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Architects: Garis Architects
- Area: 9 m²
- Year: 2018
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Photographs:Steven Ngu Ngie Woon
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Manufacturers: AutoDesk, Trimble
Text description provided by the architects. The narrative of the Nature’s Catalog is to be sensitive to nature pluralities, yet directional to frame moments and metaphor surrounding the tropical setting; it is a place for trackers to rest, meditate, and extend its character as a gazebo into an observation tower amidst the tropical forest. The design also complementing the surrounding, the way in which people experience the gazebo is paramount.
Engulfed within the thick foliage, the gazebo stand as a geometry analogy to provoke interactions and contemplation through the articulation of massing and planes. With the brief calling for a 9 square meter gazebo, the proposal consist of 3 box frames which interlock vertically in creating multiple level platforms to adapt the sloping site condition topographically. The gazebo framing configuration is expressed in vertical manner allowing public enjoyment of the tropical canopy view which is otherwise inaccessible.
The heights in between platforms varies with some spaces require adult to duck and approach carefully while children can play freely in these spaces. With the limitation of spatial allowance, platforms are adaptive element acting as a table for reading, cantilever seating along the slope, meditation box and cat ladder as a metaphor of a treehouse in the forest.
As the site located deep in the tropical forest, the construction materials of the gazebo are all hand carried and assembled on site to reduce any disruption to the existing condition with each trees and plants carefully marked and preserved.