CHALLENGES The Red River Island is an essential resource for the capital city of Hanoi. It supplies the capital with fresh foodstuff since there are nearly 200 agricultural households staying on the island. However, the fertility of the land today is strongly affected by the retention of the river’s alluvium due to hydroelectric dams. Additionally, […]
Read More… from Floating Community and Training Centre By the River | FAP 2023 Merit
CHALLENGES Nam Dinh is a province in the south of the Red River Delta with a coastline length of 72 kilometres. Most of the province is rural—85 per cent rural population—with 33 per cent of the province’s land area taken up by agriculture. The coastal area of Hai Hau district is vulnerable to extreme weather […]
Read More… from Connecting Separate Generations | FAP 2023 Merit
CHALLENGES Con Hen (also known as the Oasis of Mussels) is a gift of nature as well as a treasure left by previous generations—it is rich with cultural and culinary history. However, the area is increasingly exploited and neglected, losing community connections, and flooding has greatly affected people’s lives. ⠀ The government of Hue City […]
Read More… from Keeping Communities Afloat Over the Flood | FAP 2023 Merit
CHALLENGES The seaside community of Bajo in Maumere consists of people who have lived their entire lives side by side with the ocean, in simple stilted wooden houses, connected by a network of walkways and jetties. Over generations, the ocean has been a major source of the people’s food and income, with members of the […]
Read More… from Future-proofing an Oceanic Village | FAP 2023 Merit
CHALLENGES The regency of Mojokerto once held the capital seat of the Majapahit Empire, a powerful force that reigned over various parts of Southeast Asia from the 13th–16th century. Today, Mojokerto is known for its industrial areas. Integrated factory estates have been planned for further expansion in the coming years. Located an hour away from […]
CHALLENGES Massive landfills have been associated with rapid population growth in urban centres in many developing countries. They can rise to extraordinary heights with steep side-slopes, often surrounded by illegal low-income residential settlements or slums. As such, these landfills are often at risk of catastrophic failures that could lead to high fatality rates. ⠀ ⠀ […]
Read More… from A Hybrid Ecological ‘Reincarnation’ of a Landfill Community | FAP 2023 Merit
CHALLENGES A disastrous fire swept through Kuala Lumpur in 1881, destroying most wood-and-thatch structures. This led to a regulation that called for new buildings to be constructed out of brick and tiles, so the area of Brickfields, rich with clay pits parallel to the Klang River, was then established as a brick-making district. Its nearby […]
Over my nearly 20 years of living in Singapore, the city has changed almost beyond recognition. I moved here as a teenager, when Sentosa had a few ramshackle beach bars and Orchard Road had a huge green space where ION now sits. Of course, change is the only constant in Singapore and other Southeast Asian […]
Read More… from Pioneers of Tropical Living: Singapore’s ‘Middle-aged’ Condos
In the absence of formal conservation status for many of these residential developments, private citizens have taken on the challenge. One of the most comprehensive organisations is Docomomo, an online archive of modernist architecture with chapters in cities around the world operating independently. The Singapore chapter is one of the most prolific in Asia, with […]
Lalita, a 24-year-old woman, lies next to her newborn baby inside her ‘hut’, a structure made out of thin branches supporting a blue tarpaulin sheet. “The baby was born here yesterday,” she told me as I scanned the face of the baby and the mother, both looking dangerously underweight. Lalita is a migrant construction worker […]
Read More… from The Uneasy Relationship Between Architecture Practices and Labour
FuturArc Prize (FAP) 2022: Reinterpretation—one theme with the highest realisation potential in FAP’s 14-year run—asked students to reinterpret existing corporate/private/state-owned entities in Asia to transform them into civic/public spaces that give back to the community and are good, inviting, safe and sustainable. This challenge was set in the hope that the visions proposed could one […]
Read More… from What our jurors say about FuturArc Prize 2022 Entries
RAW focuses their practice on the process of building as much as on the products of architecture Practising architecture in a developing economy like Sri Lanka compels one to confront a number of interconnecting challenges with respect to the technological environment, labour skills and industrial organisation. Technologically, the building industry is fragmented into isolated socio-technical […]
Read More… from Imagining a Building Culture Revived on Architectural Robustness
