Design My Place

Group 5

School: Tampines Junior College

During the site visit, our group realized that site 5 is actually very much a conservation site, there were mostly shop houses and we cannot make large-scale changes to the area, we also feel very strongly that we should conserve the area’s existing culture. Through our project, we hope to achieve 3 main objectives which are firstly to inject youths into the area, increase leisure activities for the elderly as well as preserving the heritage of the area. In order to achieve this, we propose 3 main ideas. They are firstly, geocaching, secondly, introducing biking zones and thirdly, providing the elderly with more leisure activities. With these main ideas, come the sub-ideas to support the main ideas.

Geocaching is a high-tech treasure hunting game played throughout the world by adventure seekers equipped with GPS (Global-Positioning System) devices. The basic idea is to locate hidden containers, called geocaches, outdoors and then share their experiences. When we were walking along the back alleys of the shop houses we realized the rich culture and heritage of the place, and hence we feel that the youths of Singapore should experience this for themselves. It is a game that will not cause much change to the surrounding areas and will achieve the objective of preserving the culture and heritage of the area.

In order to complement the idea of geocaching, we have came up with biking hub and zones and this zones extends to the other sites such as sites 4, 6, 7 and 8. The objectives of this bike zones are as follows, it is to inject more youths into the area, provide a safer place for the cyclists to cycle as we realized that most of the elderly there cycle for a living such as collecting cardboard boxes, as well as to promote green energy through installing a motor on to the bicycles and when the cyclist paddles, the kinetic energy will be stored in the motor as chemical potential energy (battery) and they can sell this energy and earn some money (who would be interested in this energy, will be elaborated in the later paragraphs). In order to create a safer place for the cyclists, we have decided to close some roads illustrated by the diagram beside (red markings represent the closure of roads to cars.) Taking into consideration the repercussions that this will have on the hardware stores around the area, we have decided to rearrange the uses of the shop houses by arranging all the hardware stores to face the main road so as to increase accessibility for them and their customers.

Both geocaching and bicycle zone requires a hub where geocachers can rent a GPS device and other equipments that they may require. The hub will provide cyclists with bicycle rental services, repair services and many others under one roof. We also intend to have a multi-storey carpark at the hub to facilitate the drivers to park their cars and cycle towards their destination within the bicycle zones. In order to further improve the cycling experience, we will build several pavilions that would allow cyclists to take a rest and then continue their journey.

Moving on to our third objective, creating recreational activities for the elderly, we have decided to have an amphitheatre on the field of People’s Association (PA) Headquarters as we feel that the field is underutilized and it is near the HDB flats, we can have performances at the theatre for the elderly such as opera, getai (during hungry ghost festival) and other school performances. After closing the roads, we have much more empty spaces to work with. We will have night market (Pasar Malam) where people can come and rent a stall to sell their goods, and the residents can also buy some stuff from the market. The market would require large amounts of energy to provide energy for the place. Now, the batteries that the cyclists have can be sold to the power generator personnel. These motors are reusable and they will be given back to the cyclists and the cycle starts again.