Transcript
I’m Diana Bain, Associate Director in the Yale-NUS President’s Office. I started at the College, in early 2013, when the campus was just a sloping dirt field. Construction was just starting on what would become the beautiful indoor and outdoor spaces we’ve been lucky to call our school, our workplace, and, for many, our home.
The main entrance to the campus, known as the Oculus, is where most community members and visitors first enter. The Oculus is one of the highlights of the campus, with its soaring roof that opens to let the rain fall into the reflecting pool below. The square roof above and the circular reflecting pool below, whose shapes traditionally represent the Earth and sky, are flipped upside down in this case.
While the Oculus is the entry to campus, it is also a place the community returns to throughout the year. Many activities and special events take place around the reflecting pool and in the adjoining spaces. Here, students attend ballroom dance practice, wait for transportation for a field trip, or take graduation photos with their family and friends; parents and families drop off and pick up their students; staff and faculty gather to celebrate annual festivals like Chinese New Year and Deepavali; and visitors come to attend academic talks, arts events, and performances.
Immediately behind the Oculus in the Campus Green, is the Eco-pond. Located at the lowest point on campus, the pond and its system of bio-swales were engineered to filter water runoff from the rest of the University Town campus. The pond, surrounded by beautiful aquatic plants, is home to many creatures. You will see waterhen, fish, turtles, dragonflies and sunbirds and even occasional visitors like otters.
The landscaping, designed by architecture firm, Lekker Architects, draws visitors across the pond and into the Campus Green spaces. Rather than being just a backdrop for the college, the outdoor spaces were designed as an educational landscape to extend learning opportunities beyond the classroom. Each outdoor area on campus contains a thematic collection of related plant species.
The central Campus Green is home to six mature trees that were painstakingly conserved during construction. Of particular import is the Margaritaria indica, the first individual of this species discovered in Singapore, and now a designated Heritage Tree. These mature trees create a canopy under which Lekker placed native and regional trees and shrubs to mimic the underlayer and undergrowth of an “evolved tropical landscape”.
