THE SPINE

As a small country with limited land resources, Singapore imports over 90% of its food from abroad. A new model of urban development coupled with food production is critical to ensure food security for the population of Singapore. The current city model is designed with infrastructure spread out across the ground, it grows at the expense of the ecology and food is imported from outside, contributing to food mile. This project aims to investigate the feasibility of incorporating multi-layers food production within a new city typology.

The site chosen is at Jurong East, the next CBD of Singapore. The reason for the choice of site is that it is a blank canvas to test the feasibility of the proposed city model. This new urban form layers multiple programs such as mobility system, food production infrastructure, retail and residential all along a central spine and is lifted off the ground so the natural ecology can flow underneath it without fragmentation. This returns the ground floor for forestry and water catchment. A sub-spine is added to reduce traffic load of the main spine. Food production systems such as vertical farms, soil-less and soil based farming are inserted along the main spine and sub-spine and making the entire core productive. Named the Spine, this new city has the potential to produce over 50,000 tonnes of food per year, which is able to feed about 1.7% of Singapore’s food consumption. The Spine’s 22kg/m2 of food production capacity from its various layers of farming infrastructure is promising and could likely be a possible design solution for a sustainable city that addresses the food security issue of Singapore.

TYPOLOGY: Infrastructure

PROGRAM: Warehouse, Production Space, Housing, Landscape, Agriculture Land

LOCATION: Jurong East, Singapore

YEAR: 2016

STATUS: Concept