A landscape commission to repair the ground between several conserved barracks blocks at Gillman, turning a tired car-dominated yard into a shaded public courtyard. The design keeps the heritage trees, slows the rainwater and gives the arts cluster a genuine outdoor room for openings, markets and ordinary lunch hours.
We started by reading the site water — where it pooled, where it ran — and let that set the levels. A shallow planted swale takes the monsoon run-off into a rain garden instead of straight to the drain, and a loose grove of native trees extends the existing canopy so the courtyard is usable in the middle of a Singapore afternoon. Permeable granite-set paving ties the blocks back into one legible ground.
The detailing is deliberately quiet so the conserved architecture leads: long timber benches, a single water table that children gravitate to, and warm in-ground lighting that lets the space stay open and safe after dark. It is landscape as civic repair — modest, green and built to be used hard for decades.
