































ARESTY RUTGERS UNDERGRADUATE RESEARCH JOURNAL, VOLUME I, ISSUE VI 

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IMAGINARY GARDENS: 
SOLARPUNK ILLUSIONS 

AND REALITIES IN THE 

“GARDEN CITY” OF SIN-

GAPORE 

Evan Keeton 

 

✵ ABSTRACT 
By extending its vision in 2014 of building a 

sustainable state through the framework of a “Gar-
den City”, Singapore has set itself up to become the 
world’s first “Smart Nation”. With a focus on energy 
and resource solutions, the city-state has heavily 
relied on state-driven technocratic interventions to 
create what Prime Minister Lee Hsien Long calls 
“meaningful and fulfilled lives” for all. This techno-
cratic, human-centered development draws a paral-
lel to “Solarpunk”, a model of environmental utopia. 
The Solarpunk genre gathers speculative fiction 
works which imagines post-transitional climatic 
utopias. This model draws ties to the concepts of 
circular economies, degrowth economies, and de-
colonization of energy. Inspired by energy and envi-
ronmental humanities scholar Rhys Williams, it can 
be understood that the Solarpunk environmental 
model offers the elements necessary for ongoing 
global energy transition. It is important to note that 
Singapore’s current energy transition solutions, 
embedded in its Smart Nation vision, inform some 
Solarpunk imaginaries. Specifically, it utilizes an in-
terdisciplinary method by conducting a close read-
ing of both designer and governmental reports on 
two smart projects in Singapore: Gardens by the 
Bay and Jewel Changi Airport. It compares the aes-
thetic, design, purpose, and meaning of these 
structures to existing conceptions of Solarpunk. 
These projects embody Solarpunk in their aesthetic 
and ethos, but they are appropriated for uses and 
meanings that undermine this embodiment. While 

Singapore’s ecologically reflective solutions offer some 
climatic hope, they reaffirm the need to rethink the en-
ergy transition in the name of climatic justice, freedom, 
and environmental harmony. 

 

1 INTRODUCTION 
Choosing a certain image of the Earth’s ecolog-

ical future makes that image a reality. An optimistic vi-
sion can inspire people to act, leading to change and 
ingenuity. A pessimistic image can promote inaction 
and apathy. Driving the way we think and act, the envi-
ronmental imaginary thus becomes our reality. Along 
this line of thinking, a movement known as “Solarpunk” 
has sprung out of the literary genre of speculative fic-
tion as an explicit rejection of dystopic imageries, 
gathering disparate voices to paint a detailed portrait 
of ecological utopia. Recently, Singapore has gained 
recognition as a real-life embodiment of Solarpunk. 
Positioning itself as a leader in environmental con-
sciousness and futuristic architecture, the nation has 
enacted policies and concrete architectural projects, 
attempting to actualize a utopian environmental vision. 
Singapore’s green image is so recognizable that one of 
its projects has even become the community banner on 
Reddit (Reference source not found), though Reddit 
users have challenged its visibility, calling Singapore’s 
lived experience “actually Cyber punk instead,” refer-
encing the genre’s dystopic predecessor ([deleted] 
comment on CaptainSponge 2020). 
 

Figure 1: Singapore, as shown in the 
r/solarpunk community banner. Source: 
www.reddit.com/r/solarpunk/ 

 
Emerging out of this online discourse is a pro-

ductive question: is Singapore Solarpunk? More specif-
ically, to what extent does Singapore embody the ide-
als of Solarpunk? The “green” image Singapore pre-
sents to the world can have significant ramifications as 
an environmental imaginary, validating its model of 
eco-conscious development. This image may bring a 
sustainable model to global prominence. Conversely, it 
may obscure lingering challenges that the country fails 
to address. Moreover, Singapore reveals under close 

http://www.reddit.com/r/solarpunk/


ARESTY RUTGERS UNDERGRADUATE RESEARCH JOURNAL, VOLUME I, ISSUE VI 

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analysis the values and challenges of taking So-
larpunk as a model of development. Within Singa-
pore’s current vision of a “Smart Nation”, major gov-
ernment projects provide the main insight into the 
country’s Solarpunk excursions. Specifically, Singa-
pore’s Gardens by the Bay and the Jewel Changi 
Airport have garnered international attention for 
setting “new green energy standards” (Kolesnikov-
Jessop 2011), while also projecting a utopian aes-
thetic. In examining these projects, this paper ar-
gues that they partially embody the Solarpunk aes-
thetic and ethos, but that their geopolitical and 
economic meanings prove challenging to a So-
larpunk reality. Despite these challenges, both pro-
jects advance technology that may support a So-
larpunk future, allowing them to become aspira-
tional examples that demand further creativity to 
overcome the challenges of actualizing a Solarpunk 
reality. 

