Hot Air: monoliths, deep veils and the urban equator

“Hot Air: Monoliths, Deep Veils and the Urban Equator” is a journey through my creative practice via six architectural case studies designed and built from 2007 to 2022 in equatorial Singapore. Hot Air is defined as a conceptual, linguistic, and physical material that is the primary protagonist in my practice. Using the case studies, I produce a descriptive, formal, and performative design framework for architecturally scaled buildings calibrated to the urban equator. My built works are investigated through this framework, traced through the design strategies of “monoliths” and “deep veils,” which are elaborated on through the use of courtyards, verandas, sky funnels, dampeners, filters, stains, leaks, color, depth, camouflage, gradients, and patterns. Geography and travel situate my creative identity in the larger constellation of pressures impacting cities on the equator. Eight modern equatorial precedents are explored on a journey to Indonesia, India, Ghana, and Brazil. Designed and built between the late 1930s to the mid-1970s, each precedent is examined through their respective formal and material interfaces with Hot Air. The precedents are compared to the case studies, describing how travel research impacts creative practice. The method that I produce out of travel embeds Hot Air into architectural drawing, visualization, and the photographic representation in my work. The creative practice scholarship establishes a theoretical and conceptual design value system that positively contextualizes, defines, and engages Hot Air experientially and materially in the practice of architecture attuned to a rapidly urbanizing and warming world.