this is NOT my dissertation...

Housing is the microcosm of a society. It is autonomous. It is arguably all encompassing. With the institutional application of mass housing it becomes inevitable that certain organizing principles contradict personal choice. Capitalism is often cited as the main enemy in mainstream architectural discourses.

Housing blocks in a cityscape have the capacity to self organize and evolve to changing needs. In the history of Singapore, more often than not the self organizing capacity of the Singapore Town based on capital fluxes of the global economy made it rich, economically vibrant, and resilient. The strong postcolonial literature with an agenda of negating a dictatorial past negates the fact that Singapore was under virtually no centralised economic control and practices the most enlightened open jail system, chinese education and varies civic policies ahead of its time.

It must be acknowledged, that it is the self organizing cosmopolitan city and its “evil” capitalist forces willed Singapore’s into its very existence. And henceforth, the Singapore Shophouse, trading house, plantation kampungs.

Central control was implemented on housing because the basic pattern of housing was superseded by apparent chaos. It is not that autonomy bottom up building is bad. It is just that too much autonomy with the lack of building technology and know how available is bad. Children playing in the rain is not that bad, it gets bad only when the children plays too long in the prolonged rain and they start drinking muddy rainwater.

Mumford’s critique of Jane Jacob’s is fitting, “Jacobs forgets that in organisms there is no tissue growth quite as ‘vital’ or ‘dynamic’ as cancer growths… The author has forgotten the most essential characteristic of all organic growth – to maintain diversity and balance, the organism must not exceed the norm of its species. Any ecological association eventually reaches the ‘climax’ stage, beyond which growth without deterioration is not possible.” and explains any theory of housing, scale and density of housing usually lacks the interrelation and offers quite little.

The hierarchists trumped and wrote the history of enlightened top down rule of Singapore.

In the natural history of mankind, heterogeneous and homogeneous mixtures interact in open feedback loops. We have seen instances where the artificial homogeneity forcibly imposed by human action causes nature to re-impose the balance of heterogeneity by equally drastic consequences. For example, genetically modifying a strain of crops can render it vulnerable to diseases which eventually overtake the immunity via evolution in their genetic arms race.

Singapore’s case for society, and thereby housing, risks such a consequence. The Foucaldian control of Institutions could be beneficial in the short run, but thereby closing a loop into a homogenized system risks falling back on the global intellectual arms race. Singapore’s housing is not only aesthetically banal, henceforth, it induces an ideological strait jacket on the real history of capitalism and success in Singapore. There is only so much Singapore INC. could invest and reinvest in the self perpetuated accumulationist logic of consumption. There is only so much the enlightened leaders could build up defenses against the intellectual arms race. The rising standards of living are henceforth the result of upkeeping the enforced homogeneity together, of fighting natural societal growth.

Today, we have mastered building technology; we have solutions that supercede the chaos to the point of sterility; we want now, to “artificialise” chaos. HDB’s attempts are credible and unprecedented despite its tight bureaucratic front. It proposed the Home Office Scheme in 1999, attempted an IT House in Bishan, allowed private firms in Design and Build Projects, introduced White Flats. The results are decidedly lukewarm. Having taught children to fear the deathly onset of rain, children do not even want any association with rain.

The hierachists, faced with the looming evolution of global diseases, are increasingly desperate and wonder what has actually gone wrong and incorrectly interpreted the mediocrity mindset of the Singapore citizen.

Many urbanists point to Cohousing as a means to solve social separation and imbibe creativity in the growing child, to teach them that rain is not at all deadly (especially when you play together). It is decidedly a bottom up and antithesis of the mass housing paradigm. But we need to address that a thousand cohousing communities in Singapore might not necessitate vibrancy the same way a thousand gated communities generates a military complex. Being an antithesis, it overreacts to the realities of human behaviour in a large scaled system. The scale of housing from house, community, society, nation is not a simple accumulative logic, it is multiplicative and exponential in terms of interrelating variables.

For the first time in history, we have mastered information. We have invented the Internet and Computer. We could interact with more people than ever before over further geopolitical boundaries, we could form interest groups. We can be liberated from the pressure of morality in society to express individualities. We have released the dam of heterogeneous elements in society into a deluge, but nevertheless, a vibrant energy.

