This thesis explores how ecospirituality can be used as a lens to speculate a new urbanism in a highly pragmatic and functionalist Singapore (using Paya Lebar Airbase as a testbed) that has lost its close connection to nature. In light of the current ecological crisis, this thesis investigates how our natural landscape can be understood from a spiritual realm and how ecospirituality can be cultivated, in an attempt to “resacralise” nature.

The thesis starts by studying the sacred African Baobab tree (Adansonia Digitata) as an archetypal tree, one that has been providing generously for rural African communities especially in times of need. The reverence African people have for the tree can be seen in the way communities are built around, protect and care for the tree. By studying this reciprocal relationship between the community and the tree, five contexts are generated through which the sacredness of trees can be enhanced. These contexts, which are interrelated and interconnected, are spatial attributes, programmatic possibilities, utility, temporality, and rituals.

Christopher Alexander’s Theory of Wholeness and the concept of Holarchy are adopted together to explore how the concepts of wholeness, holons and poly-centers can generate new urban-architectural expressions of forms, geometries, organisations, growth, (eco)spirituality and relationships at different holonic scales. Haptic models and drawings combined with computational scripting and modelling were used throughout the process of form-finding.