Category: Cities

A City for Nature

Singapore designs not just for its people, but its animals too.

Three months after its operation, Jary wears his designed casque with pride. PHOTO: DON WONG

With its long yellow beak topped with a prominent “helmet”, Jary looks just like any Great Pied Hornbill. This species is well known for its distinctive casque, which helps to broadcast the bird’s harsh staccato cackling that goes “Yak-yak-yak!”

Jary’s “casque”, however, does all of the above—and more. But only an eagle-eyed visitor at the Jurong Bird Park would notice the line of screws holding down what is actually a prosthetic on the hornbill’s beak. Last year, when the 22-year-old was diagnosed with cancer on his casque, the park’s veterinary team surgically cut out the affected area and installed this specially designed casque.

“Our first reaction was, ‘Wah! Why (is Jary) like that’,” recalls industrial designer Eason Chow who created Jary’s prosthetic as part of a team from the Keio-NUS CUTE (Connective Ubiquitous Technology for Embodiments) Centre, the NUS Smart Systems Institute and NUS Centre for Additive Manufacturing.

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Housing Under the Sea

One of the eight reef structures being lowered into the waters off Sisters’ Island Marine Park PHOTO: NATIONAL PARKS BOARD

Over the last five decades, Singapore has successfully built quality high-rise public housing that now houses over 80 percent of its resident population. But increasingly, it is not just people but also animals in the city-state that can proudly claim to live in a home designed for them.

From intelligent nests for hornbills to hotels for bees, the government has been creating structures to help different species thrive in an effort to strengthen Singapore’s biodiversity. One of its newest initiatives is the nation’s largest purpose-built reef within the waters of Sisters’ Islands Marine Park, located just south of the mainland. Five 11-metre and three 6-metre tall structures have been installed on what was previously relatively flat and bare seabed. Akin to three-storey terrace houses, they hope to eventually be home to some 1,000 square metres of reef substrate and other marine life. If successful, this pilot will pave the way for future restoration efforts in Singapore. Over the years, the city-state has lost some 60 percent of its reefs because of extensive development and reclamation over the years.

The government agency JTC first conceptualised this project in 2010 to support efforts in enhancing the city-state’s marine biodiversity, particularly in the face of climate change and increasing coastal developments. While it is better known for the planning and development of Singapore’s industrial infrastructure such as the petrochemical complex, Jurong Island, this was an opportunity for JTC to lend its engineering and design expertise to scale up previous efforts to restore the city-state’s coral reefs.

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In Singapore, Residents Create a Social Distancing Wayfinding Language With Tape

Dots. Lines. Crosses. Boxes. They have popped up all across Singapore over the past few weeks. Plastered over furniture, floors, and more, the city-state renowned for its cleanliness and order has become a maze of symbols, in order to defend its inhabitants from the COVID-19 pandemic.

This “mess” is indeed a series of messages. They tell citizens to stay apart from one another as the city battles to control the spread of the virus. Such makeshift signs started appearing right after the government introduced safe distancing measures on March 20, in order to limit the number of people gathering in a space and keep them at least 1-metre apart.

With just two-days notice before the measures turned into law, and no specific guide on how to implement them, local businesses and organizations quickly found their own solutions. While some printed custom signage to explain the measures, the most popular method has been to use adhesive tape to construct symbols, from crossing out seats to drawing queue lines and cordoning off areas.

➜ Read the full story in AIGA’s Eye on Design