Bio
Associate Professor, NUS (2019); AIADO (2006). BA, 1989, BArch, 1992 (Honors), National University of Singapore; MArch, with Distinction, 1998, Cranbrook Academy of Art, MI. Concurrent Position: Principal, Studio Chronotope; Partner, SKA Architects. Completed Works: Ecology of Small Ideas, Japan; Prime Minister's residence, Singapore. Lectures: Netherlands Architecture Institute; Berlage Institute; Tongji University, China; Sofia Architecture Week; Singapore Management University; Nanyang Technological University; Inclusive Museum Conference, Portugal; Make a Difference School, Hong Kong. Exhibitions: Helsinki Polybrids, Tallinn Architecture Biennale; Archifest, Singapore; Urbanscape Gallery, Canada; Architectural Institute of British Columbia's Architecture Center. Publications: The Social Curating and Archiving Project, Artswok Community Inspiration Series; Between Making and Action: Ideas for a Relational Design Pedagogy, Emerging Practices: Professions, Values, and Approaches in Design and Design Education; Lives in Large Interiors, Handbook of Interior Architecture and Design; Zero, A10 New European Architecture; Crisis, Dialogue and Imagination, Networks of Design. Editorial Committees: Interiors: Design/Architecture/Culture; Journal of Architecture, Media, Politics, Society; Awards: National Heritage Board Grant; CIDA 2014 Visionary; Toyota Foundation; Motorola Foundation; Jaap Bakema Fellow. Membership: Associate Member, AIA; Member, Association of Architectural Humanities Research Society.
Personal Statement
I am an alumnus of the National University of Singapore and Cranbrook Academy of Art, where I studied on a merit scholarship and graduated with distinction in my final year. I have taught for thirteen years at the School of the Art Institute of Chicago and held leadership positions in the Department of Architecture, Interior Architecture and Designed Objects. I returned in 2019 to take up my current teaching appointment in the Department of Architecture at the National University of Singapore. I am also the Principal of Studio Chronotope and a licensed architect in Singapore.
I see architecture as a form of reflective practice. To be an architect for me is to engage in a lifelong process of questioning and searching that traces the arc of my personal growth and development. Architecture carries a surplus beyond building. I eschew narrowly defined approaches to a project, given constraints or outcomes. I see myself as someone who constructs a world in our cultural landscape with care, commitment, empathy and generosity. My projects have traversed across a bandwidth of scales, complexities and deployed an array of media and methodologies. They range from the exploration of generative sequence of forming, the affective qualities of materials, the use and design of vast, interconnected interior environments (http://www.academia.edu/8676931/Lives_in_Large_Interiors), participatory design (http://www.studiochronotope.com/dispatches/beppu-street-studio), and curatorial and archiving practices (https://www.whampoaarchives.com/)
I strive to imbue my work with significance beyond the utility or the narrow relation between means and ends. I approach the education of an architect and a designer from the perspective of art-design nexus and seek to find their overlaps and convergences. This is especially significant as crossovers between disciplines become the norm as a result of shared concerns, use of common digital tools and platforms, and the need to develop a holistic approach to design. In Between Making and Action- Ideas for a Relational Design Pedagogy, I presented my experience in re-configuring the undergraduate architecture and interior architecture curricular drawing upon my interest in the arts and humanities in educating the future designer who moves relationally between different roles and ways of practicing. (http://www.tongji-di.org/en/infor_news.asp?sid=12&nid=18&lid=29&id=270)
Recognitions
I have received national and international recognitions for my design work, research and as an educator. In 2009, I was the 3rd Jaap Bakema Fellow, a competitive international fellowship administered by the Netherlands Architecture Institute for my project 'ZERO' (http://zeroproject.weebly.com/), a co-recipient of the Motorola Foundation grant for a community-based design studio in Beppu, Japan in 2010, and a School of the Arts (Singapore) Distinguished Fellow in 2012 for my contribution to art and design education. In 2014, I was appointed by the DesignSingapore Council as a juror for the Singapore’s President’s Design Awards, the nation’s highest award for design excellence. The same year, I was recognized by the Council of Interior Design Accreditation in the U.S. as one of the CIDA Visionaries who will help the council to develop the accreditation standards for interior design higher education in North America. In 2015, my proposal for the Next Helsinki architectural competition, titled 'Helsinki Polybrids The Nexus of Art Agency and Society' (http://www.nexthelsinki.org/) was selected by a distinguished panel of architects, academics and art practitioners led by architect Michael Sorkin. It was declared as one of the 8 most interesting submissions out of a total of over 200 from 40 countries. The proposal posits an alternative, urban museum experience where art, everyday life, biota system and community engagement could be weaved together by using the tram network as a connecting element.
