[Curator’s Picks] Dare to Design: Singapore Architecture 1960s–2000s
Curator Hannah Yeo selects her favourite items from the exhibition and explores the transformative power of architecture in shaping Singapore’s urban landscape.
As part of efforts to build a Singapore Architecture collection, the National Library Board, together with the Urban Redevelopment Authority, launched To Draw An Idea: Retracing the Designs of William Lim Associates–W Architects, an exhibition at the URA building in November 2023.
To complement the exhibition and to explore another facet of architecture in Singapore, I was given the opportunity to curate a second exhibition at the National Library Building Lobby. Dare to Design: Singapore Architecture 1960s–2000 features a selection of eight significant buildings that had pushed the envelope of architecture innovation in Singapore.
The exhibition at the National Library Building’s Lobby ends its run on 16 June and here are five of my favourite things from Dare to Design:
1. Hand-Drawn Buildings Plans
Tucked away in the corner of the Dare to Design exhibition are two drawers holding original building plans of People’s Park Complex. They were submitted to the Building and Construction Authority for approval in 1968 and 1970, just a few years after the architecture firm behind it, Design Partnership, was established in 1967.
Founded by the late William Lim, together with Tay Kheng Soon and Koh Seow Chuan, Design Partnership sought to adapt global ideas to Singapore as part of the nation-building process. Their People’s Park Complex was Singapore’s first mixed-use building. It was also the first shopping mall with atriums, an idea based on the Japanese Metabolist movement’s idea of “city rooms” — indoor public spaces for communities to gather. The building plans in the exhibition are hand-drawn, not computer-generated. Looking at them, you can imagine the thought, precision and vision that went into their design. You can also see the “Design Partnership” stamp and observe built-in spaces on every fifth floor of the tower block designed to create mini-neighbourhoods.
On the top of the drawers at our exhibition, we feature reproduced plans for the National Theatre and the Singapore Conference Hall and Trade Union House. Besides displaying the “guts” of the building, these competition drawings are a reminder that the first design submission is rarely the final one. For example, Alfred Wong’s National Theatre design drawing shows 7,000 seats because that was what the brief had called for. Wong later described it as a “very idealistic” and “shoot-for-the-moon” brief, and the number of seats was brought down to 3,420 to save costs.¹ A vignette of client overenthusiasm perhaps, or simply the euphoria of building a new nation.
2. Videos. Of. Everything.
To enhance the experience of understanding architecture in Singapore, we included 21 videos in the exhibition, most of which were from the National Archives. It is refreshing to listen to architects explain their works in their own words.
In the example above, architect Tan Cheng Siong speaks about Pearl Bank Apartment’s mixed reception in pre-condominium Singapore. It was the tallest residential building in Southeast Asia when it was completed in 1976:
“Newspapers at that time wrote about people being blown away in a typhoon, or dinners get eaten up by something that flies in or something like that. So there were [sic] much resistance. And the biggest resistance were the bankers, they would not finance the building!”
Likewise, architect Lim Chong Keat speaks of the all-consuming effort to produce the Singapore Conference Hall and Trade Union House, an early example of post-colonial tropical modernism, borne out of a major open architecture competition. His team was involved in every aspect from furniture, to paintings and landscaping:
“I’m not sure I like the phrase “a dream commission” because you do spend sleepless nights over a project. You live and eat and sleep it, so no time to dream about it, you’re actually doing it.”
Besides interviews with architects, we included videos that capture social memories, such as a poetry reading by Boey Kim Cheng on the National Theatre and a short film on Pearl Bank Apartments. These are examples of how a building can have many lifetimes, lingering in collective memory even after the structure is gone.
3. Architecture Competitions
Did you know there were 201 other proposals for the Housing Development Board (HDB) flats at Duxton Plain in Chinatown? The winning design, Pinnacle@Duxton, came out of an international competition held in 2001. Teams from 30 countries had taken part and the three-year-old local firm, ARC Studio Urbanism + Architecture, working with RSP Architects Planners & Engineers, clinched the project.²
It was interesting to peruse the other competition submissions. Duxton Plain Public Housing: International Architectural and Design Competition features page after page of thoughtful ideas for what Pinnacle@Duxton could have been. Take, for example, the submission by Alsop Architects Ltd from the UK. They had proposed six different blocks, a Tower of Faces, Tower of Landowners, Tower of Eyes, Groundscraper and Blocks 1 + 2.
