if hor... remy...
some developer come and enbloc ur bras basah flat.... alot of money....
then hor some pesky akitects come petition for gazette coz ur flat got history value....
how wld u react?
pondering...
Wednesday, June 13, 2007
en bloc u how?
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5 comments:
Personally, i think gazetting a building is the way to resolve this 'en bloc' plague.
Gazetting say Pearl Bank or Andrew Seow's condo might save some of our post-independence heritage but I say enbloc is not just bad for history. It is bad for the architecture practice, the ecological environment and the people's mindset.
1.Architects no longer design. They just formulate the best GFA efficiency for the client and to maximize all URA guidelines for profit so that in future any GFA add-on is on top of the exisitng ones that they do not have to pay developmental charge for. Viscious cycle. Why design a building to last or a building to be worthy of Singapore's architectural lineage when we all know it's going to be enbloc in 15-20 yrs time?
2.Constantly building and rebuilding over a piece of land by artificial jacking of land prices is hardly sensible on the environment and obviously no one cares. x square feet of homogeneous tiles replaced by x square feet of burmese teak so that yr residence's value is now y dollars per square feet. Worst, by having some rainwater collection tank to water plants will earn the developer brownie points in the eyes of the government. You will earn a green building mark. What irony.
3. When everything in this country is a commodity, we are just people swimming in wads of Yusof Ishak's. Why conserve? We conserve because there is still 'economic' value cos its cooler to have pubs in Chijmes than in a shopping mall. We don't conserve the condos. Why Cos they dont make 'economic' sense. Well, one day they will just say that it doesn't make 'economic' sense to give you a pink IC just because you are born on this island.
er i meant it is NOT the way. haha.
http://www.iht.com/articles/2007/05/29/properties/resinga.1-57988.php
i wld b damn pissed cos ive been waiting for that FOR YEARS.... HAHA
partly cos i dont think bras basah is really worthy of being gazetted. but then its really where remnants of bras basah's past as a place with lots of bookstores can still be found in today's context. so it would really depend on what would come to replace the complex. if it can serve to preserve the place as a books haven even better than the existing complex, i dont see why not. but i admit that this possibility is rather remote...
hmm...
i've got to reject the capitalist vs heritage dichotomy. the traditional architectural way of pitting these values as arch antithesis of each other.
i see that with enough creative mixed use and critical/innovative design solutions being thrown into a building, the economic and cultural meaning of a building gets a greater boost than the fixation with lived in GFA. eg, do u foresee pearl bank being a boutique hotel, FnB, tourist viewing tower, etc. in the capitalist urban world, gentrification wld allow such natural succession and reinvention of spaces, building layers upon layers of cultural meaning.
here, i m gg in line with remy's dissertation on the design of the software for qualititative improvement rather than quantitative short term measurables.
i personally believe gazette is the only language to counter the 1969 land control act and enbloc idiocracies, to reliberate the forces of market in the city and lift the artificial inflated prices.
i m not sure, though, that the carefully conserved artificial real estate market of spore can undertake the anarchy and truth that follows which will definitely undermine the political legitimacy answerable to the electorate in the city area.
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