RS2: The Orang-orang and the Hutan
Yutong Wu
Yutong is an MA Environmental Architecture graduate from Royal College of Art. She has academic experience at Jiangnan University and University of New South Wales before joining the RCA. Following on from the completion of her bachelor’s degree, Yutong worked as an architect with completed and ongoing projects in China, exploring her comprehension of being an interdisciplinary designer. Her exhibited collaborative work and individual work ranged from intangible cultural heritage to green sustainable design. She has engaged with TEDx activities as a member which inspired her participation across organisations.
Throughout her MA, her research has focused on exposing healthcare-concerned inequalities and environmental and social injustice. She has given 4 main individual reports and 1 collaborative studio project across courses. The works examined geographic and virtual environment concern, from a global perspective to community scale.
At the RCA, she contributed to EA Research Studio 2 - The Orang-orang and the Hutan, led by Christina Geros. The programme is based on the land-rights related legal case in Central Kalimantan, Indonesia. She concentrated on the consequences of land-burning-caused health issues. The studio group has worked with PetaBencana and Wahli, the local humanitarian NGOs, to complete a booklet through mapping and reports. After a 15-day Indonesia field trip, she worked with her colleagues on experimenting a communication system physically and virtually. In addition, she represented Burning Photography for Media Study and raised a topic - “Environmental Crisis on Social Media Platform” on her Critical and Historical Studies dissertation. Since the coronavirus pandemic broke out, she started her healthcare-concerned study. With a pilot study on Cuba, China, the UK and Indonesia, she came out with her report - Emergency Healthcare Scheme, her design project - A Concerned Edge and her seminar work The Inequality.
Yutong is critical to health-related environmental justice. She practiced rehabilitation landscape architecture and environmental architecture intervention. Specifically, during her individual project at RCA, she has an obvious ambition of reflecting environmental and social injustice through reporting, mapping and planning. She is aware of the essentiality of promoting methods- interaction with media platforms and interdisciplinary collaboration.
In her A Concerned Edge healthcare project, she developed her project through primary and secondary data - referring to dialogues, online news, local research reports from humanitarian-aid NGOs, such as Médecins Sans Frontières, the World Health Organization, Google Earth and Humanitarian OpenStreetMap Team etc. The strategic planning is to intervene Jakarta’s local healthcare access, with amenity infrastructure.
Yutong has been exploring humanity fields and consequently, she is being constantly formed as an interdisciplinary architect and looking forward to practicing through collaboration.
Intervening Context — Facts Mapping & Typology
The shoreline will not be “the shoreline” geographically, the investments financially redefined the new shoreline to the edge of the reclaimed lands. The current coast is constantly losing its environmental and social status.
The changes along the shoreline are still a territory and colonialism talk over time. The indigenous residents were greatly affected by forced evictions and inevitable devastations on their living and working environment. Thus, the clients of this project include the informal settlements who may lack the accurate identifications, the architecture density becomes the evident element to identify the slums.
Both the urbanisation and pandemic has exposed the scarcity of primary care access and pre-crisis preparation. Referring to a 15-minute healthcare radius, the existing healthcare facilities have only covered 50% of the coastal area approximately, yet the pharmacies or clinics are beyond the reach of 800-1000m distance which may reduce the coverage.
Jakarta has a long history of surviving floods; the city planning department has collaborated with Humanitarian OpenStreetMap team marked evacuation sites and emergency command centres. The intervention network is going to explore a great relationship with the public emergency evacuation plan. Primarily, the site or centres should be facilitated with efficient emergency supplies; vitally, the residents are familiar with the evacuation routes, as the sites are where they are consciously seeking help when an emergency occurs. On one hand, the economy geographically depends on the marine-oriented industry, fishery and tourism. Large coastal areas have been occupied as loading, parking lots, parks and markets. The multiple functions made the open spaces flexible - part of the parking lot and parks could be temporarily converted to confront crises. On the other hand, it is respectful that Jakarta has a dynamic tradition to have certain-period markets or hold festival activities on the open spaces.
Thus, based on the relationship among infectious index data, architecture density, healthcare access and evacuation sites, the high-risk areas are defined to be the prior targets.
Medium:
Facts Mapping GIFSize:
18s20'
Intervention Concept
To maintain the essential evacuation status, this project is not planned to interfere with the original evacuation routes, it is considered as a “furniture piece” amenity to take the advantage of the sites to integrate with the local form.
The experimental concept is hoped to be promoted citywide. In the meantime, cooperating with local clinicians, healthcare providers and concerned organisations to build up the connection between the people, the knowledge and the concern, ensuring the vulnerable are being taken proper care of. If the prominent character can be the symbol to the community, it is possible to remind the residents that these centres could assist as urgently as they need.
Medium:
Concept DiagramStrategic Planning Layout
Site Presentation
Sites B, D, and G are selected to present the typical typology of this strategic planning:
Site B: The indigenous neighbourhood (65 hectares) is fishery-oriented in Muara Angka (fishing port), Kapuk Muara. The open spaces are always filled with dried fish and hold fish markets from time to time. The fishermen and workers of the fishing industry are reluctant to leave the kampung no matter how disorganised and chaotic the environment in the fishing village. The Jakarta administration is building the Muara Angke Social Housing project which will have 35 blocks of apartments to accommodate the peoples living in Muara Angke. Currently, the community has an emergency centre. The planning is taking the centre as the command centre to allocate new infrastructure nearby.
Site D: This site is in the densest population area along the shoreline. Kampung Akuarium is under redevelopment. It has the potential to integrate the healthcare resources and promote healthcare knowledge to back up political and financial upgrades. This kampung and nearby are planned to be served by relatively fair healthcare access.
Site G: Kali Baru is in the coastal transportation hub zone with more than 10 schools. The population are mainly industrial workers and school children. The open spaces are a football stadium and truck parking lots. It is considered to introduce interactions to the community to maximise the use with healthcare interventions.
Medium:
Strategic Planning GIFSize:
38s63'Conceptual Intervention — Amenity Prototype
Healthcare Intervention Co-exists with Local Activities
Healthcare Promotion in Local Community — Cooperating with local clinicians, healthcare providers and concerned organisations
Emergency Healthcare Service
This network is planned to put long-term healthcare access into the consciousness of the community members, in addition to their familiarity with the evacuation routes. It envisions the co-existence between itself and local communities.
All of the envisions will be cooperating with local clinicians, healthcare providers and concerned organisations to bridge the people, the knowledge and the concern.
Medium:
Intervention Prototype Diagram GIF and Envisions RenderingsThe report has also translated this outcome into Bahasa Indonesia. It is essential to have Indonesian local momentums, whether from the government, NGOs or even private citizens to launch such an endeavour, so it is not only a project funded and pushed by international interests and groups.