 

2 WHAT IS “SOLARPUNK”? 
“Solarpunk” refers to a collection of imagi-

nary utopian futures. This definition draws on the 
work of environmental humanities scholar Rhys Wil-
liams, laid out in “‘This Shining Confluence of Magic 
and Technology’: Solarpunk, Energy Imaginaries, 
and the Infrastructures of Solarity”. In his essay, Wil-
liams synthesizes a number of anthologies into a 
cohesive framework of three pillars: light, abun-
dance, and transparency (Williams 2019). Evident in 
the vibrant, futuristic aesthetics of the genre, these 
pillars run much deeper, as his analysis suggests that 
they form the core values of a Solarpunk society. For 
instance, sunlight becomes “entangle[d]… with 
community”, being a shared public resource and 
even at times, an object of communal religious feel-
ing (Williams 2019). In stark contrast with the sup-
ply-and-demand dialectic of modern capitalist socie-
ty, Solarpunk celebrates an abundance of natural 
resources. The first and foremost is light, around 
which transparent and harmonious societies flour-
ish. At times, Williams acknowledges the transpar-
ency of such societies as a totalitarian streak, which 
underscores the fact that Solarpunk explores an un-
familiar set of relationships between people and the 
environment (Williams 2019). This dissonance posi-

tions Solarpunk as a cautionary exploration of the fine 
line between eco-consciousness and authoritarian en-
vironmentalism. Nevertheless, Solarpunk’s target re-
mains a harmonious imagined society built on the val-
ues of light, abundance, and transparency. 

Another understanding of Solarpunk considers 
the examination of the supporting structures of the life-
style it depicts. As per Rhys Williams, a Solarpunk soci-
ety is built on “…an infrastructural base encoded with 
an ecologically sound sensibility, facilitating agency in 
a way that allows us to act without thinking in much the 
way we do now, but in full knowledge that our actions 
do not extract an ecological cost” (Williams 2019). In 
other words, Williams suggests that Solarpunk rethinks 
the ways in which people achieve a common and ele-
vated standard of living. Part of the work of Solarpunk is 
redefining this elevated standard, prioritizing harmony 
with nature and freedom from environmental concern. 
Today’s consumerist convenience may not be con-
sistent with, or even desirable in, such a future. But his 
definition also highlights Solarpunk as a term with in-
frastructural meaning and as a means of producing and 
distributing the resources people need in which every 
step is in harmony with the environment. 

It is tempting to conclude that the Solarpunk 
philosophy is an outright rejection of capitalism. So-
larpunk as an idea should not outright embrace or re-
ject any one economic system, for this unduly limits its 
speculative capacity. Nevertheless, in his essay “art, 
energy, and technology, the Solarpunk movement,” 
engineering researcher Juan David Reina-Rozo rightly 
concludes that “the decolonization of energy is neces-
sary to inhabit potential futures” (Reina-Rozo 2021). 
Reina-Rozo’s analysis recalls the linguistic origins of 
Solarpunk with its emphasis on solar and other renew-
able energies, and highlights the genre’s relevance to 
the ongoing energy transition. Moreover, Solarpunk 
draws a parallel to other concepts in the energy transi-
tion. “Degrowth economy”, rejects limitless growth and 
demands reduced resource consumption. “Circular 
economies” are completely renewable, self-sustaining 
pathways of production (Lai 2022). Certainly, these sus-
tainable economic models cannot be consistent with 
capitalism in its purest, most unrestrained form. In this 
way, a Solarpunk future necessarily demands a chal-
lenge to the status quo, collecting and implementing 



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values, infrastructures, and individual practices that 
contribute to a revolutionary and sustainable way of 
life.  

