Basically, everything started off with an image of a fire hydrant chain shot at the roadside, red & multi-layered coated to be precise. An object that stood for many years at the same spot but yet often disregarded by the many that walked pass. As mentioned, countless coats of paints built up the exterior and cultivated reams of circular wraps due to its base form. Everything needs to have a foundation no matter what it is and things generally start developing over time just like how Tanjong Pagar started out. Originally being called the Cape of Stakes, Tanjong Pagar emerges itself from a small fishing village with roads and streets linking each other forming the bond. Just like how the Chinese sayings, ‘One chopstick breaks, but a bundle of them strengthen all’. Roads and streets are like the foundation. Without them, Tanjong Pagar will be just like the idea of the insignificant chain. Only the buildup tiers and layers make it unique as every coat has different consistency and that is individualism.

For this project, the first level of visual (looking) holds nothing much but just a visual of an ordinary chain which slowly advances to the ‘Seeing’ level that holds the Text, ‘Layers upon Layers’. This was done to anchor the meaning. Looking and seeing are different, just like hearing and listening. One gives the viewer the visual experiences while the other provides him/her the visual understanding. Perhaps just like how a visual-impaired person wants to see but not to look. And like how this project works, through contextual knowledge, it is a book & pages are meant to be flipped upon to advance the content within and how layers of words created this rationale in-order to get a paragraph or a page. The content within encompasses the names of the Roads & Streets that surrounds the area with ‘Cape of Stakes’ as the top basis. Each page holds a cut-out of each individual name with Stakes-like support literally holding them and partially stained with the silkscreen image at unique sections. Once every individual piece was made to layer on top of each other, a distinctive image of the original will be form. Just like how Tanjong Pagar works out to be now.

Ultimately, everything takes time to progress just like how tedious it takes to get each individual page to be precisely cut out at their particular areas.

Dimension: A3