Recent Interests
My recent work revolves around Lesser Urbanism, a term I coined and is inspired by William Morris’s 1882 essay The Lesser Arts of Life. Lesser Urbanism curates, examines and presents aspects of urban life in high dense cities that are overlooked or ignored. Their presences are often negotiated, contested, and sustained along the margins of society. Although urban development is progressing at a relentless pace in Asia, I find there are still the vestiges of traditional rituals and local customs subsisting alongside and in quiet resistance against the process of globalization and gentrification. To disclose and celebrate these local cultures and alternative spatial practices where resourcefulness, creativity and sociability are called upon to overcome unfavorable situations and material scarcity are imperative in Asia, as more and more vernacular knowledge and places are erased and forgotten. My research project on the Wah Fu informal public space in Hong Kong is one such effort. (http://www.studiochronotope.com/informal-religious-shrines-curating-community-assets-in-hong-kong-and-singapore.html). On the other hand, Curating Whampoa and the Whampoa Archives in Singapore are projects that look at the role of the arts in supporting ageing in place and the storytelling capacity of objects.
In Lesser Urbanism, I am equally keen to articulate forms of individual and collective judgment and governance, both tacit and stated, as well as social conditions that give rise to, scale out and sustain localised spatial organisations. They herald a novel urban experience, alternative strategies of configuring spaces and make visible a vernacular poetics that are more representative of our current splintered and tangled lives heightened by increasing contingency, scarcity and entropy.
Contact: chronotope[at]gmail.com; tkong[at]nus.edu.sg
Associate Professor, NUS (2019); AIADO (2006). BA, 1989, BArch, 1992 (Honors), National University of Singapore; MArch, with Distinction, 1998, Cranbrook Academy of Art, MI. Concurrent Position: Principal, Studio Chronotope; Partner, SKA Architects. Completed Works: Ecology of Small Ideas, Japan; Prime Minister's residence, Singapore. Lectures: Netherlands Architecture Institute; Berlage Institute; Tongji University, China; Sofia Architecture Week; Singapore Management University; Nanyang Technological University; Inclusive Museum Conference, Portugal; Make a Difference School, Hong Kong. Exhibitions: Helsinki Polybrids, Tallinn Architecture Biennale; Archifest, Singapore; Urbanscape Gallery, Canada; Architectural Institute of British Columbia's Architecture Center. Publications: The Social Curating and Archiving Project, Artswok Community Inspiration Series; Between Making and Action: Ideas for a Relational Design Pedagogy, Emerging Practices: Professions, Values, and Approaches in Design and Design Education; Lives in Large Interiors, Handbook of Interior Architecture and Design; Zero, A10 New European Architecture; Crisis, Dialogue and Imagination, Networks of Design. Editorial Committees: Interiors: Design/Architecture/Culture; Journal of Architecture, Media, Politics, Society; Awards: National Heritage Board Grant; CIDA 2014 Visionary; Toyota Foundation; Motorola Foundation; Jaap Bakema Fellow. Membership: Associate Member, AIA; Member, Association of Architectural Humanities Research Society.
Personal Statement
I am an alumnus of the National University of Singapore and Cranbrook Academy of Art, where I studied on a merit scholarship and graduated with distinction in my final year. I have taught for thirteen years at the School of the Art Institute of Chicago and held leadership positions in the Department of Architecture, Interior Architecture and Designed Objects. I returned in 2019 to take up my current teaching appointment in the Department of Architecture at the National University of Singapore. I am also the Principal of Studio Chronotope and a licensed architect in Singapore.