 

3 IS SINGAPORE’S “SMART 

NATION” SOLARPUNK? 
Like Solarpunk, the “Smart Nation” vision 

Singapore has embraced outlines an imaginary, 
idealized future. Key to understanding this self-
imagination is understanding how Singapore ima-
gines the roles of its government and businesses 
leading the way into the future. Singapore has long 
envisioned itself as a “garden city,” a phrase which 
took root in 1967 when then-Prime Minister Lee 
Kuan Yew introduced a major beautification plan for 
the city (“S’pore to Become Beautiful, Clean City 
within Three Years” 1967). This vision, more recently 
referred to as a “city in a garden,” operated through 
the creation and expansion of tree-planting and park 
development programs in the hopes of weaving a 
beautiful green environment throughout the city 
(“Garden City Vision Is Introduced” 2015). Among 
other goals, this beautification project sought to 
make the country more attractive globally, both for 
tourists and for investors (“Garden City Vision Is In-
troduced” 2015). Highly successful, the ongoing 
garden city vision has played an important role in 
Singapore’s growing global status and rapid devel-
opment. Since 2014, PM Lee Hsien Long’s new 
“Smart Nation” vision has extended and expanded 
this trend, promising in his words for a nation “where 
people live meaningful and fulfilled lives, enabled 
seamlessly by technology, offering exciting oppor-
tunities for all” (Ho 2017). Nanyang Technological 
University researcher Ezra Ho elaborates that 
“the Smart Nation initiative is about coordinating 
and intensifying the effort to develop the institutions, 
regulations and talent for a hyper-connected, data-
fied urbanity” (Ho 2017). He illustrates this effort 
with three examples: high-tech living spaces which 
track energy and water usage for the reporting of 
data to citizens, digital monitoring and remote con-
sultations in elder care, and promotion of active par-
ticipation in what leaders call the “engineering 
ethos” (Ho 2017). These programs highlight the his-

torical continuity of Singapore’s focus on centralized 
development which is conscious of the environment 
and of people’s well- being, using technocratic inter-
ventions to develop the nation-state of the future. As a 
project, Solarpunk or otherwise, Singapore operates 
top-down. 

From these brief descriptions, the overlaps and 
gaps between Singapore and Solarpunk begin to be-
come clear. Singapore’s focus on “meaningful and ful-
filled lives” recalls the characterization of Solarpunk, in 
which an eco- friendly infrastructure supports a high 
standard of living. The practical approach of reporting 
energy and water usage exemplifies the transparency 
needed in a Solarpunk society, though effective im-
plementation of this transparency might require a 
more complete infrastructural redesign. More broadly, 
the beautification goals of the garden city underscore 
its aesthetic considerations, emphasizing light and 
abundance. However, it is unclear what role such aes-
thetics play in shaping core values. On the other hand, 
Singapore does not seem to embrace Solarpunk in its 
cold, distant attitude towards the environment. As po-
litical science professor Heejin Han explains in her 
study of authoritarian environmentalism, the country 
embraces an “instrumental and utilitarian view toward 
nature” (Han 2017). Given that the “garden city” adopts 
such a cold view, its development is mismatched with 
the Solarpunk idea of environmental harmony. 

Although its location on a small island in Southeast 
Asia demands creative and intensive development, it 
can allow for the implementation of Solarpunk aesthet-
ics and infrastructures. Singapore’s approach to the 
environment would be contradictory at best. Solarpunk 
and Singapore may share similar goals, but it does not 
necessarily have the same approach. The technocratic 
nature of the “smart nation” demands a closer look at 
major projects in these visions, namely the Gardens by 
the Bay and Jewel Changi Airport. These projects, as 
physical enactments of the “garden city” and “smart 
nation” visions, reveal not only the practices and tech-
nology that make up these self- imaginations, but also 
how everyday people interact with them. We will see 
that, just like the government visions behind them, 
both of these projects are limited and contradictory in 
their solarity.  
 



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4 THE JEWEL CHANGI AIRPORT 

AND THE GARDENS BY THE 

BAY: INHABITING SOLARPUNK 

SPACES? 
Poet Joanne Leow once described Sin-

gapore’s Gardens by the Bay as a place of “perpetu-
al spring / in a land that has known only the sea and 
the monsoon” (Leow 2022). As noted, there is some-
thing poetic about the environment that is cap-
tured within the carefully controlled climates of 
conservatories and infrastructure projects: the con-
tradiction between oppressive tropical heat and a 
temperate haven along with the impossibility of 
indoor mountains and waterfalls. Both incongru-
encies underscore the sense of artistry with which 
Singapore builds its vision of a garden city.  

