Category: History

January 20, 2011

Escalating a nation

Singapore’s climb from a Third World country to a First World nation was made easier, thanks to the escalator.

The year 1965 was a revolutionary one for Singaporeans. On August 9, Singapore separated from Malaysia and embarked on its own journey through nationhood. But, a much more quiet revolution happened just seven months earlier. Amidst the opening fanfare of the Orchard Theatre and Jackie’s Bowl along Grange Road, many Singaporeans visited this “supermarket of entertainment”[1], and for the first time in their lives experienced travelling on an escalator.

Some 45 years on since those first-ever escalators were installed in Singapore, it is now almost impossible to imagine going around this city without it. It is a badge of status for a modern city, and Singapore has some 44,000 escalators[2] to help move its people everywhere today – through office buildings, shopping malls, train stations and even parks! Silent and convenient, it is the perfect travel companion through this air-conditioned nation.

THE CITY’S ESCALATION

The rapid adoption of the escalator has stretched the Singapore city – “expanding like an accordion, up and down at once”[3]. The Orchard Theatre escalator was only 5.18 metres long, but by 1993, Singapore’s longest escalators. in City Hall train station, were twice as long[4]. The Singapore Indoor Stadium once boasted the city’s highest outdoor escalator with a vertical height of 7.15 meters[5]. Today, Orchard Central shopping mall has one three times taller![6] But even that is half the 41-metres escalator inside Bras Brasah MRT station[7].

The escalator has also helped give birth to the shopping mall, the second home of Singaporeans. On it, shoppers can window-shop effortlessly from one level to another, just like how a 1976 advertisement for Far East Shopping Centre proclaimed: “Escalators take you to more than 190 shops on 7 floors – for complete shopping convenience”[8]. In fact, escalators shaped the early shopping malls. Their insides are usually large rectangular atriums that let shoppers survey the entire mall while travelling up and down the stack of escalators on both ends.

Today, the escalator has even become an attraction. Orchard Point shopping mall shelled out two million dollars in 1992 for Singapore’s first pair of curved escalator just for their “novelty factor”[9]. The latest rage nowadays are outdoor escalators that line the facades of malls like the revamped Wisma Atria and new ones like Illuma[10].

SERVING ESCALATING NEEDS

Despite its ubiquity, escalators are a contradiction in the Singapore city. On the one hand, they are symbols of a developed nation. Travelling on escalators instead of using the staircases is akin to saying we’re already there and the only way is up. But, this is also the mentality the government is always guarding against. Singaporeans must never be too comfortable. Or as a motivational poster found in MRT stations succinctly puts it: “There is no escalator to success, you have to take the stairs.”

But, such exhortations may have come too late. During a 1993 National Healthy Lifestyle campaign, Singaporeans were encouraged to take the stairs instead of the escalators. It never took off. “Taking the escalators has become a natural reaction for many of us,” said a Singaporean. Take the stairs? “Unless there’s no choice, say when the escalators break down.”[11]

And while we can afford to install escalators, we can hardly enjoy them in our fast-paced city. Escalators at MRT stations travel at a speed of 0.75 metres per second, 1.5 times faster than those in shopping malls[12], but just ride on the escalator in the city stations during rush hour mornings. You’ll hear the office crowd’s collective groans as their precious seconds tick away.

While people were already writing in to the local newspapers in the ‘80s to appeal to Singaporeans to cultivate the habit of keeping to one side so that those in a hurry could pass through on the other side[13], it took another 17 years before SMRT began campaigning commuters to do so[14].

For years, SMRT wanted Singaporeans to use escalators like Singaporeans – safely and efficiently. As its spokesperson explained in immaculate detail in a reply to the newspaper forum, “Each escalator, which has a step-width of one-metre to accommodate two persons standing side by side, can move about 7200 people per hour” [15]. Introducing a keep-right, or -left, rule would slow down movement, as “one side of the escalator will not be utilised fully especially during peak hours”. Plus, it was safer to “stand on the steps of the escalators and hold on to the handrails at all times instead of walking when using the escalators”.

