invisible cities: series 1

Do buildings exist if no one can remember that they were once there? Will we be left with only the landmarks pointing to the official progress of history when buildings and spaces deemed insignificant but bearing collective memory are demolished? Perhaps someone (perhaps I) should start recording lesser known buildings- buildings that may be banal functionally but bears qualities worthy of remembering, immediately as we encounter them, for they may not be there when we want to see them again.

As a start, I'm going to try a little game. Anyone who names all 4 buildings above gets a prize.


And go watch invisible city.

(x-post from Kit's Crit)

majulah singapura

one of the most soulful and personal renditions of Majulah Singapura, hauntingly beautiful without the melody and in the full silent awe of the away ground stadium.

sung by this 21yo singaporean gal who went to japan to pursue her singing career. this is dedicated to those pple for a personal contemplation of nation on this day.

happy 188th bday

the town of singapore, on the islands of the same name, stands on a point of land near the western part of a bay, and is easily distinguished by there being just behind it, a pleasant looking hill, that is partly cleared of trees. between the point on which the town is situated, and the western one of the bay, there is a creek, in which the native vessels anchor close to the town, and it may be found useful to european vessels of easy draught to repair in. on the eastern side of the bay, opposite to the tower, there is a deep inlet lined by mangroves, which would also be a good anchorage for native boats; and about north from the low sandy point of the bay, there is a village inhabited by fishermen, a short way to the eastward of which, is a passage through the mangroves, leading to a fresh water river...

The coast to the eastward of the town, is one continued sandy beach; and half a mile to the eastern point of the bay, or two miles and a half from the town, there is a point where the depth of water is six or seven fathoms, at three of four hundred yards from the shore; and at six hundred yard a small bank with about three fathoms at low water; the point offers a favorable position for batteries to defend ships that may in time of war anchor near to it.

fresh water is to be had at several places in the vicinity of the town, and there are some small rivers along the coast to the eastward, where the water appears red.

....7 February 1819

Review of Invisible City

The glut of en bloc sales and their accompanying gluttony of riches, the impending demolition of the National Stadium and some time ago, the 'rational' removal of the central National Library are probably fresh in most people's mind.

Tan Pin Pin seeks to probe and stick something in Singaporeans' notoriously stulified minds. Not unexpected from a director who brought us Luvre Me Now (a 3 min short video on Barbie, and was banned in Singapore)

Dreadfully slow in certain parts of this 60-min documentary but always poignantly so. It might seem at first as being reactionary with questions on the 'official' histories, collective erasure of memories and nearly every interviewees' desire for immortality. However, if you watch carefully, at certain points in the show, one wonders about the legitimacy of terms such as collective even.

What struck me most was this Englishwoman who said that Singapore is not a good place to grow old in. A frail body and gradually fading recollections is definitely not helped with the complete loss of external artifices of memories.

It is not a show to watch if you want a feel-good vibe after it. But it is also just about time to stop feeling sense-lessly good about nothing now.

Catch it in the Arts house for full effect. Watch it with your fellow Singaporeans (whom you do not have much hope in) in an adaptive reuse building where 'they' passed laws to ironically erase your past. I guess the static buzz of the DV and the film reel was cleverly used and very much akin to a person stringing thoughts in his/her mind.

colosseum

watching all the games in the golden age of 1994 msia cup and league on tv. addictive. i am also very fortunate to be able to watch the 2005 and 2007 asean cups. TV coverage of the stadium’s roars is muffled coz they do not have mics all over the pitch like those overseas stadiums.

there was one match, spore vs bahrain i watched with jansen. against a superior opposition who were cowed by the kallang roar into play acting and wasting time. the half filled stadium stood and swore profanities, screaming for the ref to “fuck off” (seriously, 30000 pple shouting fuck off is quite a spectacle with concert like synchronisation of hands pumping). AFC promptly fined spore for that. but nothing beats the spontaneous self righteousness of a little nation that night.

really, no matter wat pple might say, nothing beats kallang roaring out majulah spore, not even national day. throwing toilet rolls as streamers. torn newspapers as confetti. kallang wave. referee kayu. singing ole ole all the way home on mrt. cheering hardcore gangsters running in to fight overseas gangsters.

football is passion, and at the very core, the very epitome of the national spirit that pple condensed into 90 mins. and spore teams throughout the yrs live for that moment for the full house, living their lives dedicating to trying their best in spite of a seasonal bandwagon crowd.

i can only hope the crowd that pays 16 dollar a ticket are not prim and proper ah sia giahs who suddenly got a nostalgic attack and start dreaming they had once been part of history. i only hope the mild and chirpy malay aunties in their tudong who turn into fervent fans do turn out too. and teach the impressionable kids over there the real meaning behind the kallang roar.

brings a tear to my eye

en bloc u how?

