Aras Burak designs logo and website for SenemZen Yoga. http://www.senemzen.com
liveplasma.com
LivePlasma is a tool that visualizes the similarities and relationships between music artists' styles. Similar bands or bands sharing a member, collaborators are linked with a line. The size of the circle around an artist's name reflects his impact. Simple as that. Such a simple visualization concept whose mechanics stand the test of time (the website is around for almost a decade, but it went through some visual and technical facelifts)
On the other hand, the database under its hood has several problems. It is updated by a single source, probably an editor - if it ever gets updated that is. It doesn't allow visitors to add their comments, add new artists or update the links with their votes. The relationships are not quantifiable in nature, and in the absence of user input that reflects public opinion, it is impossible to come up with a database that updates itself automatically.
It is such a great tool to explore new music. It also allows the user to see a complete landscape of how several similar artists' music create just like a discography. So you can wander around starting from your favorite band and explore many new bands whose names you've never heard of. Similarly, you can locate a band you like in other bands' map and try to figure out how they are connected.
Great concept for structuring and visualizing information, above standard visual quality, poor technical execution.
Mehmet Tolgay / Reading Office
Information Architecture
Everyday, we find ourselves exposed to a huge amount of information. In the limited time we have, we have to understand, analyze and synthesize this pile of information and communicate our findings. It is becoming more and more important to be able to communicate information with methods that are easier to understand, that enable second and third parties to notice new interesting results, that enable them to arrive their own conclusions. Graphics can play a crucial role in depicting, organizing and communicating information.
Through this blog, I will share some important books to read, links to visit/follow, good and some bad examples of infographics, and anything that relates to information architecture.
Mehmet Tolgay / Reading Office
Through this blog, I will share some important books to read, links to visit/follow, good and some bad examples of infographics, and anything that relates to information architecture.
Mehmet Tolgay / Reading Office
The political background of a huge transformational project for a mega-city
The book is tells the story of the construction of New York subway network. It begins by describing New York at the wake of 20th century, a booming city, the world's financial and commercial center in the making. Not surprisingly it was attracting immigrants form all over the world and its population was growing at a head spinning rate; but as an island surrounded by large bodies of water, the city failed to expand beyond its natural limits. Population density which grew at an alarming rate was lying at the center of many problems including transportation, health and social unrest.
The Dual System was proposed as a solution to all those problems. It was a huge project that would cost $366 million, $22 billion in today's terms. It aimed to expand very limited transportation system by building lines that connect Manhattan with Bronx, Brooklyn, Staten Island and Queens and work in tandem with housing projects to disperse extremely dense New York population over a larger area.
The book is full of lessons about how to realize such a huge transformation project: How to get the public support? How to coordinate several organizations? How to ensure governmental support? How to bring the pieces of such a huge project together? How to find necessary funds?
The project itself, albeit extremely successful at its time, may not be the answer the mega-cities are facing today. But the way the project was realized is still a case study worthy of close examination.
Mehmet Tolgay / Reading Office
Mehmet Tolgay / Reading Office
Building Office TV is on Youtube Channels
http://www.youtube.com/buildingofficetv
lectures, interviews, travel, construction sites, debate videos are our interest.
also you can get the latest news for Building Office TV from its official Twitter page
http://www.twitter.com/botelevision
The Accumulating Edge
Our cities and buildings are nothing but an accumulation of different elements built or brought in different times in the past.The edge of River Thames accomodates the London Eye next to the Parliament, the Louvre Museum has the glass pyramid in its courtyard and Eiffel Tower is the icon of Paris, although the city is famous for having Haussmannian buildings.
The accumulation is unexpected, it can not be foreseen by one single designer. It can be defined by the user of its edge or can even be expanded by another architect's contribution.
In order to let accumulation happen the presence of an edge is crucial. Instead of the tradition of the architect trying to control everything and drawing arrows of circulation, dictating the use of the spaces very clearly, the role of the architect can be dealing with this edge.
On the scale of a house, it is never used the way the architect projects his vision by collages or selects the post-construction photos in order to explain the project in a publication. What happens in the post-construction phase seems to be not in the interest of the architect. Unfortunately great things happen in terrible buildings and terrible things happen in great buildings most of the time.
In an architecture magazine or architect’s publication; we never see a shirt thrown on the chair, a glass left on the table, while the whole experience of architecture is very much affected by these.
The architect’s role must be influencing the accumulation in both urban and house scale.
