Tag: Tan Cheng Siong

TOMORROW: Design Stories of Our Future

Communicate by Caleb Tan and Danny Tan.
Connect by Randy Chan and Lee Xin Li
Dress by Alfie Leong and Teresa Lim
Eat by Kinetic Design and Chris Chai
Learn by Lekker and Esther Goh
Live by Tan Cheng Siong and Sonny Liew
Play by Hans Tan and André Wee
Relax by Nathan Yong and Ng Xinnie
Travel by STUCK and Dan Wong
Work by forest&whale and Koh Hong Teng

What would a day in Singapore look like come 2065?

10 designers and 10 illustrators from this city present their visions of her future today.

Responding to 10 speculative questions of how we will communicate, connect, dress, eat, learn, live, play, relax, travel and work, these creatives were paired up to discuss and create stories together on one assigned aspect of life in Singapore on its centennial.

Through vignettes written by myself, concepts imagined by the designers, and narratives drawn by the illustrators, we invite you on a journey to discover the possibilities and pitfalls of life in this little red dot tomorrow.


Thanks to BLACK, I got the opportunity to pair up 10 Singapore designers with 10 illustrators to imagine futures for this upcoming SingaPlural 2017 exhibition.

Communicate: Danny Tan & Caleb Tan
Connect: Randy Chan & Lee Xin Li
Dress: Alfie Leong & Teresa Lim
Eat: Kinetic Singapore & Chris Chai
Learn: Joshua Comaroff &  Esther Goh
Live: Tan Cheng Siong & Sonny Liew
Play: Hans Tan & Andre Wee
Relax: Nathan Yong & Ng Xinnie
Travel: STUCK Design &  Dan Wong
Work: forest&whale & Koh Hong Teng

Come by the F1 Pit Building from 7 to 12 March to check out the exhibition. We’re also having a chat with some of the teams on 11 March, sign up here.

A Singaporean Architect Wants to Reclaim Land From the Sky

Many Singaporeans were up in arms when their government announced plans to house a population of 6.9 million by 2030.

Architect Tan Cheng Siong was one of them.

But unlike his countrymen, Tan was also frustrated at how city planners were planning to accommodate the population increase – by reclaiming even more land from the sea. In just under five decades, Singapore had expanded by over a fifth from its original 587 square kilometres through land reclamation. It is a tried-and-tested plan that will generate land zoned into plots for singular uses like residential or commerce. However, Tan, who is also trained in urban planning, concludes that “this method of planning is wrong.”

Instead, he has a better solution: Reclaim land from the skies.

Read the rest in Rice magazine

Saving Pearl Bank Apartments

Architectural conservation or real estate investment? An essay on the fate of a 1970s style icon that has seen better times.

2016-from-penthouse-level

A 27-storey “green tower” of residences may one day rise up at the edge of Singapore’s historic Chinatown. It will boast the Outram Park MRT station at its doorstep and Pearl’s Hill City Park as its backyard. There will even be an infinity pool and a rooftop garden. But none of these will rival the most attractive aspect of this new development if it ever comes to pass: securing the future of the iconic Pearl Bank apartments and literally giving it a fresh lease of life.

This is architect Tan Cheng Siong’s unorthodox proposal to rescue what was once Singapore’s tallest block of apartments. Having witnessed the 38-storey building he designed over 40 years ago undergo three unsuccessful en-bloc attempts in the last decade, and faced with a 99-year land lease that is almost halfway used up, Tan and a group of residents have taken the unprecedented step of voluntarily applying to the Urban Redevelopment Authority (URA) for Pearl Bank to be conserved. Not only is this the first time a multi-strata private development has made such a request — almost all the 7,200 buildings given conservation status in Singapore thus far have been proposed by the government — Tan’s conservation plan would entail demolishing part of Pearl Bank’s existing five-storey car park to build a new block of 150 apartments.

In an interview in his office at Maxwell House, Tan made clear his views on conservation: as a result of a rising population and the pressure on land resources, high-rise living has become firmly entrenched as part of the societal, environmental and architectural fabric of Singapore. If people have come to accept this fact, why don’t they learn to conserve their ageing high-rise buildings instead of tearing them down?

While Tan understands the pragmatism of maximising land values in land-scarce Singapore, his idealism is tempered by the practical business of living. While Pearl Bank is a vital piece of Singapore’s architectural history, it is also home to the people who live there, many whom are retirees with dwindling incomes. As a result of high maintenance costs and shrinking sinking funds, the apartment building has deteriorated over the years — plagued by broken-down lift shafts, leaking sewage pipes, peeling paint and even rat infestations.

Given its failed en-bloc sales attempts, Tan came up with a radical idea to secure Pearl Bank’s future: seek conservation status for the property and then unlock part of its value by allowing a developer to construct a new block of apartments next to the original tower. The money from the sale of the new flats would then pay for the refurbishment of the ageing building as well as top up what is left of its 99-year lease.

The result would be a modern appendage on his modernist marvel – a concrete materialisation of how architecture, property and conservation intersect in Singapore. “We thought this conservation [proposal] would be a binding force because it would bring them an extension of lease, [and] … a new building,” he says.

Read the rest of the essay in BiblioAsia (Vol 12, Issue 3) Oct-Dec 2016