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...

remy's

Who is authenticity for? I would think that its for nobody and everybody. Authenticity can probably only be unravelled through an objective eye, which would thus mostly exclude the everyday man, and include instead the 'bystanders', academics and tourists. Yet authenticity can only be produced through the everyman's practice of his daily life. I remember LKY (gasp!) once saying that the production of culture is only possible through an unconscious, and relatively isolated process, although in today's context, the relative impossibility of isolation (due to globalization) critical for production of 'culture' means that culture has to evolve through fusion of different influences over time. Perhaps thats why korea and japan have such unique cultures since language itself forms a barrier to provide some form of isolation.

Yes I would agree that authenticity is a western concept and the realisation of such a concept in the east created some form of self-consciousness which an exist at varying levels altho most of the time its the institutions. in a way its also an anxiety to differentiate ourselves from the west. In fact the very concept of 'east' and 'west' is a product of such self-consciousness: are we really that different in today's context? is there really an eastern perception of things? for all you know, our perception has but been homogenized.

History is a selective reconstruction, perhaps only memory is authentic, but then memory is tricky since it is personal, fragmented and may be affected by the present.

Chang Jiat Hwee wrote a dissertation 10,000yrs ago on "The myth of conservation" and noted through a quote from pierre nora that history was established as a device to conquer and reconstruct memory.

Heres my revised dissertation topic statement:
Physical urban fabric, when manipulated (conserved, reconstructed) to propogate strategic cultures, produces 'hyperreal-scapes' and stand as poor means to preserve meanings of site (genius loci). On the other hand, certain everyday experiences (tactics) acts as resistance against the totalising effects of hyperreal-scapes and serve as better agents to sustain meanings of site.

I chose to stress on certain everyday experiences since the everyday exists in various forms, i.e. there are many everydays. In any case, the topic is in constant state of revision...

Hi All! I am Back!

I am back from 60 plus days of travelling and before I organize my experiences and thoughts; I would like to share some of Richard Senna's thoughts on experimentation/ play which I encountered while virtual 'touring' (i am such a tourist. lol) MoMA. It cannot beat going down in person but I guess the hegemonic (the source of constant bitching nowadays) West is still enlightened to share arts and culture online and provide free entry to students. The virtual tour can be found here.

Cliche it might be but here goes:

"Experimentation/ Play… is how one allows oneself to move in directions that one could not have foreseen."

modernism

i just realised, the critique of modernism with a decidedly architectural determinism is merely a veiled attempt to uphold the moral integrity of the profession and its relevance.

it is a bitter jealousy that behind the monolithic, uncanny, completely void of aesthetic could still breed cultural life. it is thought to be blasphemous that architecture had no role and effect on the cultural incidences that sprout out naturally from socisalisation.

architecture, itself, could not come to terms with the fact that it is never all encompassing.

sorry

hmm. just tots. i hope i dun come across as callous or apathetic, or too sombre.

the above tschumi manifesto is to be taken literally.

this post is in reply of the drownings in lower seletar reservoir yesterday. the flagship project of PUB's Active Beautiful Clean waters programme.

earlier i posted some whimsical pictures of the model remy and me made. basically we participated in the masterplanning of the lower seletar reservoir park. those in the team and the clients had harboured very lofty ambitions of the project. images of pple kayaking, playing in the waters, splashing abt, aplenty. children of the sun and water. sparkling clean water.

never this....

in the project team, not a single member having a passion and knowledge of outdoor sports, no one an expert on water safety. for every project, we were instructed to design with safety of the public in mind. a very intangible and subjective notion.

therin lies the very vast gap between the user and implementor. the completely dissociated history of water culture in spore (ie, u dun see orang lauts, bumboat operators, or kelong fish farmers drowning do u?) vs the utopian imagery of unbridled safe fun, the total regulatory rationalisation of safety factors design.

for every designer and user, there are thousands of pple trying to bridge the huge gap. the huge gap precisely becoz of the complete disempowerment of roles of user and designer,

and there we were, carelessly drawing up plans, carried by euphoria of being released into the play pool, photoshopping images from somewhere else, misleading the general public from our supposedly higher academic standing. the river sectional drawings were not scrutinised in detail.

