Semoga Bahagia examines the value of leisure in the definition of citizen and nation. A Citizens’ Parliament, a place to host the initiation of new Singaporeans, critiques an efficient city. In recuperating histories of place, notions of value are accumulated through leisurely pursuits, personal reflection, and agency, recalibrating our attitude towards - and within - the city.

1. This thesis emerged from a study of Nuisance. Its antagonism to spatial norms of architecture made it an inspiring, yet limited phenomena. The status quo has to be substituted by a self-affirming set of values.

2. Leisure, critical of the capital-centric city, possessed revalued value - on a local level of architecture, and collectively towards a communal sense of nationhood.

3. Infrastructure, so central to the productive city, is exposed. Infrastructures of leisure subvert the integrity of their ubiquitous counterparts; their active forms accumulating their own patina of meaning.

4. A Malayan spatial disposition towards productive leisure, drawn from the particularities of the land, is exemplified through the work of local landscape artists in the years following independence. They make visible the leisurely potentials in which the architecture sits, invisible to other modes of representation.