Category: Cities

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Mangrove, Kranji Park | PIX: DARREN SOH

To chance upon a pocket of space in land-scarce Singapore is to have fortuitously arrived at an in-between moment in the city-state’s relentless urban march—a pause after something was demolished; a pause before a construction site emerges.

In that moment, the land is emptied but not empty. The urban fabric has opened up a space for contemplation: to think outside the boundaries of a city so neatly delineated by its state planners and real estate developers. As Singapore builds itself up to house a projected population of 6.9 million people by 2030, such temporary voids offer us a momentary frontier of possibilities, before they become concretized as urban structures again.

➜ Read the rest at Design Observer

Architect in Profile: Alfred Wong

In the years leading to Singapore’s independence, Alfred Wong and other young architects founded what became the Singapore Institute of Architects (SIA) to empower local practitioners and educate society about the architecture profession.

Over five decades on, with the architecture profession well established locally, the 85-year-old has embraced the global market and built up a successful multinational practice that works on projects from around the world out of its two offices in Singapore and Chengdu.

Such foresight has helped Wong successfully grow his practice since starting it in 1957, just four years after graduating from architecture school in Melbourne, Australia. It has also made him a pioneer in Singapore’s design history. Besides laying the foundation of the profession as a founding member of SIA, Wong also advocated for architecture training to be transferred from the polytechnic to the university, and successfully delivered some of the country’s earliest modern buildings against a backdrop of decaying shophouses and traditional kampungs.

➜ Read the rest at IndesignLive Singapore

Architecture—What Future?

WOHA Architect’s latest public housing design in Singapore: SkyVille @ Dawson.

To the provocative question of what future lay for architecture, the responses from this year’s Archifest conference were surprisingly measured. Invited speakers Kerry Hill, Professor Waro Kishi, Professor Li Xiaodong – with the exception of Wong Mun Summ – offered moderate answers to the theme of “What Future?” set by the Singapore Institute of Architects (SIA) for its annual festival this year. While acknowledging the profession is now in an “age of uncertainty”, the first speaker of the conference, the 72-year-old architect Kerry Hill, quoted the late English actor Arthur Wing Pinero and declared that “The future is only the past again, entered through another gate.”

➜ Read the rest at IndesignLive Singapore