However, the architectural profession, grounded deeply in the academic epistemology of top down learning, is slow to comprehend this change. In fact, the suppression of chaos was the crowing moment of the heroic Modernist era, why would the profession revert back to the admission of chaos? For every change in society, the architectural discourses try its best to investigate with western academia with little useful result, the result is a self perpetuating myth of public spaces, altruism, hedonism and an imaginary client. The House becomes an architectural edifice first, and telling what the clients what to do with it later.

With the advent of the computer age, we could simulate collective autonomies into a higher level system. We could listen, they could talk. The facelessness of the internet and the processing powess of a computer harnesses great potential for learning. The clients can draw their dreamlike childish fantasies of “my dream house” without being scorned, the architects can advise on the sensible arrangement of space and form without being chided for being commercially unrealistic. But how can this be useful?

Firstly housing in Singapore needs to address some real truths. Mixed use is definitely overwhelming the segregation zoning of yesteryear. Nation place boundedness requires density. Culture needs variability. People can work more and more from home. Mass transport merely addresses the industrial facelessness of the Public Man and new urban solutions would cater to new high density living. Singapore. These are inescapable facts that could not be solved by HDB nor small seclusive tracts of cohousing, these are facts that Singaporeans need to comprehend.

Fusing the Internet and the institutions, we can encourage the latent heterogeneity to resurface in a productive way by simple rules. Encouraging heterogeneity in a petridish is unlike artificially creating one. I come up with various mad ideas from brainstorming:

What if every Singaporean is educated in craftsmanship and architecture for the entire primary school and they can build a house entirely on their own? Or at least appreciate spatial design and wont stare blankly at the planks of a White Flat when given one. We have 4 Million Architects instead of 4 Million Smiles? We become an exporter of New World Urban Culture?

What if instead of doling out Economic Restructuring Shares during Elections, we receive bonus points and number of moves in a supercomputer managed SimCity Singapore where you can simultaneously shape your country whilst interacting with 4,999,999 other people and realizing that project in the near future?

What if in the course of your education you are enrolled in a super programme that allows you to slowly plan your house in a city benchmarked against your preferences and capital endowment instead of enrolling you in SDU?

Currently in the midst of Real Estate Dissertations are some very enlightening data analysis of housing preferences, housing quality and life qualities, demographic assessment of housing demands, mathematical tracking of demand and supply. These statistical models are delightfully close to mapping the psyche of the Singaporean society as a collective whole rather than the patronizing attitude towards “heartlanders”. However there is a catch, in the war of hierarchies against heterogeneities, capitalism is the unwitting culprit. The surveys overwhelming point to the fact that Singaporeans always look at prices of houses as foremost priority.

In Emergence, Warren Weaver postulates. In a nutshell, 3 kinds of scientific enquiry: 1. simple systems (one to 2 variables, linear equations), 2. disorganised complexity (billions of variables, probability theories), 3. organised complexity (variables are interrelated). The Real Estate Students performed very well to archive scientifically the behavioral science of a society, however they committed the cardinal sin inculcated to them, that societies are made of individuals making autonomous choices. The next step of scientific enquiry is required to map out human societies.

Which leads to this daring question:

What if all Singaporeans sought deep into their inner childhood and started (re)drawing futurist fantasy themes like “What do you think Singapore will look like in the year 2050?”, and the architects find the ways and means to reconcile that into material truth instead of the other way round?

My dissertation henceforth is to seek as large a number of people, encourage them to stop believing the absolute hierarchy (note, against the concept of making them radical anarchists), and believe themselves and the capacity to create change via swarm logic. To free themselves from the pain of inevitability of capitalist pricing of real estate, and educate them processes of knowledge capital and its urban requirements (ie, mass housing, density, mixed use). Then encourage them to dream…

What if you can live in a pod that could be plugged anywhere in Singapore? A pod that acts as a vehicle and temporary shelter. You can live in Tampines today and Boon Lay tomorrow depending on your preferences on whichever New Town could provide you the spaces and programmes you would like to engage in.

What if you tell Singaporeans they can get richer by staying at home, tending to their house and family?

Singapore is already a institution, and we shall solve it as a collective organism. The problem arises when we use OTHER solutions to solve our dreams. This is unlike Unite d habitation imposition of public and self life where people are forced to accept values of mass housing. Singapore is in a unique position in the world where its citizens readily ACCEPT mass housing. Now, we are in a position to evolve into the next bigger step. Correct solutions will result in commercially and economically viable housing based on home ownership and land empowerment.

How will this form housing take shape apart from the realities aforementioned?