Designer has to think about the connections with the adjacent spaces, the amount of light, materials, temperature and comfort of the space. He should not give up his idea of the use of the space but yet, he should respect the decissions of the users themselves. Most of the failing architectural products in the history are the dictating attempts.
The tension of trying to find a balance; the game between the designer’s idea against the user’s desire of using the space is one of the most interesting challenges of the profession.
This tension forms the accumulation on the edge that is defined by the architect. Although the result, the accumulation can not be pictured by the architect, it is not unpredictable. A lot of contemporary designs show no respect to the knowledge and input of its user. The discoveries of the new architecture can be about widening the knowledge of how space is occupied at which conditions almost accidentally, and let great things happen in great buildings too.
Istanbul=Sisli 2009
We will be working on the guide for Building Office Istanbul,
about Sisli in July, August and September 2009.
This will be the fourth year of the project.
The book will be a presentation of 5 project from north to south placed around the Sisli Strip and it will be about starting a fight against the consumption - migration strategies of the city planners, shopping mall dominated Istanbul and the heritage/so called silhouette problem of Istanbul.
about Sisli in July, August and September 2009.
This will be the fourth year of the project.
The book will be a presentation of 5 project from north to south placed around the Sisli Strip and it will be about starting a fight against the consumption - migration strategies of the city planners, shopping mall dominated Istanbul and the heritage/so called silhouette problem of Istanbul.
The Shopping Factory
17th November 2005, Tokyo The department store in Shibuya, Seibu is probably one of the most interesting buildings I have ever seen in my life. This department store literally had been growing since 1970s. Connections are not only stuck to the ground level, tunnels and bridges are built underground, in the air because of the need, without one and only architect's decission.
Seibu is impressive because it's a collective work's result. The complexity is very inspiring for the future of architecture proffesion. In the age of easyness and boredom, this one building should be analyzed with every single aspect of it. How can one department store stay alive for 40 years at the heart of Tokyo? Is it only because the owners are rich enough to keep it open or is there also the contribution of this perfectly saturated complexity?Every layer of the building has special spatial qualities and vertically Seibu works in a very interesting/different way in comparison to any European department store.
First of all, this building is a complete surprise. From a distance, all you can see is a repeating window pattern, gray, cold concrete facade. Some people from the streets are sitting behind those windows, looking like they have a lack of interest in shopping. They are sometimes sleeping, sometimes reading newspapers at the fifth floor. The whole department store is made out of two elements: the outer cold skin with seats, stairs and paths and inside warm core, the stores. When you spend a few days inside and around this building, you start to realize that, this outer cold facade with paths, stairs and bridges are being used as streets.
Ok, we have heard the streets on the vertical two hundred and seventy three times from many architects since 1950's. But actually this is one of the very few examples of vertically used streets and personally I am not surprised at all that this thing is happening in a shopping mall.
Circulation is provided in two different ways in this two sections. The cold section has staircases and bridges, the warm part has escalators and lifts. Now, what is inspiring here is, you get a chance to eliminate some of the floors without paralizing the circulations from down to top which gives the user to have a chance to use the mall as a 24 hours open public building even if it is not used right now like that, for any future complex organisations this could be used. The escalators inside the stores are not imposing the user shopping. When you are taken from downstairs, you find the next escalator next to you as you arrive the floor. These honest escalators saves a man's life when he wants to go to the restaurant at the eight floor, he gets the chance to cancel a unnecesary one minute walk through bras section.
There are Seibu A, Seibu B buildings and Loft, Movida buildings in Seibu Complex. Movida is still being vertically extended. Seibu A is a female, Seibu B is male building. Loft is where you can find stylish stationary, furnitures and some clothes. Movida is the newest building added to Seibu, not surprisingly instead of sexes and needs defining the floors, Movida is divided in Gucci, Prada, Armani floors. The sequence of Seibu Complex includes history, it has a timeline of our shopping habits, how they have evolved. History doesn't mean only classical elements in architecture, organisational history; the evolution gives a clear image of the last fifty years of shopping.
Women are still the shopping masters, but men are joining today more equally to shopping world. To get this result, I have analyzed the number of toilets and who they belong to in the building. The female building, Seibu A has 7 female and 3 male toilets. It's not surprising to see men toilets on the restaurant floors only. The male building has an equal share although the content is dedicated to male users. 5 male and 5 female toilets. Loft, the cool bit is still 4 female and 3 male toilets, probably considering how much time women can spend in the toilet looking at the mirror they get one extra toilet. A section of Loft is dedicated to carpark, when the subject is travelling with car, noone would ask why one of the Loft floors have 2 male toilets. the only place male users are welcomed looks like the carpark and restaurants. Things start to be more equal in the newest section, Movida, the designer stuff. 3 male and 4 female toilets are put in Movida.
