The thesis explores Singapore’s progressive paradigms of an ideal clean and green global city - the ecological modernisation ideal that Singapore’s urban policy has been developing since 1963: a “Garden City”, “City in a Garden”, and recently, “City in Nature”.

Emergent dynamics have the potential to destabilise the current established order - microbes that cause emergent diseases by discovering new modes of transmission or forms of existence can swiftly change prevailing political policies, economic structures or agricultural practices. The pandemic has demonstrated how spontaneous growth in manicured green spaces has made Singapore more attractive and resilient.

Microbial diversity plays a huge role in the lost biodiversity and is essential for maintaining a balanced ecosystem. As humans are part of this ecosystem, our immune systems will fail to function when the exposure to microbes is reduced or eradicated. There is an urgent need for alternative methods of ecological architecture, a new approach to urban design that treats biodiversity as an opportunity and a valued resource in the built environment. Therefore, this thesis aims to speculate how new typologies can be emerged to recover community resilience through a healthy exposure to bacterial flora even when we spend most of the time indoors, once again fundamentally changing our spatial routines.