i am sure certain things cannot be faulted, certain things are purely accidental. however a tinge of uneasiness hangs in the air. that i had participated unknowingly in a dream that turned out to be someone elses' nitemare.

remy told me once that koolhaas wrote that architects and planners should be tried for war crimes because of the profound effects of subjugation and control they had on the masses via design. and we, unknowingly, murdered pple with our naivety, idealism and aultruism.

sorry.

zihao dissertation

"the domino prototype... has haunted architectural imagination ever since"
- deyan sudjic

hmm. very vague now. dunno how to "ask the correct question" to tackle this academic mess.

there is a basic assumption underlying this dissertation. that is, mass produced single family houses in singapore follows a basic nLKD (n living rooms, kitchen, dining) hierachy. it has greater impacts on psf pricing rather than addressing the live in conditions of the occupants.

basically i am questioning the historical consequence of the tradition of single family house. why in plan, the 21st century house is ideologically exact to the 18th century tudor house.

uma and prof heng cited that due to customs, family traditions and makeups, societal wants and needs, the mass produced single family house will not change. khengsoon haven meet me, but i hugely suspect he is gg to berate me on the vagueness of tot.

anyways, my point of contention is, there is huge possibilities for a niche housing/house. current types of SOHO, studio apartments, white flats fall short. i am steering clear of populist and utopian visions (or technocratic pessimist ones) and grinding into the facts.

a house. the generic type. is now reduced into a symbol, a harking back to the 18th century bourgeosie domestic fantasy which can never be attained. the family, work, societal, technological, consumer spaces dominating a house has greatly altered the architectural one. so much so there are inherent tensions trying to live out the ideology within the concretised walls of the floor plans.

here, i am not trying to provide an ideology free dream house. i am trying to find facts to address the fact that new ideas should in fact guide house design better rather than a continual pessimistic tone to the usual Death of Public Space, Death of the Workplace, Fall of the Public Man, the Uncanny Home, the Island/Matrix/I Robot/1984 technocratic domination literature. eg families are not torn apart by internet, but indeed more connected. poor stereotyping of children and elderly. workplaces become more homely more so than homes become looking more like offices. family roles after the end of Patriarchism. consumerist furniture and interior design that puts architecture into the pale, etc.

neither is this a corbusien/archigram styled alternative manfesto for society wide implementation. i am trying to compartmentalise the dissertation into the design of A HOUSE.

a house, that hopefully addresses the real needs of pple who desire to live a certain way customisable within another hypothetical framework rather than the current paradigm.

can you guys ask me the correct question?

conversation of the day

zihao says
lee hsieng loong is correct when he say sporeans materialistic
jitao enbloc everything one
one day istana also enbloc

amelia says:
HAHAHA!!!

laos

hmm. laos... very enchanting country. only remaining socialist country in ASEAN. poor, but never desperate. in vientiene, the provincial capital, most buildings are less than 3 storeys tall. no traffic congestion. no signs extreme poverty like beggars or crime. the children are earnest and dignified, preferring to work rather than beg.

unlike the end of the world scenarios forwarded by castells or william lim of asian cities, wat i saw here is uncannily peaceful and lazy townships. neither is there a dichotomy of dual economies that sets the rich gated communities against the deprived poor. here in laos, mansions and dilapidated wood houses stand side by side, tuktuks parked beside the toyota prados. this country doesnt feel communist or oppressive at all, or even the presence of a state or government.

either i am blinded by romanticism, or there is really something unique about laotian culture. its resilience and self dependence of the people.

lao GDP comes mainly from... rice and tourism. it is non industrial. it doesnt even have a train system. its best interstate bus service called VIP bus breaks down several times enroute.

it is idylic. but it is unfair for me to say it should remain that way. i dun believe it is right for rich brats like me to put pple into a time capsule or a theme park for me to enjoy.

right now it seems lao will face a surge of tourists in the coming years. already prices for tour packages are soaring, gentrified by the hordes of tourists with their american dollar. china in 2006 passed a new regulation allowing chinese to travel freely into laos, which is expected to contribute to 25% of tourists there. how will the laid back culture handle the surge of materialism coming straight into their very doorstep? (literally, many of them operate in shophouses and guest houses).

lets all hope that a sensible future for them, not one that is marred by senseless short term gratification that left a bitter taste in other vice ridden countries as they tried to take off to modernity overnight. let these children enjoy a decent future and happiness.

laos

vientiene


louang prabang


mekong river


lao new year


vang vieng

our new stadium

i like the concept

but is the design a bit too....? erm....

geesh....