The female building is next to the Shibuya square, where the public transport connection is closest, probably because female users are more likely to use public transport, the male buildings and carpark is pushed inwards.
Roof also has story, I would name the only not working bit of Seibu as the roof, the ninth floor. There is only a pet shop there and some seats. They have even placed some speakers to play music to the roof, it is the only place you can get most of the daylight, there are some trees, a big chimni, a big Seibu sign and services for the building on the roof. Where there is no shopping activity, public quality is lost.
Shopping is probably not about buying stuff, shopping is more about seeing, touching and trying new season bags, shirts and shoes. Shopping is the definition of public activity when your status is defined by the size of your plasma screen and horsepower of your car's engine. We mustn't forget that people no longer shop for a need, they need to shop and The Shopping Factory with a big chimni works best when you are swallowed and lost inside sliding down the escalators feeling happy like a kid in the playground...
Marble, Steel and Glass...
Someone has to say this loud that whenever an architect's phone rings, most of the time, the other side of the phone wouldn't be really seeking for help to solve a spatial/architectural problem. That's probably the shame of the profession which is normally not talked much and ignored both by the architect and the client.
The need for architecture could be easyly explained to an even five year old kid as a need very similar to our need for dressing starting from the time we are born. So it's not a as complex subject as our society thinks it is. Every single person, the client has some kind of capacity to solve their own architectural problems with their own ideas. Anyone can be an architect and at the same time everyone should be an architect. Everyone in our cities has to be an architect in some sense to prevent our built environments to become prison cells for modest lives. What is meant by being architect is, being aware of the power of architecture. Although to hear the term as "the power of architecture" is very pleasing for the architect, architect has to always remember that in most of the cases he/she is not holding the strings of that power. Power is money, power is politics and only the representation of that money, luxury or political power is allowing the architect to be "creative" in most cases.
Architects are enjoying to be placed in this "creative" level which is about competitions, magazines and being celebrity. So what should the word architecture mean is different than what architects are interested in. The similarities between the architect and architect-ure words shouldn't mistaken us. What architect does is about ego and its product is almost part of the show business.
Some offices are putting their hands in dirt and they end up defining the amount of their production with metresquares and number of buildings. When the number of buildings they build or the metresquares they design starts to be proof of their success almost like the number of people Superman saves in a regular day. The mentality of being Superman and helping a lot of people in their architectural problems is not really a healthy way of doing architecture at all. There are many proofs of this in our cities especially in business districts.
There is a certain slowness and the rush of architectural design process at the same time which has to be understood by architecture teams. This slowness shouldn't allow the architect to walk around telling how many squaremeters he has built. Simply because this kind of statics could only be the concern of construction companies. Thinking a single human being is only almost two meters tall and not even one meter wide, its a very brave and bold statement when offices like Foster and SOM talk about how many countries, how many buildings they work in. These offices would defend themselves saying they are formed by hundreds of employees but the reality is there is a miss of concentration on most of their projects which makes almost all of their projects lacking the undestanding of the context.
One of the areas which screams to be highlighted is Canary Wharf. Both SOM and Foster has projects in Canary Wharf. There are some other very similar offices getting involved in this kind of projects. The homogenity of these places always surprizes me. People dressing almost same, with a loyal to the boring monochromity and seriousness for not good enough reasons.
There is definetly the feeling of an all above power in control in Canary Wharf. Even the public square, where people are meant to take a breath is surrounded by the digital exchange rate marquees. There is an Asian city feeling in the Canary Wharf station which is not honest enough to make the inhabitant believe the scales are sized up because of the density. There is too much luxuary surrounding Canary Wharf which makes me feel suspicious about whether this place is built just to have a place similar to New York or is built because there was a need for a business district in London like this.
Organisation of the city London provides its habitants a real luxuary in the sense of space. Almost everyone has a garden in suburbs, the houses are generously bigger than most of the european cities' houses comparing to the Paris for example. The ceilings are higher, there is always squares with a lot of trees in central London. This density of London, the DNA of it is kind of ignored in Canary Wharf to achieve a model of dense city as it is seen in USA.
