Upon hearing about renovation efforts to make Tanjong Katong Complex a community-inclusive place that preserves Malay heritage, PSYKHE took the initiative to gather community insights that would inform placemaking¹ strategy. The goal was to generate insights and placemaking principles that could be used to implement concrete initiatives that would create a “beautiful” space.

¹ Placemaking is a participatory process for shaping public space that harnesses the ideas and assets of the people who use it.

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Over the course of 1 week, PSYKHE conducted rapid guerrilla testing consisting of:

1. Onboarding
To immerse ourselves into the concept of placemaking and the broader historical context of the Geylang Serai Cultural Belt, PSYKHE began with rapid desktop research into placemaking frameworks, principles, and historical context.
In preparation for observational fieldwork, the team also 
 designed the recruitment criteria, interview questions, and observational guide to be used.

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2. Fieldwork
PSYKHE conducted rapid guerrilla fieldwork consisting of:

• 4 unique site visits
• Photo and video documentation of observations
• n=35 street interviews with community residents and local business owners
• Visitor immersion exercises through first-hand experiences of common activities (e.g. eating lunch, shopping in the space)

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3. Analysis
As a wrap-up to the fieldwork, the team collated and synthesised key findings into a lean, placemaking programme design report.This consisted of resident verbatims, business owner verbatims and key placemaking guiding principles to inform future programme design.

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