Diary of Community Patterns
The HDB estates present the fascinating realm when public but restricted spaces meet a free roaming community. To observe the tectonics or structure is not enough – It is to observe its use by the very people it was designed to sustain. Only then can we have an intimate understanding of the way people occupy, assimilate, and even terraform the public space. Better if it was unintentionally made that way by the original designers, that we can see the friction between what was the original design intention versus how residents deem to better use. These documentations represent a snap shot of the community “patterns”, ways they use or develop the space, or even ignore it entirely, and why it appears so.
Taking lessons from Atelier Bow-Wow’s Pet Architecture & Windowscape, Christopher Alexander’s A Pattern Language, and Eric Klinenberg’s Palaces for the People, we use 4 lens to observe social practices. The first is a photograph, aimed to record a snap shot of the space in its whole, a moment in time. It is followed by a short write up of the space and observation. Next is the intangible, the observation of how people use, or ignore, the place. An anatomical axo drawing of the relationship between the human, space, and objects is drawn to show how it comes together. This gives an impression of the strengths or weakness of the space, what elements allowed it to succeed or fail as a social space. Finally, a diagram of the space is drawn, a simple universal way to highlight key elements that identifies the spaces.
This handbook thus serves as a research diary of the community, a slice of life, giving us key information into the behavioural patterns we can tap on, or extend, when designing new social spaces wholly unique to them.