Boldly embracing this image, a set of parks 
called the Gardens by the Bay have garnered 
much international attention for their ecological de-
sign since before their opening in 2012 ("Gardens 
by the Bay"). Most recognizable in the Gardens 
are the memorable sights of Bay Gardens South: two 
arching glass conservatories and a “grove” of 
Supertrees, fusion structures of natural and man-
made materials that reach up to 50 meters in 
height (Figure 2). Of the glass conservatories, the 
“Flower Dome” houses collections of flowers from 
around the world, and “Cloud Forest” (Figure 3) fea-
tures “one of the world’s tallest indoor waterfalls” 
and a lush simulation-mountaintop environment 
("Gardens by the Bay"). As constructed environ-
ments, the domes are built with energetic and aes-
thetic considerations that aspire to fulfill a Solarpunk 
vision. For instance, Designer Meredith Davey 
explains that the conservatories use “highly selective 
double- glazed [windows]” to maximize daylight 
while minimizing heat from the sun, a careful and 
considered integration of light and transparency 
which harmonizes the needs of the plants with the 
comfort of human visitors (Davey 2011). On top of 
this, she states that energy production uses “bio-
mass combined heat and power” sourced from 
“horticultural residue” (Davey 2011), upcycling natu-
ral waste from the Gardens and other parts of Sin-
gapore in one of many steps towards a self- sus-

taining Solarpunk infrastructure. Noting that this prac-
tice is not yet in use at the Gardens, one horticul-
tural study investigated the uses of biochar, a byprod-
uct of the Gardens’ energy production demonstrating 
a promising potential for upcycling this waste in horti-
culture and agriculture (Arora et al. 2021). The fact that 
such further upcycling has yet to be implemented un-
dermines the solarity of these domes. This “bubble” of 
Solarpunk demands for more improvement to meet 
this infrastructural standard. 

 

 
Figure 2: Ariel view of Gardens by the Bay, Singa-
pore, showing the conservatory domes (left) and 

Supertrees 

 

 
Figure 3: Cloud Mountain, inside Cloud Forest. 

Photograph by Basile Morin; Source: Wikimedia 
Commons



ARESTY RUTGERS UNDERGRADUATE RESEARCH JOURNAL, VOLUME I, ISSUE VI 

 

The exhibit-based nature of these parks marks the 
Gardens by the Bay as a structure with a message, 
not limited to being solely a development project. 
Critiquing the visitor experience, scholar Eng-Beng 
Lim approaches the Gardens as “both a per-
formative space and a [transnational] perfor-
mance,” further arguing their horticultural 
design inherits from British colonial imagery (Lim 
2014). While Lim focuses on the Garden’s role in a 
“system of national feeling,” architectural pro-
fessor Donald McNeill examines their technopolitics, 
arguing that the project perpetuates the “pater-
nalistic” role of the Singaporean government. This 
fits neatly into its “Smart Nation” approach to gov-
ernance (Lim 2014, McNeill 2022). Both analyses 
center the role of citizenship within the Gardens, re-
emphasizing the role of centralization within the 
state-driven project. In this way, Gardens by the Bay 
presents contradictory messages ranging from envi-
ronmental harmony and community to authority, 
dominance, and power, all contained within isolated 
projects of incomplete sustainability. Such contra-
dictions stand in the way of any clear and concerted 
effort in the direction of Solarpunk. 

On the eastern end of Singapore, the Jewel 
Changi Airport was built from a vision similar to that 
of the Gardens by the Bay. The project which 
opened in 2019, expanded the biophilic and com-
mercial characteristics of Changi Airport. It now 
styles itself as a “multi-dimensional lifestyle destina-
tion” with its indoor park, a shopping mall, and a 
supporting infrastructure for the airport (CapitaLand 
2019, Schröpfer 2015). Like in the Gardens, the 
structure’s extensive use of windows served multiple 
purposes. The glass was “fritted” (made finely po-
rous) to “allow optimal ultraviolet penetration for the 
garden areas while also helping to control solar 
heat gain for occupant comfort” (Correa 2022). The 
developer CapitaLand adds the following notes re-
garding the panels: 

“Each glass panel also has a 16 
mm air gap to insulate against 
noise emitted from aircraft… 
Likewise, a series of tests and 
research were conducted to en-
sure that the glare emitted off 

the glass surface will not interfere 
with the daily operations of air traf-
fic controllers as well as aircraft that 
are approaching the two runways 
at Changi Airport” (CapitaLand 
2019). 

