also been on the rise. NParks’ Community in Bloom programme has spawned over 1,000 community gardens since 2005. “We have seen many benefits in community gardening, including the promotion of a healthier lifestyle, greater personal well-being, the opportunity to make more friends and increased bonding in the community,” says Ng Cheow Kheng, NParks’ director of horticulture and community gardening. “Community gardeners who grow edible fruits and vegetables often share their harvest with their neighbours at bazaars and get-together culinary sessions.”
When Alexius Yeo decided to open up his backyard garden two years ago, he distributed pamphlets around his neighbourhood inviting people for a potluck and to learn about starting their own edible gardens. “My neighbourhood didn’t quite respond, but the rest of Singapore did,” says Yeo with a chuckle. His informal monthly sessions sometimes see groups of up to 50 people from diverse backgrounds. The group bands around his backyard, where they relish taking a bite of Indian borage or red hibiscus, while learning anything from stem cuttings to creating potted landscapes.
“I see my garden as a social gathering place,” says Yeo, who adds that he is thrilled every time he sees new connections made among his growing community. “The older people get inspired by the younger energy. The younger participants get excited listening to older people talk about plants.” Such interest can perhaps explain why recent award-winning developments, from condominiums like The Interlace, which won World Building of the Year at last year’s World Architecture Festival, to a new generation of public flats at Skyterrace@Dawson, feature lush vegetation and seamlessly integrated communal gardens.
NATURAL POTENTIAL
Successful examples of visionary integrated landscaping within projects like Gardens by the Bay and KTPH have also demonstrated the way forward. Not only do the 14 gardens at KTPH, which are located on different levels of the complex, provide a calming view for patients, they help to lower the indoor temperature of the facilities directly underneath them by at least 1 deg C. Tan explains her approach to creating a healing landscape at KTPH: “The way we do gardening here is not prim and proper. It’s wild and tropical. A healing environment is sight, sound and scent: the sight of beautiful butterflies, sound of birds chirping. It’s an eco-system.”
And in dense urban Singapore, such innovative approaches could revitalise the artificial urbanscape and create more life-filled spaces. “Biodiversity can be brought back to the building level, where residents get to see birds flying to the rooftop gardens. Such experiences can begin to infuse every layer, every facade and surface of the urban fabric,” says Tang. “As the city gets denser, people try to find places for refuge.”
Perhaps one of the most exciting projects exploring such an integrated approach is upcoming luxury mixed development Marina One. Once completed next year, it will be home to the largest green sanctuary within the CBD. Its central meeting point, the Green Heart, features terraced gardens, a 13m waterfall and biodiversity equivalent to five Olympic-sized swimming pools. Greenery here provides tangible benefits: the plants reduce noise and catch dust; green roofs improve air circulation; while central gardens ensure a comfortable microclimate. The project’s Ingenhoven Architects says creating such an compact, efficient and intelligent building is inevitable for the future of rapidly growing megacities.
LOOKING AHEAD
If creating liveable environments is on the agenda, there’s one clear challenge for designers: addressing the needs of an ageing population. By 2030, Singapore’s elderly population is projected to hit 19 per cent, up from 12.4 per cent in 2014. Therapeutic facilities involving nature, now mostly located in a small number of public institutions like KTPH and Alexandra Hospital, could hopefully become more commonplace.
Singapore’s design community has started to respond. Po’s firm is embarking on its own initiative to design a prototype facility tailored to the care of dementia patients. Other firms like Spark have recently proposed a new urban retirement home modelled on a vertical farm.
For Tan, her home garden might seem removed from high-technology or sophisticated urban regeneration. But positive energy has a way of finding itself into the wider world. “My garden gives me optimism. It enlivens my day,” she says. “The plants bloom for me and make me happy.”
“Singapore is aspiring to become one of those great cities in asia that speak about liveability. It’s the environment that you have to start with.” Landscape architect franklin po, winner of last year’s president’s design award.
