Project Description
The newly inaugurated Singapore University of Technology & Design required a centerpiece installation for their temporary campus to exemplify their mission of incubating innovative design. As the primary communal resource space on campus, the central library presented the ideal venue for this design exercise.

FORTH explored two joinery varieties.

The first, a gravity-defiant helicoidal fan type that challenges the conventional notions of display frontage and reader access. The form also demonstrates the ironic counteraction of dead load failure by increasing live load - it is less likely to topple over as more books weigh it down.

The second type was an artistic exercise inspired by the abstraction of agate slices and coral-like morphological regrowth, and based on the structural loading gymnastic of the corner wall detail at Carlo Scarpa's Brion family complex.

The varieties share a lively and permutating palette of coloured gradients on white; and as mobile structures with permeable visibility, defined a mix of spontaneous group-work and intimate media-viewing spaces.


Client Singapore University of Technology & Design (Temporary Campus)

Duration 3 months
Completed September 2011

Project Team
Project Design Leader - Cheah Fang Leah
Student Design Assistants - Amos Chia and Jessie Tang