The ground has always formed part of Singapore’s political discourse. For the state, the ground plane is a resource to be maximised; the result has been the creation of land, housing and burial policies designed to control and manage land use. Because of this, the ground manifests itself within juridical systems and, although there is a clear intention to treat it as an asset or stake, this operation does not always hold. The thesis establishes a link between the complex condition of land scarcity in Singapore and the construction of national identity and myth, drawing on Anderson and Barthes.It begins by examining the history of the ground and explaining how housing and burial policies have served not only as pragmatic responses, but also as expressions of state power and authority over land. The thesis then turns to these policies as myths: the myth of socio-economic equality, the myth of racial equality and the myth of progress. Because Singapore is made up of different social groups, such myths are critical to the formation of an imagined community among people who do not share the same kinship structures.The research examines the environment of the living, from housing policy and neighbourhood planning to architecture and the plan of the public housing flat, alongside the spaces of the dead, including burial policy, ritual architecture, cemeteries and columbaria. At each scale, it asks how policies and designed spaces sustain wider myths, and when these constructions fail, adapt or encounter resistance. The thesis finally questions the extent to which the condition of the ground has generated these myths and altered the way of life of Singapore’s citizens.

Andrea graduated from the National University of Singapore with a Master of Architecture in 2010 and worked in policy and urban planning at the Urban Redevelopment Authority in Singapore from 2011 to 2015. In 2016 she completed the History and Critical Thinking MA at the Architectural Association, where she later completed her PhD. Her research interests include domestic space, the condition of home and the spatial cultures surrounding death.