In this way, the project flaunts its attempt to in-
tegrate the pillar of light into its construction. To sup-
port its “more than 2,000 trees and palms and over 
100,000 shrubs”, the structure also embraces natural 
rainwater, which is “funnelled into the waterfall and 
harvested for landscape irrigation systems”. The visual 
centerpiece of the Jewel is its memorable Rain Vortex 
(Figure 4), which is surrounded by the Shiseido Forest 
Valley and sponsored by a Japanese cosmetics brand 
(CapitaLand, 2019). Together, these spectacles pro-
vide the backbone of the inviting green atmosphere 
which greets visitors to the Jewel. Upon the opening of 
Jewel Changi Airport, the chairman of Singapore’s 
Government Parliamentary Committee for Transport, 
who initially had “doubts about the need” conceded 
that “a beautifully designed garden concept recrea-
tional centre which complements the existing airport 
and exemplifies [Singapore’s] position as a garden city” 
(Kaur 2019). Although Jewel Changi Airport differs from 
the Gardens by the Bay in that it de-centers the exhibi-
tion-like purpose, the Jewel has a similar potency as a 
national symbol. Even artists such as pop star JJ Lin 
have adopted the building as a symbol, featuring the 
Jewel in a music video to express “magical moments” 
in life (Fatt 2019). From the gleam of its countless win-
dowpanes and the glitter of falling water, to its symbol-
ic resonance, the imagery of the “Jewel” is apt. 

Figure 4: The Rain Vortex in Jewel Chang Airport. 
Photograph by Mike Peel. Source: Wikimedia 



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5 DISCUSSION 
Although the design of the Gardens by the 

Bay and Jewel Changi Airport embodies the aes-
thetic and ethos of Solarpunk, that embodiment is 
limited, if not entirely appropriated, by the struc-
tures’ alternative motives and meanings. The aes-
thetic being a clear celebration of natural light dur-
ing the daytime, also supported less- natural uses. 
This often-created nighttime spectacles, such as the 
one which greeted early-access visitors to Jewel 
Changi Airport in 2019 (Figure 5). Gardens by the 
Bay in particular, suffers an appropriation of mean-
ing for the purposes of visual spectacle to the ex-
tent that Lim describes the exhibition as being “de-
signed to awe, but the order of display can be 
somewhat categorical and even sterile” (Lim 2014). 
Above all, both structures suggest an underlying 
message of man’s dominance over nature: the 
symbolism of capturing a mountain and taming it 
within a glass cage, the creation and preservation 
of bubbles of temperate climates within the tropi-
cal environment, and the visual spectacle of the 
Rain Vortex. This proud assertion of dominance 
strikes a dissonant note with notions of environ-
mental harmony, though Solarpunk does not ex-
plicitly object to the use of such spectacle. Wil-
liams, for instance, highlighting the connection be-
tween light and community, explains how festivals 
in Solarpunk “connect the pragmatic use of solar 
power to a conscious celebration of it” (Williams 
2019). Singapore’s developments can support a 
Solarpunk community in at least two dimensions: 
spatial, maintaining celebrated parks and indoor 
spaces where people can gather, and visual, cele-
brating the solarity of Singapore’s infrastructure 
through spectacles and festivals of lights. Though it 
contrasts the grassroots ethos of the literary genre, 
the centralization project in these developments 
could potentially support a Solarpunk society due 
to its ability to tie citizenship and community to solar 
architecture. Nevertheless, there is a lingering hol-
lowness to these structures. A persistent reminder 
is made of the missing human-centered element 
that is critical to Solarpunk. 

