Final Design of Residential Tower

The final design of the Residential Tower is further developed from Sketch 5 and drawing some inspiration from various sources such as Gardens by the Bay's vertical gardens and as well as shophouses.

The idea of having the residential tower on a podium with 3 levels filled with coffee shops and clinics is based on shophouses but instead of just an apartment at the top level, it's replaced with a residential tower. There are probably a number of elderly who lived in shophouses before or know of them and having the residential tower of the elderly town based on this, it might bring a sense of familiarity to them.

The window planter box is an additional feature that was added to the final design so as to make our town more like an eco-city and adding more greenery to not just the landscape but in the building itself. This was inspired by Gardens by the Bay and decided to incorporate a vertical gardens into our town. By making a planter box which means the household can decide what they wish to grow at their windows. The planter box also serves the purpose of blocking the sunlight at the windows.

The elderly town is going to be an eco-city so the circular shape and garden dome were chosen because it reminds me of the earth which is spherical.

(Source: https://www.ecocleanerssb.com/why-eco-friendly.html)

Design Sketches Development

Bus Sketch Development

The inital idea of the bus was something wider and slightly longer but I decided to use the design of a bendy bus so as to allow more passengers and seats. Since our group is going to use the eco-friendly concept, the bus has motifs of flowers and leaves. 

Elderly Town Residential Tower Development

Started with a rectangular shaped building before developing it into square towers with linkways connecting the blocks of flats.

More greenery added to it.

Further developed the residential tower by using a hexagon shape which is inspired by honeycomb and a bee colony. The residential tower now sits on a platform like a shop house but in the form of high-rise apartments.

Our group decided on a circular shape and to experiment and play around with the design, I added a rooftop garden and a glass lift shaft at the side which can be seen on the exterior of the architecture. More greenery like trees are added and the rails of the monorail is visible on top of the platform which has an organic structure.

This is the final sketch and design. Keeping the circular shape of the tower, the lift is now relocated to the center and there is a dome rooftop garden to incorporate solar panels so as to make the Elderly Town more eco-friendly and energy saving. The monorail is no longer a part of the platform but a separate entity. Gardening plots are added and window grails with planting functions are introduced. These additional features can add more personalised and natural greenery to the town and furthermore, the idea of farming and plantation can be an idea to look into for the town.

Research for Design Solution 2

Elderly Town: Residential Towers (Architecture)

To help with coming up with the design of the residential towers, I searched for ideas both online and through books and came across several useful and informational architectural designs from the book Evolo Skyscrapers 2.

This book contains many interesting and futuristic architectural designs under various categories such as 'Technological Advances' and 'Ecological Urbanism'. I thought it will be great to draw some inspiration from the designs in the book and I picked out a few that I thought would be relevant to my group.

Firstly, it's Unit Fusion.

Unit Fusion is a design catered to the rising demand for housing especially in populated countries with limited land. This is very useful and applicable to Singapore. Its main feature of being a high-rise building (75 floors) that can have concrete units plugged when an apartment is purchased. An advanced technology like this is really fascinating and I thought it'd be something worth looking into or used as reference. 

Tower 3 Agropolis is very interesting too and also applicable to Singapore. It's a fresh living vegetable market which means the residents can grow their own crops and also consume by the residents. Water is recycled for plantation and waste used as fertilisation. It is not only environmentally friendly but cost efficient and sustainable which is the direction our group is taking for our elderly town. 

Vertical Farming is very similar to Tower 3 Agropolis, in the sense that both deals with plantation and agriculture. Vertical Farming targets the problem of increasing rice demand. However, it's not a residential architecture. Nonetheless it is still useful. The structure is built like stairs and have plantation plots upwards. This smart design in structure can save space as lesser land will be used to plant more crops and water is able to flow from the top of structure to the bottom. 

These 3 innovative designs are what fascinated me the most and thought were useful and worth looking into and maybe developed into a part of our designs. 

Research For Design Solution 1

Revamped Bus Design

Since our group decided to take the eco-friendly route and concept in our design solutions, I have decided to do some research on the technology and eco-friendly options available currently.

TOSA (Trolleybus Optimisation Système Alimentation) is a smart bus which is rechargeable. It was invented in 2013 in Geneva as an alternative to clean energy as the bus runs on electricity and will not have any carbon emissions. Furthermore, it doesn't have any noise and hence reduces noise pollution in the city. The bus is able to contain 133 passengers which is more than a regular bus capacity. A double decker SBS Transit bus in Singapore can contain 124 passengers and a bendy SMRT bus can contain 130 passengers.



