Phase 5 Speculative Representation

City of Hyper Transparency

Est. 2037

In respond to the contemporary society in 2017 where we immerse ourselves into the world of online community exposing a part of our lives to the public on a daily basis sharing what we value through many platform like Facebook, YouTube, Instagram, Twitter, etc.

For the city of Hyper Transparency, it is the criticism reflecting on this matter by encourage everyone to live transparent 24/7 and constantly update their status online to keep their transparent rank up. The government promote the idea of living transparent for the sake of security and indirectly organize the city so that everyone would behave nicely since there is camera recording everywhere.

However, what does it mean to live transparency?  Being transparent is meant to portray the real you without trying to be the perfect people that everyone would appreciate. It is the fact that everyone has flaws and most of the time, we do not want people to notice those flaws. 

Are we really being transparent?

In this broadcasting society, it has the powerful impact on people. As we have seen many news how the social media can be harsh on many celebrity judging them whether they did the right thing or not, it forced them to act and stage themselves, so that people would admire and accept them, and ultimately become their followers. Are we really showing who we are through the lens or just trying to be that flawless somebody?

Nowadays, we were judged as well as judging a lot through people's social identity. We measure their live through the number of likes, shares, and followers. Ultimately, it become bragging culture where everyone want to show off their lives to the public. We are 100% in control on our social account and how we want to be perceived by other people. Doesn't it mean that the social identity are all set up?  

In the city of Hyper Transparency, the paradigm has shift from priorities privacy to security through the medium of transparency. Although the citizen would gain more security living in peace in the seemingly happy and pleasant neighborhood, what's about their mentality with the fact that they pretending and staging their live most of the time?

PHASE 4 Three-dimensional Speculation

- Minimizing blind spot -

Since the project is focusing on the only one parameter of transparency that build up the society, there is the question of how the shift in paradigm has an influence on architecture. In the city where everyone is monitored by the CCTV and even lives streaming exposed their life to the public themselves, I propose to create an architecture the maximized your perception which in this case the main focus would be the organization of the space. 

People trumps security over privacy, the paradigm shift has occurred. The government's policy aim toward driving the city into maximum transparency. The policy includes the effect of transparency ranking on the housing. Regardless of the social status, the more transparent you are the better housing unit you are going to get with privilege on the opacity taxes.

The structure is situated in the first development residential district in Singapore, Toa Payoh where there are lots of heartlander and local people. To emphasize on the idea of paradigm shift, the location portray the idea of the closeness to the people that it is not something new and has practice as an ordinary matter.

By looking a network of connection of an important figure in Toa Payoh, I noticed that everyone is interconnected. Therefore I proposed a new way of organizing the space to maximize the visibility with much smoother gradient rather than just having an ordinary offset circular hierarchy. Basically, the hierarchy of the space are more gradually and smoothly change in term of the level of transparency based on the density of the framing structure. The density implies that the denser, the less transparent you are. the looser, the more transparent you exposed to the public. 

The framing structure that scatter throughout the plot are unify by the common mass where occupied by the main circulation which also includes the program for common use like canteen, kitchen, restroom, broadcasting panel, etc. in order to maximize the contact with other neighbor.

There are several sky bridges that connect the common mass with the housing unit. 

This is the formalization of the structural frame in which the joints are electro-magnetic that hold everything together which is convenient and flexible to connect for the ever growing structure. 

Phase 3 Metaspeculation

Phase 3 Metaspeculation

- I have nothing to hide -

From the previous observation on the topic of hyper security control, Singapore is under the surveillance state that control by the government in a positive manner. To speculative from this topic, the propose narrative is focus on the key statement, "I have nothing to hide." which said by many Singaporean when asking how do they feel to being watched all the time. 

“In a city where everyone is happy and transparent! Singapore is listed as World’s most transparent city that everyone has a contribution to the online society to keep the city safe to improve quality of people’s life to another level...”

In the year 2037, Singapore has achieved to be the city where everyone is pride for being transparent. The change in value has occurred. Everyone give more priority for being open and transparent over personal privacy in which being opaque is considered as a threat to the society. Government encourage people to share every single moment in their life with one another on the online platform that any person has access to the information at any time. The more contribution you made online will be recognized by public as being an explicit citizen, and the authority will rank you base on how much contribution you make online. The higher in rank you are the higher priority you are going to get. 

link to speculative narrative

The city are organized in a way to minimizing the blindspot to decrease the risk of being opaque. In term or housing unit, the higher in rank you are, the more spacious and open of a space you will get. Lower rank would have the space that less transparent with facade or partition that would reduce the vision to observe what is going on around us. 

To reduce the blindspot, architecture need to organized in a certain way to make sure that each housing unit has an access to another units. In this case, I propose the to organize the space by this conceptual diagram where the housing unit will be organized base on the hexagon grid at the intersection to form the ring around the watcher data center.  

Narrative Document:

To explore the tranparent lifestyle, I decided to compare how we do it nowaday and how we might do it in an extreme way to stream our lives 24/7.

Phase 2 De-coding the Little Red Dot

- Hyper Security control -

Singapore, "Surveillance State"

Throughout history and modernity, Surveillance has been used as a method of control, a symbol of power. Lately it has been used to assure, or attempt to manifest, Safety in urban environments. The structure of surveillance spread wide from using several technologies; CCTV, Drones, Internet monitoring, phone call, etc. 

Surveillance vs. Social interaction

With in Singapore territory, Surveillance begins at home and it's basically everywhere. Surveillance is promoted as a positive matter which ensure the security within its neighborhood. And the number has shown that Singapore obviously has the lowest crime rate in the world. Therefore, people interaction on this matter is positive as most people state that, "I have nothing to hide".

Liberty vs. Security

But is it true? There are a serious matter of Liberty. Although Singapore government declare to the public that Singapore is under surveillance. But does people really understand what it's mean? how much privacy that the government can access? Are they really aware of that? 

It is true that using Surveillance structure have a power that make everyone conform to the social norm. People might not imprisoned but their soul are. The fact that they are watching by an unknown source are forced people to  act in an acceptable way.

Surveillance vs. Boundary

Another important point is the idea of Surveillance and Boundary. In Surveillance structure, boundaries are set up where the cameras cover, or end coverage, implying a change in space, social contact, and control. What it's like beyond the camera? 

Phase 1: Micro-Speculation

"Yishun is cursed"

Singapore has known for its peaceful neighborhood with full control in Security. However, Yishun is an exception. Somehow, absurd behavior and bad thing start to happen within the area including sexual harassment, pervert wandered around the MRT, murderers, and etc. 

Speculative Narrative:

Due to the political situation with Donald Trump as a current US president, Singapore is facing the problem. US President Donald Trump's attention has drifted from Singapore and Chinese leader Xi Jinping grows more powerful. With the insecure position, Singapore’s government feel the need to develop troops and new technology to advance the level of Singapore in a Global stage with the secret help from China. Yishun is the chosen district for experiment and discover new military tech, which it is the reason why weird thing happen within the periphery, so called “The cursed district of Singapore” For example, the genetic-modified animal, Humanoid, Psychological break down human, etc. However, it is a mistake to get the help from China since China is trying to takeover the whole country by having Yishun as the main headquarters and with the technology developed, China slowly expanded their troop throughout the city.