(All Image Courtesy of SPARK Architects)
SPARK architects has presented ‘the solar orchid’, an outline for a floating hawker center equipped for involving waterscapes over the globe, giving visitors a spot to eat and socialize. The self-sustainable, solar-powered pods endeavor to rejoin the island country of Singapore with its harbor, while reinterpreting a traditional and favored local past-time. The plan complements the Singaporean government’s drive to create floating solar-islands in nearby reservoirs.
Singapore was based on a cozy association with the water, which has verifiably been an artery of its culture, commerce and recreation. Nonetheless, many years of quick urban development has to a great extent separated this association, deleting a hefty portion of the coastline’s vernacular architecture.
Responding to the city’s culture and legacy, the layout for floating orchids reinterprets the traditional hawker, with a versatile and reconfigurable structure equipped for promptly populating different locations. Every individual pod suits cooking stalls, (with built-in exhaust, water, gas, electrical, waste accumulation and water recycling services), and in addition table settings and seating. On top is a protective canopy formed from an energy-generating expanded EFTE pillow that includes photovoltaic cells.
SPARK is an award-winning leader in the field of architecture that has created a wide-range of innovative and sustainable projects across Asia, Europe and Middle East.
‘The idea of reinventing the hawker center grew from the widely documented observation that the popularity of the traditional hawker lifestyle has begun to wane. We seek to re-energize the hawker center typology while retaining the soul of a very Singaporean dining experience’, explains Stephen Pimbley, a founding director of SPARK.
‘We have a duty as designers to develop and propose ideas and visions that can enhance our cities, as well as contribute to making them more liveable places. History offers many extraordinary examples of visionary projects that remain on paper, serving as vehicles for debate about the future of our cities.’
