‘Garden Dreaming’: an exhibition from the Garden City State that imagines future green living

Renowned as the ‘Garden City’ state, Singapore is justly proud of its green spaces, with trees and plants that grow everywhere, from within parks to the rooftops of skyscrapers.  Now, as Singapore transitions into its next phase as a ‘City in Nature’ (the new mandate of Singapore’s National Parks Board, or NParks), an exhibition at the National Design Centre explores how Singapore, and by extension all of us, can live more closely with nature for great potential benefit.  Conceptualised by the DesignSingapore Council (Dsg), Garden Dreaming is an exhibition intended to invite consideration of how we co-exist with nature now, and imaginings of a positive landscaped future. By having leading practitioners talk about how their work can improve wellbeing, ecosystem health and services, and resilience, Dsg aims to inspire the design community, developers and the general public alike to think deeply about the great potential that can come with a close connection with nature.

Running daily (9am to 9pm) until 31st May, Garden Dreaming encompasses a series of video interviews – shown on screens throughout the gallery –  with key figures involved in shaping Singapore’s landscapes and ‘greened’ urbanscapes, paired with wall panels that explore key themes in the nation’s nature stories – all surrounded by an indoor jungle of live plants.

The four video interviews are conducted with Singapore-based creators of nature-focused design projects, showcasing these and featuring discussions around how they were brought to life, and the designers’ philosophies on the current and future synergies between cities and green spaces. Together, these practitioners demonstrate how innovation is happening in landscape and urban greening in Singapore – driving valuable change and improvement despite a lack of resources and space.

The four interviewees, their projects and some topics covered are:

Leonard Ng, Country Marketing Director, Ramboll Studio Dreiseitl – landscape architecture and urban planning – Lakeside Garden at Jurong Lake Gardens

• Bringing back old ecologies into industrialised areas
• Creating space for residents to appreciate nature and, particularly, water as a precious resource
• How natural spaces evolve to create a diversity of wildlife and the co-existence of this within a human-inhabited environment
• How landscape architecture can make a real impact in mitigating the effects of climate change in Singapore
• The importance of public spaces – particularly in the wake of COVID-19

Schirin Taraz-Breinholt, Director (COO), WOHA – an architectural practice with expertise in biophilic design – PARKROYAL COLLECTION Pickering

• Integrating landscape and architecture; exploring how we want to live as a civilisation and a responsibility to create better typologies for sustainable development
• Reconciling the accommodation of millions of people in cities with our relationship with the natural environment – considering how this impacts our organisation of transport, how we harvest energy and food
• How development in the city does not have to be solely at the expense of greenery, but can intensify it
• Integrating sky gardens to maximise green space and giving back to the city; providing visually attractive surroundings despite being in a dense urban environment
• The scientifically proven positive impact of biophilia on people’s health
• Measuring buildings based on social and ecological factors, not just their economic viability, and creating three dimensional cities that foster both liveability and sustainability

Yun Hye Hwang, Associate Professor and Programme Director (BLA) – landscape architect – National University of Singapore (NUS)

• Creating rewilded spaces with minimal yet strategic human intervention to encourage and monitor growth of biodiversity
• Exploring the public’s comfort level in terms of the degree of wildness in urban green spaces and creating an accessible way to experience them
• The Bachelor of Landscape Architecture is a newly created degree at NUS in response to demand and timeliness – using green space as a means for urban planning and the environmental issues it helps address

Goh Yu Han, Director, Salad Dressing – landscape architecture – Enabling Village

• Creating natural, self-sustaining systems
• The shifting perception of nature from something to be tamed to something we need to support and co-exist with; closing the gap between humans and our natural surroundings
• Greening of high-rise buildings and how rewilding can take place at all levels – “rewilding the sky”
• The studio imagines a future in which other living organisms are seen as our equals, not as commodities