Canary Wharf is about a luxury that most of the workers of it are and will not be able to reach even if they work all of their lives in the same company to a certain lifestyle. It's a place where the people with power shows but doesn't let the others touch.
How this power is translated into architecture is, the client contacts with the architect with similar passions and lifestyles to themselves and the corparate architecture office solves the problem with a seriousness which ignores the humanity, crashes the souls and makes the environment, spatial qualities fail in many ways. As the seriousness of the business world is already enough for anyone, spaces representing this almost like they are designed by the bosses of these companies puts their architects in a place where the concerns of architecture are no longer important, and the profesion is ready to be declared as dead.
Architects has always been the translators between the man with power and the man without power. While the nature of architecture has nothing to do with power is only a need.
Philosophy of the architect is extremely important although many wouldn't even care to have one while they are in the practice. Architect shouldn't be walking around looking for a job without having a personal decipline for approaching to architectural production. Otherwise the client dangerously uses the architect as a regulation must, as an engineer to create prisons of shiny marble, steel and glass...
Canary Wharf development is divided from the city by being built on a piece seperated land surrounded by water. Which reminds the castle age cities, the castles surrounded by water. Only a thin train line reaches into the 10th level of the forest of skyscrapers with a taste of science fiction movies. As you try to walk in, you push probably the heaviest door you have ever seen in your life hardly and walk in. Floors are shiny marbles, handrails are metal and everythingelse is glass. The only British invention in architecture, power of high tech can be felt everywhere in a mutated form. Power is unquestionable everywhere. Advertisements inviting you to the Far East for a holiday, estate agencies with BMW Mini Cooper cars selling an image... Super healthy exotic food stores with Italian, French names which has nothing to do with the atmosphere of the business district... The crude seatings for the public which are not comfortable at all and overscaled for human body.
Architectural design, here, is not much different than stage design in the theatres. Its driven by not the architect, design process is too much controlled by the raw fantasies of the client. Architect has to place him/herself to a place where he/she can suggest new solutions to traditional problems. Today, to do this, architect has to be also interested in non-architectural world. Isolated architect only interested in forms or marble, steel and glass loses the ability to communicate to the inhabitant through architecture, which is a real shame.
Unfortunetly the fact is workplaces are not meant to be places to have fun. They shouldn't be specific. Company owners looks for big open floorplans, no distraction to get most advantage from their employees.
Projects like Museum Plaza in Louisville USA try to suggest new organizations which are interesting, yet not enoughly designed in human scale and for it's comfort. When we hear an office like OMA, now REX with Joshua-Prince Ramus leading the team saying they didn't touch the developers tower visions - probably because they couldn't touch them - and rearrange them in order by joining with a modern art gallery floor in the middle as a public space in the air, gives me a feeling that even leading radical offices in architecture are preparing to raise their white flags against the developers. We are close to a point because the men with power knows exactly what they need, architects have no chance to change specific programmes anymore like the business districts.
Canary Wharf is dangerous because the inhabitants of it are almost in a hypnotized stance so that they are not feeling uncomfortable enough to hate the environments they are in. Architecture is a architect - client - user tripod which can stand up on any condition even if the floor is not a straight plane and losing the power of two legs means the system is collapsed. Client is over equipped with power which should make architect and the user worried about the spaces created through the architectural production process.
The need for architecture could be easyly explained to an even five year old kid as a need very similar to our need for dressing starting from the time we are born. So it's not a as complex subject as our society thinks it is. Every single person, the client has some kind of capacity to solve their own architectural problems with their own ideas. Anyone can be an architect and at the same time everyone should be an architect. Everyone in our cities has to be an architect in some sense to prevent our built environments to become prison cells for modest lives. What is meant by being architect is, being aware of the power of architecture. Although to hear the term as "the power of architecture" is very pleasing for the architect, architect has to always remember that in most of the cases he/she is not holding the strings of that power. Power is money, power is politics and only the representation of that money, luxury or political power is allowing the architect to be "creative" in most cases.
Architects are enjoying to be placed in this "creative" level which is about competitions, magazines and being celebrity. So what should the word architecture mean is different than what architects are interested in. The similarities between the architect and architect-ure words shouldn't mistaken us. What architect does is about ego and its product is almost part of the show business.
Some offices are putting their hands in dirt and they end up defining the amount of their production with metresquares and number of buildings. When the number of buildings they build or the metresquares they design starts to be proof of their success almost like the number of people Superman saves in a regular day. The mentality of being Superman and helping a lot of people in their architectural problems is not really a healthy way of doing architecture at all. There are many proofs of this in our cities especially in business districts.