On a more practical note, the vision of an 
ecologically sound infrastructure is a possibility, but 

a rather slim one in Singapore’s current reality. Notable 
advancements in engineering, including the advanced 
glasswork and the reuse and upcycling of natural 
waste, have a real impact on the actual resource usage 
of these projects. For instance, Lim cites one study 
which claims that the Gardens design makes significant 
cuts to energy usage by up to thirty percent (Lim 2014). 
Though far from a completely self-sustaining model, 
such energy cuts make significant advancements to-
wards a sustainable ideal and could provide some of 
the technological basis for a Solarpunk infrastructural 
redesign. On the other hand, both projects are impli-
cated in a number of global energy and sustainability 
issues, such as the airline industry, consumerism and 
capitalism, post- or even neo-colonial power structures 
of investment from the Global North, and resource ex-
traction of sand, from the rest of Southeast Asia (Mam 
2018). Economically, their cost is staggering. “The 
Straits Times” reported in 2013 that Jewel Changi Air-
port project was estimated to cost 1.47 billion Singapo-
rean dollars (Sim 2013). In 2013, this figure was 
roughly equivalent to $1.17 billion USD, which in 2023 
would be roughly $1.54 billion. Moreover, both pro-
jects come at the cost of continued resource extraction 
and fast-paced, capital-intensive global development 
which is fundamentally incongruous with visions of cir-
cular economies, degrowth, and the decolonization of 
energy. This deep ideological conflict is perhaps the 
most existential question which Solarpunk faces in the 
ongoing energy transition. 

 
Figure 5: Jewel Changi Airport at night. Source: 

CapitaLand News Releases. 



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6 CONCLUSION 
Analysis of the “Smart Nation” in Singapore 

through the lens of Solarpunk reveals a complicat-
ed relationship between fantasy and reality. So-
larpunk being a space in speculative fiction where 
light, abundance, and transparency are prioritized in 
an infrastructure free of ecological concerns shares 
some idealisms with the “Smart Nation” vision, 
though they differ in how they make use of nature. 
Two recent projects, Gardens by the Bay and 
Jewel Changi 

Airport, exhibit a number of Solarpunk features, 
especially in their use of light intertwined with 
community and in infrastructures that enact a par-
tially-circular ecosystem. With  the  weaving  sun-
light  and  greenery  into  their infrastructure as 
aesthetic celebrations, the structures make visible 
the pillars of light, abundance, and transparency on 
which Solarpunk rests. The extent to which these 
projects meet the genre’s self-renewing standard is 
limited, as their sustainability is better expressed in 
terms of impact mitigation rather than self-
sustenance. However, novel technologies such as 
windows that maximize natural light while minimiz-
ing heat and renewable energy production using 
upcycle-able biowaste, suggest the value of pursu-
ing these kinds of development further. The great-
est challenge to the “Solarpunk-ness” of these pro-
jects is their relationship to existing social and eco-
nomic structures, including capitalism, neoliberal-
ism, and even neocolonialism, which concentrate 
power in a way that undermines the efficacy of a 
Solarpunk transition. Works of speculative fiction 
emphasize that Solarpunk features a “decoloniza-
tion of energy” and promises “full knowledge” that 
the infrastructure does not harm the environment, 
neither of which is consistent with multi-billion-
dollar technocratic development projects that sup-
port a capitalist reality. To the extent of which these 
top-down projects express a proud dominance 
over nature, they are better understood as neolib-
eral fantasies rather than Solarpunk realities. That is 
to say, Singapore’s well-publicized sustainable pro-
jects may nod to promising Solarpunk possibilities, 
but they raise challenging open questions about 
development and decolonization. 

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https://doi.org/10.16995/olh.329 

 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 



ARESTY RUTGERS UNDERGRADUATE RESEARCH JOURNAL, VOLUME I, ISSUE VI 

 

 
Evan Keeton (he/him) is a junior in the School of Arts & Sciences 
and the Rutgers Honors College. Formerly a dance major, Evan 
is currently majoring in math and Asian studies, as well as con-
ducting research in Chinese dance. Outside of academics, much 
of his time is devoted to dance, especially in performing with 
Mason Gross Haru (K-pop dance cover club), and the Rutgers 
Chinese Dance Troupe, for which he is also the current presi-
dent. Research for “Imaginary Gardens” was conducted as part 
of the Environmental Crises in Southeast Asia class where he 
combined interdisciplinary methods of the environmental hu-
manities with area studies of Southeast Asia. During the class, 
Evan was inspired to consider the contested space of environ-
mental imaginaries and the importance of how we think about 
and understand the environment. In the future, Evan hopes to 
study abroad and further pursue his interests in Asian studies 
and Chinese dance. 

 
Evan can be contacted at eck81@rutgers.edu. 

 

mailto:eck81@rutgers.edu.

