Abstract
In the Anthropocene era, can our effects on earth be reversed through a more ecologically sustainable form of urbanism? As Richard Hassell pointed out, “the only way to preserve nature is to integrate it into our built environment.” With more then two thrid of the world’s population moving into urban environment by 2050s, natural environment will have to expand and in the process, displacing every other living thing. This thesis seeks to search for a prototypical housing hybrid which attempts to blend the natural and the urban environment to bridge the dichotomy between the two. On an urban level, the thesis seeks to oppose monofunctional land use and apply the concept of landscape ecology three dimensionally. This new urban-nature hybrid will facilitate the coexistence of residential complex and forest, providing habitat for all people, flora, and fauna through having a more porous residential neighborhood where human dwelling is elevated skywards, freeing up ground plane to be forested. Exterior dweliing is made possible by the mild climate condition in the tropic, where boundary between the interior and the exteior and establish fluid transition between the two. Consequently, the dissolution of boundary will result in a community-centric neighbourhood. In all, the housing hybrid will be one that dissolve the boundary between urban environment and natural environment, interior and exterior, public and private.