I see architecture as a form of reflective practice. To be an architect for me is to engage in a lifelong process of questioning and searching that traces the arc of my personal growth and development. Architecture carries a surplus beyond building. I eschew narrowly defined approaches to a project, given constraints or outcomes. I see myself as someone who constructs a world in our cultural landscape with care, commitment, empathy and generosity. My projects have traversed across a bandwidth of scales, complexities and deployed an array of media and methodologies. They range from the exploration of generative sequence of forming, the affective qualities of materials, the use and design of vast, interconnected interior environments (http://www.academia.edu/8676931/Lives_in_Large_Interiors), participatory design (http://www.studiochronotope.com/dispatches/beppu-street-studio), and curatorial and archiving practices (https://www.whampoaarchives.com/)
I strive to imbue my work with significance beyond the utility or the narrow relation between means and ends. I approach the education of an architect and a designer from the perspective of art-design nexus and seek to find their overlaps and convergences. This is especially significant as crossovers between disciplines become the norm as a result of shared concerns, use of common digital tools and platforms, and the need to develop a holistic approach to design. In Between Making and Action- Ideas for a Relational Design Pedagogy, I presented my experience in re-configuring the undergraduate architecture and interior architecture curricular drawing upon my interest in the arts and humanities in educating the future designer who moves relationally between different roles and ways of practicing. (http://www.tongji-di.org/en/infor_news.asp?sid=12&nid=18&lid=29&id=270)
Recognitions
I have received national and international recognitions for my design work, research and as an educator. In 2009, I was the 3rd Jaap Bakema Fellow, a competitive international fellowship administered by the Netherlands Architecture Institute for my project 'ZERO' (http://zeroproject.weebly.com/), a co-recipient of the Motorola Foundation grant for a community-based design studio in Beppu, Japan in 2010, and a School of the Arts (Singapore) Distinguished Fellow in 2012 for my contribution to art and design education. In 2014, I was appointed by the DesignSingapore Council as a juror for the Singapore’s President’s Design Awards, the nation’s highest award for design excellence. The same year, I was recognized by the Council of Interior Design Accreditation in the U.S. as one of the CIDA Visionaries who will help the council to develop the accreditation standards for interior design higher education in North America. In 2015, my proposal for the Next Helsinki architectural competition, titled 'Helsinki Polybrids The Nexus of Art Agency and Society' (http://www.nexthelsinki.org/) was selected by a distinguished panel of architects, academics and art practitioners led by architect Michael Sorkin. It was declared as one of the 8 most interesting submissions out of a total of over 200 from 40 countries. The proposal posits an alternative, urban museum experience where art, everyday life, biota system and community engagement could be weaved together by using the tram network as a connecting element.
Recent Interests
My recent work revolves around Lesser Urbanism, a term I coined and is inspired by William Morris’s 1882 essay The Lesser Arts of Life. Lesser Urbanism curates, examines and presents aspects of urban life in high dense cities that are overlooked or ignored. Their presences are often negotiated, contested, and sustained along the margins of society. Although urban development is progressing at a relentless pace in Asia, I find there are still the vestiges of traditional rituals and local customs subsisting alongside and in quiet resistance against the process of globalization and gentrification. To disclose and celebrate these local cultures and alternative spatial practices where resourcefulness, creativity and sociability are called upon to overcome unfavorable situations and material scarcity are imperative in Asia, as more and more vernacular knowledge and places are erased and forgotten. My research project on the Wah Fu informal public space in Hong Kong is one such effort. (http://www.studiochronotope.com/informal-religious-shrines-curating-community-assets-in-hong-kong-and-singapore.html). On the other hand, Curating Whampoa and the Whampoa Archives in Singapore are projects that look at the role of the arts in supporting ageing in place and the storytelling capacity of objects.
In Lesser Urbanism, I am equally keen to articulate forms of individual and collective judgment and governance, both tacit and stated, as well as social conditions that give rise to, scale out and sustain localised spatial organisations. They herald a novel urban experience, alternative strategies of configuring spaces and make visible a vernacular poetics that are more representative of our current splintered and tangled lives heightened by increasing contingency, scarcity and entropy.
Contact: chronotope[at]gmail.com; tkong[at]nus.edu.sg
