Category: History

30 Years of Conservation: Keeping the Past Relevant

Straits Times heritage correspondent Melody Zaccheus believes telling good heritage stories helps connect people and their relationships to places.

Melody’s foray into the heritage beat can be traced back to an article she wrote in 2012 on the National Heritage Board’s efforts to document Singapore’s eight remaining traditional bakeries known for producing conventionally prepared breads and buns. Learning first-hand about the struggles of these dying businesses, which once numbered up to 200 in the 1970s, inspired the then fresh journalism graduate to pursue more of such evocative stories.

Inspiring deeper conversations about Singapore’s heritage and giving a voice to forgotten historical figures and everyday people with stories to tell, are some of the reasons why The Straits Times has a reporter covering the heritage beat, says Melody. Since 2012, she has assumed this role in Singapore’s main English-language newspaper, carving out a niche in the newsdesk.

Beyond just the recounting of nostalgic events, much of Melody’s job is to figure out how to make a story relevant to readers today. Over the years, her coverage has ranged from reporting on new historical discoveries to overlooked heritage, and occasionally, even correcting misconceptions about the past.

➜ Read the full story in 30 years of conservation in Singapore since 1989

East Coast Park: “The Singapore Way” to Recreation

Despite being touted as an “explosive book”, Socialism That Works… The Singapore Way has a surprisingly idyllic-looking cover.[1] Featuring an aerial photograph of a tree-lined lagoon and greenery that stretches into the horizon, the book could be mistaken for a tourism brochure. Instead, this picture of East Coast Park fronts a 268-page publication that refutes “the many half-truths perpetrated by hostile parties” about Singapore, including the government’s detention of communists without trial and its controls on trade unions and the press.

Over 10 chapters, the country’s top politicians and trade unionists refuted the allegations and made a case for how successful Singapore had become under the rule of the People’s Action Party (PAP). East Coast Park was just one picturesque outcome. As Singapore’s newest and largest public recreational centre when Socialism That Works was released in 1976, the park showcase how the PAP had literally reshaped the island for modern play.

[1] ‘Socialism That Works… the Singapore Way’, The Business Times, 1 February 1977.

➜ Read the full story in The Singapore Architect #15 (May-August 2019)

#ADesignLibrary: The Way of Asian Design (2007)

“The Way of Asian Design” (2007) was my earliest introduction to the idea that design could be related to Asian culture. This 200-page catalogue documents the presentations of four professors—Kohei Sugiura 🇯🇵, Ahn Sang-Soo 🇰🇷, Lu Jingren 🇨🇳 and Kirti Trivedi 🇮🇳—who spoke at a seminar of the same name at the Nanyang Technological University as part of the Singapore Design Festival 2007. While each interpreted their graphic design practice in the context of traditional Asian cultures, it was not entirely convincing as they often fell back on vague notions of “duality”, “formless” and “essence”, which are found outside of Asia too. Nonetheless, we can see them as part of a global trend in the 2000s when designers tried to create (or interpret) more culturally-specific works (in this case, “Asian sensibility”) to offer an “alternative to international modernism”.

#ADesignLibrary spotlights lesser known design books, and invites public access to my personal collection of titles that focuses on Singapore architecture and design, Asian design, everyday design, critical and speculative design as well as design theory and philosophy. I welcome inquiries and physical loans.