Dimesions: 18m x 2.55m



Dimesions: 18.75m x 2.55m

TOSA will be a great inspiration to our group's design of our revamped bus, not only because of its eco-friendly technologies but also the design of it that is able to increase the bus capacity within the road restrictions. The idea of a bendy bus is useful for our design. It will be hard to increase the width of a bus to make it more spacious due to the fixed width of roads. A double decker bus is not ideal for elderly because of the stairs. Hence, the only option is increasing the length.


Sources:

• https://publictransportsg.wordpress.com/tag/sbs-transit-2/
• http://www.tosa2013.com/#/
• http://www.hess-ag.ch/en/busse/linienbusse/linienuebersicht.php
• http://landtransportguru.net/mercedes-benz-o405-tibs-smrt/

Design Solution 2

After our presentation and getting feedback from our lecturers, we have encountered a few main problems we had to take into consideration for our solutions and proposed design so that we can further develop them.

Firstly, since the idea of an Elderly Town is still new, our group has decided to scale down its size from the original 8 blocks of apartments to 4 blocks instead but keeping the facilities available the same. We have also decided to target the audience at elderly who are living alone, with their spouse or with family (e.g. single adults living with their parents) which means each apartment can have 1 to 4 people living inside.

We needed to find a proposed space in Singapore that is able to let us build and carry out our Elderly Town. It was suggested that we choose an outskirt part of Singapore that is undeveloped. I've decided to do some research into the urban development plan of Singapore and have found some maps that can be useful in our group's research.

The outskirts of Singapore, specifically places like Woodlands, Lim Chu Kang, Pungol and Seng Kang have a lot of room development and the government does have plans on developing areas like this as the other regions are already very crowded.

My only concern is that according to the feedback we did for our survey primary research, it was pointed out that the Elderly Town might be not as ideal because it can be seem as a solution to isolate the elderly. By placing the Elderly Town at the outskirts of the country, it does seem like we are isolating the elderly even though the town will have a bus/train interchange to help them travel out of the town. One of my proposed solution to this would be to build an Elderly Town in each region connected to existing bus interchange and MRT stations. This would solve the problem of isolation and at the same time, we can use the North Region as the area for the pioneer Elderly Town.


Source(s): 

• https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgvuJ5tQ4UuPF-20MDiJ5mEQiLLrAY1BNpcnWPEUT_1eLWlx47LWvzPd7DOk-9KxXSlKNPImNlaa2lnGnW9uSi9trxV9Txyc6QiVcAG-9K-DCMPiru0HRMSl0_G6uiGPZPcQYJmxrqgID8f/s1600/ST+Graphics+-Singapore+2030.jpg
• https://www.ura.gov.sg/maps/?service=MP2014_DL

Design Solution 1

Solution 1

1. Flats are built shorter in terms of length such that the lift can be located in the center and elderly do not have to walk far.
2. Eateries, clinics, convenience stores are located at void decks or 2nd to 3rd levels of the blocks for convenience.
3. A garden in the middle for the elderly to spend some time outdoors.
4. The interchange is a MRT station and has shuttle buses to aid elderly to travel outside of the town.
5. A supermarket and some shops will be located at the interchange.
6. Link bridges with shelter to allow elderly to travel within blocks to enhance interconnectedness of town.
   
   To consider: Underground carparks for visitors/residences.

Solution 2

1. Larger signboards to show bus number.
2. Replaced with ramp instead of stairs with built in handicapped ramps.
3. Different colour/design to help elderly differentiate the buses easily.
4. Wider and bigger/longer bus to contain more seats.
5. No steps inside, more railings for elderly to hold on to.
6. Emergency buttons in bus.
7. Stop buttons located strategically to make it easier for elderly to press it to alight. Placed within reach and without them having to move out of their seats before the bus stops as it's dangerous for elderly to get off their seats before the bus stops as the bus might come to a stop suddenly. 

Observation Results

Venues: 

• Void Decks
• Supermarkets
• Public Spaces (E.g. Parks, benches)
• Community Clubs

Time:

• Morning
  8am-10am
• Late Afternoon/Evening
  4pm-6pm

Morning, 8am-10am

As early as 7am, there are elderly who attend mass daily morning exercise classes held at the open spaces at the community clubs. This is part of their daily routine for those who are more active.

Supermarkets are crowded with elderly in the morning as well, specifically on Monday.

Late afternoon/evening, 4pm-6pm

Able to find elderly sitting and hanging around void decks and the public spaces such as parks and the benches located along the blocks of HDB flats. Elderly accompanying their grandchildren to the playground.

Some elderly are also seen going for walks as exercise but however facilities made for elderly like the exercise corner found in HDB estates, are hardly used.

Around this time, elderly can be seen heading home with their dinner. Either they headed out just to get food, coming home from work or coming home after going out for leisure purposes.