Today, in line with the government’s more liberal view of things, Singaporeans practice the art of “expresscalating”[16] like in major cities around the world such as New York, Taipei and London. No more groupthink and hyper-safe mindsets. Instead, for those brief minutes of an escalator ride, an ideal society exists: regardless of who you are or where you come from, the escalator serves all at a constant speed – and if that’s not fast enough, you have a choice to keep to the right and speed on.

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[1] “Cathay Organisation’s $6mil Entertainment Centre Opens,” The Straits Times, 7 January 1965.
[2] “Conference on Sustainable Development – Lifts and Escalators,” Building and Estate Management Alumni, http://www.bema.org.sg/downloads/lift-conf-120907.pdf.
[3] John King, “A Matter of Perception: Escalators, Moving Sidewalks and the Motion of Society ” in Up Down Across: Elevators, Escalators and Moving Sidewalks ed. Alisa Goetz (London: Merrell Publishers, 2003).
[4] “Escalators in Singapore Are Reaching New Heights,” The Straits Times, 12 October 1993.
[5] Seng Jin Lim, “It’s Official: We’re the Lo-O-Ongest!,” The Straits Times, February 14 1995.
[6] Magdalen Ng and Shakylla Saifudin Nur, “Escalators Going Outdoors,” The Straits Times, July 19 2009.
[7] Suan Chiang Tay, “Track Stars,” The Straits Times, 27 March 2010.
[8] “Far East Shopping Centre,” The Straits Times, 24 January 1976.
[9] Lim, “It’s Official: We’re the Lo-O-Ongest!.”
[10] Ng and Nur, “Escalators Going Outdoors.”
[11] Hwee Yng Yeo, “Climbing Stairs for Fitness? Few Want to Do It,” The Straits Times, 6 October 1993.
[12] “Escalators in Singapore Are Reaching New Heights.”
[13] G. R. Mills, “Let’s All Keep to the Right,” The Straits Times, 1 November 1985.
[14] Chin Lian Goh, “Left or Right? Some of Them Get It Right,” The Straits Times, 23 January 2002.
[15] Lay Tee Ang, “”Stand to One Side’ Rule Will Slow Movement,” The Straits Times, 8 July 1998.
[16] “Express Escalators,” The Straits Times, 10 December 1932.

December 2, 2010

VOTE FOR ME: Elections Posters in Singapore (2)

In the previous post, I talked about the manifesto posters that the various political parties put up during a General Elections. This time around, I’ll be looking at the posters that feature the candidates. Above are the various poster designs of the People’s Action Party (PAP) in 1972, 1976, 1988 and 1991 respectively. The lack of colour coincides with the period when colour printing wasn’t cheaply available yet. The choice of portraits was also conservative, or maybe even practical, since it is just as likely that these would have used for Identity Cards, or worse, funerals. It was only in the 1997 elections that the candidate photos came in colour, and by 2001, Photoshop also came into the picture.

1972 PAP Lim Kim San

1976 PAP Lim Kim San

1988 PAP LKY

1991 PAP Single

In contrast to these posters of the ruling PAP, the candidate posters of the opposition parties have generally been ‘less designed’, as evident in these posters of the Workers’ Party (WP) (1980), Barisan Sosialis (BS) (1984), Singapore Democratic Party (SDP) (1984), United People’s Front (1988), Democratic Progressive Party (1997) and National Solidarity Party (NSP) (1997). With the exception of NSP’s poster, the other opposition candidates don’t subscribe to the “less is more” attitude of the PAP posters. Instead, they try to squeeze the logo, slogan, party name (in all four languages!), candidate name, and in case you still don’t get it, icon or tagline reminding you to vote for him or her. One might attribute this desire to squeeze as much as they can to the lack of funding to print better posters, but one must also remember that by law, each candidate has a fixed budget for their elections campaign. For the last elections, one could only spend on average, $3 per voter.

