Idea 3

G193 Portfolio Development – Idea 3

Nur Syafiqa Bte Kasturi (108120) Design for Interactivity

Making the enclosed space (East Court 4) between E5 and W6 more interactive

- Main objective: to make the space interactive and a place where students can go to and release their stress

Spatial design & product design

I was inspired to make the enclosed pond between E5 and W6 a more interactive space after my facilitator of my smart architecture module gave my class an RJ question; to select an area in RP and how to make it a more interactive space. And thus, I decided to pick this space.

From the outside of the space

Inside of the space

Escalator above the space

Pictures taken

Above are the pictures that I took of the space. From my observation and site analysis, nobody goes to this space. The space is very dead. The only time that I notice the space being used is a year back, where a group of girls were there to celebrate someone’s birthday. Besides that, the only person that I observe using this space regularly is a cleaner, who regularly cleans the ponds. He cleans the ponds because of the falling leaves from the trees around the pond. Also, while I was doing my site analysis, the space is very humid. I was already perspiring within five minutes of entering the area. I suppose the space is very hot because it is located on ground level and it is surrounded by the school’s pods. Below is an illustration of how the space is located at.

Level 4

Level 1

From this illustration, air is only active at level 4 (lawn level). Thus, that is the reason why the space is very humid. Besides that, I also notice that there is one power plug attached to every benches in that space.

Based on the humidity issues of this space, I got inspired by the Grand Central Park located at New York City.

Above is the aerial view of the Grand Central Park. From this picture, it shows that the Grand Central Park is surrounded by trees. This explains why the environment of the park is very cooling.

With this, I interviewed a few of the RP students about what they feel about the space in RP.

Questions:

1. Do you know about the space infront of E5? (If don’t know, show image of the space)

2. Have you went into the named space?

3. What do you think about the space? Do you think that it’s okay or does it lacks anything? Can you elaborate more (if not satisfied with the answer)?

http://walkingtouradvisor.com/blog/wp-content/uploads/2010/07/Central_Park_aerial_v-1297.jpg

4. Why and for what purpose do you think RP build that space for?

5. What do you think the space can be improved on?

I interviewed 30 RP students. Most of them said that yes, they know about the space infront of E5 but they never went in.

“I didn’t went in because I thought we students can’t go in.”

“There’s a door?! I didn’t know that there’s a door!”

When being asked the third question, most of my interviewees said that’s very boring and dead.

“Nobody goes in there. It’s practically dead.”

“There’s nothing interesting inside there thus, it’s as good as invincible to the people walking pass by there.”

When being asked the fourth question, most of my interviewees said:

“Just as a decoration to RP.”

“For outdoor studies? Or if students feel like studying outdoors rather than indoors.”

When being asked the last question, most of my interviewees said to make the space more interactive to the students, make it more obvious and interesting so that students will make use of the space.

“Make the space more interactive to students.”

“Make the space into a place where students can relax and chill out there.”

Besides that, a few of my interviewees said about the humidity of the space.

“It’s very hot and humid inside the space. Put in air con.”

“Put more greenery inside the space so that the space is more cooling.”

From the answers that I get from my interviewees, I know that these are the factors to consider:

- Make the space stand out so that more people would get attracted to that place and therefore, use the space

- Make the space more interactive

- Make the space more cooling

I came out with a few ideas to follow up with the factors.

- Have a water fall

- Include more trees (inspired from Grand Central Park in New York City)

- Put fishes into the pond (allow students to interact with the fishes)

- Have a space to allow students to put their feet in the water (a sense of calm and tranquillity)

- At night, put more lightings on the floor, for way-finding purposes

- Have synthetic sounds of crickets at night

- More entrances to the space

Also, I went to Changi City Point. Below are the pictures that I took of a small interactive space within Changi City Point.

The designers of Changi City Point have the same concept as what I want the space to be like. Even though the space is very small (about half the size of RP classrooms), the designers were able to make it interactive with the users of Changi City Point. From the 1st picture, a whole family went in. The space was very obvious to the surroundings (surrounded by shops), with a lot of greenery playing around the space and large fountain centre piece in the middle of the space. There were two of these spaces, and they were interconnected by these:

The whole concept looked like a calming and peaceful place, away from the busy shoppers around Changi City Point. So, I got inspired by the spaces in Changi City Point.

Above is an illustration of how the space will look like. There will be an additional entrance on the other side of the space. On the doors, they will be a no smoking sign to ensure that nobody breaks the rules of the school and also, to tell people that they are allowed to enter the space.

Below is an illustration of how the automatic entrance will look like.

Fountain

The space where users can dip their feet into the pond

Original entrance

Waterfall

Fishes

Escalator

The space where users can feed the fishes

New entrance

Table with 5 chairs

Lighted “dots” on the ground

Plantation

Pathway made out of large stones

Lamps