IVAN KURNIAWAN NASUTION

PhD Student

Email: e0462041@u.nus.edu

Research Title: The Dynamics Within and Around the Production, Circulation, and Enactment of Land Documents in Emerging Second-Tier Cities: an Actor Network Theory Approach to Land Planning and Management
Research Group: Social and Cultural Geographies (SCG)
Thesis Advisor: Prof Tim Bunnell


My research is interested in the physical and conceptual form of land. The physical form is never neutral, it is shaped by socio-cultural practices and activities of nonhuman entities. And the conceptual form, for example, land use plan documents, often ‘hang’ all these practices together problematically. The research (and the researcher) will deliberately be immersing themselves in the complexity and messiness of the sociomateriality of the land planning documents as well as the daily life of the documents within the heterogeneous spatial forms-norms. The research will inquire:

  • how planning-related knowledge is institutionally produced,
  • how this knowledge is recorded/inscribed within planning documents,
  • how the knowledge embedded in the documents are circulated among various agencies, and
  • how the knowledge embedded in the documents are enacted into heterogeneous socio-spatial forms-norms.

The research aspires not only to understand the dynamics within and around the circulation of the conception of the earth’s land surface via records inscribed within land documents, especially in the context of emerging second-tier cities but also to enrich the methodologies on document studies.

I obtained a degree in architecture at Institut Teknologi Bandung, Indonesia and post-graduate training in architectural research at Berlage Institute Rotterdam, the Netherlands. At present, I am also a Research Associate at the Centre for Ageing Research in the Environment, National University of Singapore. Before the appointment, I worked as a Research Associate in the Centre for Sustainable Cities, NUS (2012-2017), and was previously an Architectural Designer at Park+Associates, Singapore (2006-2009).

My recent publications include “Designing for Resilience in Public Housing: An Architect’s Perspective” in an edited book titled Building Resilient Neighbourhoods in Singapore (2019) and an article titled “Singapore’s Urban Folly” in a book titled see play eat walk, Gwangju Folly III: Where the Everyday and the Unexpected Intersect (2018).

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