Singapore: Biophilic city

     The video Singapore: Biophilic City gives me a feeling akin to culture shock. To see a city that has embraced this feeling of biophilia wholeheartedly is to see what I want my home to be. The urban integrated natural spaces seems as normal as breathing in Singapore. I know that it probably wasn’t all peaches transforming Singapore into what it is today, but it now seems as though the city could never be any other way. When Kelvin Kan, green wall designer in Singapore, spoke about his first implemented green wall, and how the idea for his design came into place I felt inspired by the amount of passion that you can hear in his voice talking about his work. The results of his project are so obviously successful; it is crazy to me that his style of green walls aren’t implemented all over the world. His goal of creating a lively green space was completely recognized, and I loved his description of the place as “the cathedral of green."

     Liak Teng Lit, Ceo of Singapore hospital, speaks about the garden space implemented in the hospital he works in, there were a few things that he said that I was surprised, pleasantly so, to hear.  While I can really appreciate that green space is great to incorporate into healing spaces, what I really enjoyed hearing was Lit speak about was how this green space incorporated into the hospital is a space that should be shared and open to the public and animals, not just kept for patients. As Lit says, "We should maximize the utility of this whole space… We want the birds here.. If you do this the birds will come, if you do that the butterflies will come.” I absolutely love how everyone in the film puts a large emphasis on the importance of bringing birds and insects and other wildlife into the shared green spaces of Singapore: “We, on purpose, plant trees that will attract birds, hopefully to attract hundreds of species of birds, and the fish” —Rosalind Tan.

  

     All of the people spoken to in this film are not only passionate about biophilia and biodiversity, but are so knowledgeable about these biophilic areas that they work within. It seems so obvious to them the benefits of the transformations taking place in Singapore and the need for this kind of work to take place. If we could transplant that passion and that attitude here in the US I can just imagine what we could do. Mohan Krishnamoorthy, primary school teacher in Singapore, has an attitude that I wish all planners could understand. Sometimes all you need to do to get something beautiful and functional created is to.. just do it:  “it wasn’t planned.. you’ve got a blank canvas, just start drawing … it’s not rocket science… It is nothing to design, plants grow if you give them what they need.” Let’s just do it!