There is a certain slowness and the rush of architectural design process at the same time which has to be understood by architecture teams. This slowness shouldn't allow the architect to walk around telling how many squaremeters he has built. Simply because this kind of statics could only be the concern of construction companies. Thinking a single human being is only almost two meters tall and not even one meter wide, its a very brave and bold statement when offices like Foster and SOM talk about how many countries, how many buildings they work in. These offices would defend themselves saying they are formed by hundreds of employees but the reality is there is a miss of concentration on most of their projects which makes almost all of their projects lacking the undestanding of the context.
One of the areas which screams to be highlighted is Canary Wharf. Both SOM and Foster has projects in Canary Wharf. There are some other very similar offices getting involved in this kind of projects. The homogenity of these places always surprizes me. People dressing almost same, with a loyal to the boring monochromity and seriousness for not good enough reasons.
There is definetly the feeling of an all above power in control in Canary Wharf. Even the public square, where people are meant to take a breath is surrounded by the digital exchange rate marquees. There is an Asian city feeling in the Canary Wharf station which is not honest enough to make the inhabitant believe the scales are sized up because of the density. There is too much luxuary surrounding Canary Wharf which makes me feel suspicious about whether this place is built just to have a place similar to New York or is built because there was a need for a business district in London like this.
Organisation of the city London provides its habitants a real luxuary in the sense of space. Almost everyone has a garden in suburbs, the houses are generously bigger than most of the european cities' houses comparing to the Paris for example. The ceilings are higher, there is always squares with a lot of trees in central London. This density of London, the DNA of it is kind of ignored in Canary Wharf to achieve a model of dense city as it is seen in USA.
Canary Wharf is about a luxury that most of the workers of it are and will not be able to reach even if they work all of their lives in the same company to a certain lifestyle. It's a place where the people with power shows but doesn't let the others touch.
How this power is translated into architecture is, the client contacts with the architect with similar passions and lifestyles to themselves and the corparate architecture office solves the problem with a seriousness which ignores the humanity, crashes the souls and makes the environment, spatial qualities fail in many ways. As the seriousness of the business world is already enough for anyone, spaces representing this almost like they are designed by the bosses of these companies puts their architects in a place where the concerns of architecture are no longer important, and the profesion is ready to be declared as dead.
Architects has always been the translators between the man with power and the man without power. While the nature of architecture has nothing to do with power is only a need.
Philosophy of the architect is extremely important although many wouldn't even care to have one while they are in the practice. Architect shouldn't be walking around looking for a job without having a personal decipline for approaching to architectural production. Otherwise the client dangerously uses the architect as a regulation must, as an engineer to create prisons of shiny marble, steel and glass...
Canary Wharf development is divided from the city by being built on a piece seperated land surrounded by water. Which reminds the castle age cities, the castles surrounded by water. Only a thin train line reaches into the 10th level of the forest of skyscrapers with a taste of science fiction movies. As you try to walk in, you push probably the heaviest door you have ever seen in your life hardly and walk in. Floors are shiny marbles, handrails are metal and everythingelse is glass. The only British invention in architecture, power of high tech can be felt everywhere in a mutated form. Power is unquestionable everywhere. Advertisements inviting you to the Far East for a holiday, estate agencies with BMW Mini Cooper cars selling an image... Super healthy exotic food stores with Italian, French names which has nothing to do with the atmosphere of the business district... The crude seatings for the public which are not comfortable at all and overscaled for human body.
Architectural design, here, is not much different than stage design in the theatres. Its driven by not the architect, design process is too much controlled by the raw fantasies of the client. Architect has to place him/herself to a place where he/she can suggest new solutions to traditional problems. Today, to do this, architect has to be also interested in non-architectural world. Isolated architect only interested in forms or marble, steel and glass loses the ability to communicate to the inhabitant through architecture, which is a real shame.
Unfortunetly the fact is workplaces are not meant to be places to have fun. They shouldn't be specific. Company owners looks for big open floorplans, no distraction to get most advantage from their employees.
Projects like Museum Plaza in Louisville USA try to suggest new organizations which are interesting, yet not enoughly designed in human scale and for it's comfort. When we hear an office like OMA, now REX with Joshua-Prince Ramus leading the team saying they didn't touch the developers tower visions - probably because they couldn't touch them - and rearrange them in order by joining with a modern art gallery floor in the middle as a public space in the air, gives me a feeling that even leading radical offices in architecture are preparing to raise their white flags against the developers. We are close to a point because the men with power knows exactly what they need, architects have no chance to change specific programmes anymore like the business districts.
