SELA/SELA (Eps. 2) | ArMSchitecture - Trimmed House

Around the world countries are grappling with the COVID-19 outbreak, and in Asia, local governments have put measures in place to curb the spread. Hong Kong was impacted early on and issued a quarantine order on 8 February 2020. Singapore was quick in detecting and responding to the cases and has been thorough in regulating its spatial use since then. Malaysia has issued a Movement Control Order since March 2020. Indonesia has recently followed suit with its Government Regulation Number 21 Year 2020 about Large-Scale Social Distancing to regulate localised movement.

In light of how public spaces enhance our experience of the cities, private developments have also started to contribute by way of extending their property, whether through urban design policies or simply as a function of the buildings on those plots.

Public space, as we know it, is a designated area in a governed human settlement that is accessible to everyone. As it is named, public space functions as a place for public gathering—one of the earliest examples is the square in ancient Greek metropolis and similar space that other cities built through the span of the last millennium. The more recent takes on public spaces include parks, pedestrian path as well as other accessible infrastructure, and sometimes, institutional buildings. Public space then functions more than as a place to gather, but also to relax, spend time doing almost anything, up to being a deliberate pause in a dense urban design, and as an ecological element, for instance, an area of water reserve or for nature to thrive.