Shaun Huang

Your “Grandfather Space”
Adjective
1. A Singaporean term used to describe a sense of ownership or behaving however way one wants or feels.
“Why do you cross the road without looking at the cars, do you think this is your grandfather’s road?”
This project aimed to investigate and discover the ideal ‘rights’ to public space, and began with the observation that public spaces are sometimes designed without reflecting on the way people used it.
The primary methodology used was a mix of observation and documentation, mainly focused on the people present in the public space. The project also took international, historic examples of public spaces seriously. The project was ultimately split into three phases that looked at two different sites: The first investigation took place in a neighbourhood area where people make spaces “home-like” in public. Then, the second and third investigations took place in the interior and exterior of a shopping mall in central Singapore, and considered the constraints inherent in designing for commercial spaces.
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The “Rights” to sit in your neighbourhood
The first investigation will be located at a neighbourhood district as people will be less conservative. There will be more opportunities of capturing unscripted inhabitations of people making the public “home-like” for them.
Specifically, the first exploration aims to create an experience of homeliness and rights for the users inhabiting the space.





The “Rights” to reclaim The City
The second investigation will be located in the city district. This time other than understanding the “rights” of the people in the public space, I must also take into account of introducing an intervention that does not disrupt the commercial side of the space like the retail shops as the owners themselves paid rent and too have the “rights” to the space.
The second exploration aims to create an experience of freedom of using the public space in the buzzing city, at the same time incorporating an engaging shopping experience for the people and the owners.
Moving forward, much of the documentation of the people in the city may be domestic workers, however this project does not revolve designing for them but rather just studying the way they inhabit the city and ask why do we not inhabit it the same way? To clarify, this project is not targeted on any specific community in the city but rather the people of the city in general.









The “Rights” to the City within
The third investigation will be located inside city itself which in this case, inside Lucky Plaza itself. The idea being that malls with large atriums missed out on the opportunity for public inhabitations.
Specifically, the third exploration aims to create an experience of public inhabitations where the people and shops within the mall will have some form of connectivity and interaction. However, this phase will be rather speculated and conceptual.






