Intermezzo 3: Air

One-third of Singapore, including the central business district, is less than five metres above sea level—not as low as the Netherlands, one-third of which lies below sea level, but low enough to worry the city-state’s famously foresighted urban planners. Singapore’s plans to defend against rising seas include building sea walls, polders, and new islands made from reclaimed land. New buildings are to be built four metres above mean sea level, and critical infrastructure at least another metre higher. The ways in which Singapore expresses its creativity uniquely is also informed by its atmospheres, including air, as a part of a Singaporean ecology. Atmospheres is another way of approaching a consideration of the elements (natural and manufactured), actants (human and non-human including animal, plant, mineral, microbial, and more), and agency (the ability of something to be self-determining in any sense). Atmospheres, like creativity, resist research apprehension, but bathe experience in the sensory and experiential of everyday lives, places, and encounters. Like creativity, and climate change, atmospheres exist in a space of speculative concern, be it celebration or dread.