Canary Wharf is dangerous because the inhabitants of it are almost in a hypnotized stance so that they are not feeling uncomfortable enough to hate the environments they are in. Architecture is a architect - client - user tripod which can stand up on any condition even if the floor is not a straight plane and losing the power of two legs means the system is collapsed. Client is over equipped with power which should make architect and the user worried about the spaces created through the architectural production process.
Marina Promena-dead
15th March 2005, Singapore Half of the Marina Bay is manmade like most of the Singapore Island. There is a lower-manhattan size residential development planned on the manmade lands on the east side of Marina Bay. The existing business district is on west side of the Marina. The north is used more as a cultural, leisure area. West and south sides are completely empty but we know that there is going to be a lot of houses there and they won't be cheap.
First question was, how do you build a city from a scratch? or do/can you build cities from scratch? Did Brazil, Ankara work?
Who doesn't love Manhattan? There was no doubt in my mind before I go to Singapore to see the site, the developers had already proposed a tropical-Manhattan life for this empty site. When we first watch the advertising videos, we were not surprised at all. There was one Gehry style culture center, a Libeskind like museum placed on two focal points pointed out by the developers. Rest of it was a singapore style scaled manhattan grid with lots of condos and lots of happy people.
Scale is a problem in Singapore. Some roads are too wide, some are too narrow while the island itself is very small. I was interested in the completion of the circulation circle around the bay. Ok we know there is hotels on south, residential on east, culture on north west, business on west side. But you have a 300m gap between residential and culture on north west. On the north east you have a dead promenade area which is only used in Chinese new year celebrations by thousands of people.
I shaped my brief over this problem, how do you fill in 300m gap in this area of massive pavements, wide roads and huge buildings. The best solution would be to do what any cook does before cooking, slice the big pieces into little pieces. Having studied generation of space in sections in the first two terms in the school, I decided to put a free spending time area for the workers who needs a shade, joggers, fishmans, tourists and lovers just on the edge of the bay. Five types of users would use the site for different purposes. Tourist would like to take the best photo and be proud to be in Singapore, someone who needs a shade would just like to relax and take a nap for some time, joggers would like to have as less obstacles as they can, fishman would love to just relax and don't talk to anyone except their old fellows, and lovers would just like to be alone.
The last thing you would like to do as an architect on a promena-dead like this is dictating spaces for these five type of users. There should be a balance of flexibility for the five type of users to spend time without disturbing each other at the same time, while having the quality of public park, relaxing without paying any money.
First question was, how do you build a city from a scratch? or do/can you build cities from scratch? Did Brazil, Ankara work?
Who doesn't love Manhattan? There was no doubt in my mind before I go to Singapore to see the site, the developers had already proposed a tropical-Manhattan life for this empty site. When we first watch the advertising videos, we were not surprised at all. There was one Gehry style culture center, a Libeskind like museum placed on two focal points pointed out by the developers. Rest of it was a singapore style scaled manhattan grid with lots of condos and lots of happy people.
Scale is a problem in Singapore. Some roads are too wide, some are too narrow while the island itself is very small. I was interested in the completion of the circulation circle around the bay. Ok we know there is hotels on south, residential on east, culture on north west, business on west side. But you have a 300m gap between residential and culture on north west. On the north east you have a dead promenade area which is only used in Chinese new year celebrations by thousands of people.
I shaped my brief over this problem, how do you fill in 300m gap in this area of massive pavements, wide roads and huge buildings. The best solution would be to do what any cook does before cooking, slice the big pieces into little pieces. Having studied generation of space in sections in the first two terms in the school, I decided to put a free spending time area for the workers who needs a shade, joggers, fishmans, tourists and lovers just on the edge of the bay. Five types of users would use the site for different purposes. Tourist would like to take the best photo and be proud to be in Singapore, someone who needs a shade would just like to relax and take a nap for some time, joggers would like to have as less obstacles as they can, fishman would love to just relax and don't talk to anyone except their old fellows, and lovers would just like to be alone.
The last thing you would like to do as an architect on a promena-dead like this is dictating spaces for these five type of users. There should be a balance of flexibility for the five type of users to spend time without disturbing each other at the same time, while having the quality of public park, relaxing without paying any money.
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