Each block had its own design, so potential homeowners could choose their favourite. Their concept earned praise from two competition judges, renowned architects Fumihiko Maki and Moshe Safdie, for breaking away from the public housing norm of repetition and encouraging residents to “establish their own identity”.³
4. Artefacts That Show the People Side to These Buildings
Besides concrete and steel, there are many “softer”, social sides to architecture. For instance, the first HDB flats designed by private architects were built in Tampines New Town. They became a well-loved setting for Don’t Worry, Be Happy (敢敢做个开心人), a popular local Mandarin television series about life in changing Singapore.
And what of connections and relationships among the architects themselves? The Singapore Conference Hall, People’s Park Complex and Golden Mile Complex emerged out of a key circle of colleagues from the Malayan Architects Co-partnership, whose founders met while studying in the United Kingdom.
Some of this group were also pioneers of the Singapore Planning and Urban Research Group (S.P.U.R.), a non-profit think tank set up in the 1960s to brainstorm solutions for high-density living in Singapore. We have featured S.P.U.R.’s first publication (image above), showing their vision for the Golden Mile to be part of a network of interconnected vertical cities, with an underground thoroughfare and railway system. Though radical at the time, these are concepts we now take for granted today, such as the underground walkways that connect malls around Orchard and City Hall.
5. “My Grandfather’s Name” in a Futura Apartments Article
I never met my Gong Gong, but a few years ago I discovered that his company, Chye Guan Building Contractor, built several well-known buildings in Singapore. They included the condominium Futura Apartments, which stood at Leonie Hill Road from 1976 to 2012. I was unaware of Futura’s significance until our team decided to feature it an example of innovative early condominiums in the 1970s, and we found it on the cover of a trade journal. The nearly 20-page spread called it “one of the boldest and most dynamic attempts at high-rise building”.
The architect of Futura Apartments, Timothy Seow, coined the term “bungalows in the air” as a new proposal for high-rise living in the 1970s.⁴ Futura’s apartments mimicked the space and privacy of landed housing through cantilevered living rooms with panoramic view of the city, lifts that opened directly into individual units, and no shared party walls. Its space-age design gave the apartments a luxurious, futuristic feel, as did the introduction of then-unfamiliar amenities like sauna baths.
However, it was not a straightforward construction project. As I read about concrete being poured into new wooden formwork moulds to achieve the required curved walls, I wondered what the project managers would have experienced. When I learned about the float glass used for the windows of the living rooms that was “distortion free and cuts out 37 per cent solar heat,” I wondered what the sourcing would have been like.
Over Chinese New Year in 2024, my extended family shared photos of Gong Gong’s work with me. It was interesting to learn about the built industry from other angles. I was reminded that a building is more than an architect’s vision, and there are micro-histories that lie with the subcontractors, builders, plasterers, carpenters, plumbers and so on, just waiting to be told.
Hannah Yeo is a Librarian with the National Library of Singapore and curated “Dare to Design: Singapore Architecture 1960s–2000s”.
Dare to Design highlights a selection of significant buildings that pushed the envelope of architecture in Singapore, including:
The National Theatre
People’s Park Complex
Golden Mile Complex
Pearl Bank Apartments
Books, building plans, photographs, and more will be displayed in an exhibition at the National Library Lobby from 28 November 2023 to 16 June 2024. A smaller display is also available at Tampines Regional Library until 9 June 2024.
[1] Alfred Wong, “Building Dreams–In Search of Singapore Architecture Ep 1: Dawn of a New Era,” 24 February 2002, Video. National Archives of Singapore (accession no. 2017025928)
[2] “Local Architect Firm Wins Competition,” Today, 1 May 2002, 4. (From NewspaperSG)
[3] Duxton Plain Public Housing: International Architectural and Design Competition (Singapore: Urban Redevelopment Authority, 2002), 86.
[4] Nellie Har, ‘“Bungalows in the Air’–A Unique $2m Project with Swim Pool and Roof Garden,” Straits Times, 26 June 1970, 10. (From NewspaperSG)