1984 SDP Chiam See Tong

1984 BS Lee Siew Choh

There few exceptions of distinctly designed posters of opposition candidates have come from two controversial ones: SDP’s Chee Soon Juan (1997) and Singapore Democratic Alliance’s Steve Chia (2006 and 2001). For some reason, the latter’s posters reminds me of real estate advertisements. I think it’s the man in a suit with the choice of colours.

A new type of candidate posters had to be designed in 1988 when the Group Representation Constituency (GRC) came about. Suddenly, one candidate had to share the same space with two or more as seen in these posters of the PAP (1988), WP (1997), SDA (2006) and PAP (2001).

1988 PAP GRC

Finally, just a quick look at a quirky category of posters that belong to the independent candidate, a breed that has not existed since the 2001 elections. Their posters reflects how inadequate they are without the resources and machinery of a party.

November 28, 2010

VOTE FOR ME: Elections Posters in Singapore (1)

Here’s a sure sign that the general elections has begun: when elections posters start popping up all over your neighbourhood! Besides rallies and media reports, posters are the most visible form of an election campaign. These traditionally come in three forms, depicting the party’s logo, its manifesto, and the candidate contesting. This is a set from the People’s Action Party (PAP) General Elections campaign in 1980.

In the first of this two-part post, I’ll be looking at the manifesto posters of the parties since 1972. It starts from Singapore’s second post-independence election as it is the earliest poster I could find in the National Archive’s POSTERS Database, where I have got all the images from. In this 1972 poster of candidate Lim Kim San, the three elements of party logo, manifesto, and candidate are all rolled into one, but by the next election in 1976, posters came in three separate forms as depicted above.

As with most visual culture for the public here, a unique element of election posters here is the use of Singapore’s four official languages. These are 1980 posters from PAP’s “The Right Choice” campaign.

Over the years, the PAP has used various visual forms to express its platform of material progress in its manifesto posters. The 1980 poster depicts its oft-used rhetoric of past versus progress, and so do the posters used in the next two elections of 1984 and 1988.

In 1988, the PAP also took advantage of the official launch of Singapore’s MRT system that year to come up a smart campaign poster.

The PAP’s election posters though the 1990s became more dull under the leadership of Goh Chok Tong.

In contrast, posters of opposition party The Workers Party’s seemed to capture the voice of its leader J B Jeyaretnam, the first opposition candidate to break the PAP monopoly in the 1981 by-elections. WP’s slogan of “Power To The People” was easily translated into a powerful visual rhetoric as first seen in this 1991 poster. However, the photo used seems to be a stock photo of people in a Western country.

1991 WP 1

For the next elections in 1997, WP improved on this poster. The Chinese version with its forceful calligraphy matches memories of WP candidate Tang Liang Hong’s controversial speeches that got him labelled by the PAP candidates as a ‘Chinese Chauvinist’. After the elections, he got sued for defamation and has since fled Singapore.

Despite these highly memorable posters, the WP was unable to convince the people to power it into power, garnering only one Parliamentary seat in both elections. Perhaps, this was why it toned down its visual rhetoric in the subsequent elections. Moreover, the rise of Low Thia Khiang to become leader of the WP and the ousting of the fiery J B Jeyaretnam also ushered in a quieter form of politics as seen in these 2001 and 2006 posters.

The PAP has also adopted a more sophisticated visual language with its manifesto posters in the new millennium. One reason for this change seems to be the availability of technology such as Photoshop and cheap colour printing. As seen in the 2001 poster of Goh Chok Tong and the 2006 poster of current prime minister Lee Hsein Loong, these are clearly creations of the times, and they’ve been crafted to depict the PAP’s belief that the way to govern Singapore is through a strong leadership backed by the support of the people.

In the next post, I’ll be looking at the posters depicting the party’s logo and their candidates, including some whacky ones from independent candidates!