Friday, September 25, 2009

Davis Systems Formulas Heartlanders

Today, our view of Singapore doesn’t stay at the beautiful picture Lee Kuan Yew paints for us but instead the awful but realistic images that we normal citizens see around. To know Singapore, one shouldn’t say they know Singapore based on the clean and green environment. But instead, to really know Singapore, one should view Singapore from inside to outside. That is obviously what many photographers and film directors try to paint Singapore as. Many people always question why they like to paint Singapore as a dirty and ugly city with gamblers, red light districts and our juvenile ‘ah bengs’. But I gradually realize that from their point of view is then the real daily life of Singaporeans. To analyse Singapore’s society, we can reflect on the humans (our common citizens’ actions and routine), artifacts (our daily necessities and belongings), landscape (interiors and structure of buildings). Definitely, the artists today receive more freedom in their creation as compared to the artists in the past who have pressure to only bring the good side of Singapore.

Shannon Castleman posts an interesting system to explore the life within a certain space, in order to attract us, influencing viewers to post attention into the issue of homeless man. This seems to create a visual image and story for the viewer to understand and stand in the situation of the homeless man issue. The “Jurong West Street 81” project provides an opportunity for all the residents to really interact with each other. The high-stories of HDB seem to like encompass the density of all the residents’ energies, personalities, intimacies and distances inside and between these bricks and cements.


However, residents are residents. They are just common citizens of Singapore. Through them, we can see the different characteristics and personalities of heartlanders living on this land. Some people are shy (avoid the camera) and some are overly-enthusiastic. However, through 20 minutes of looking at their actions, we are like looking at their daily life. A picture tells a thousand words. That is definitely true for Singapore. We should be more observant for things and people around us, and we will realize Singapore really do indeed has cultures and is a place with a cool character. We are definitely beyond just Merlion statutes and modern buildings.

Tuesday, September 15, 2009

Excursion around Chinatown People's Park Complex




It was certainly not my first time stepping into Chinatown People Park Complex. I had accompanied my parents here a number of times during Chinese New year period to shop for New Year goodies. Sometimes I would also come to the People Park Food Centre for meal. However, this time is certainly the first time I see People Park Complex in a different light. Never did I think about its architecture and history background every time I came here. I had just thought of People Park Complex as an old and “ready to be extinct” shopping mall that can only attracts elders to come here shop here. However, I was wrong.Through the architect, Dinesh Naidu's explanation, I finally realized what the elders always quoted ‘Everything was built for a reason”. The 31-storey high People's Park Complex building is certainly not the first shopping mall in Singapore; however it is certainly the first shopping centre of this structure in Southeast Asia and has set the building design pattern for most of today’s retail developments in Singapore. The shopping centre was completed in October 1970, while the residential block, in 1973. The residential block accommodates a variety of apartment sizes, and access to them is through a lift that is independent of the shopping centre. The roof-level of the block previously was a common area contained shared amenities, such as an open-air play space, built for communal use. That was told to us by the accompanying Naidu that the concept was just like today’s neighbouring playground corner and open space. However, it is a pity that such thing is all history. Now what is left is that the open space serves as a dormitory and hangout for those foreign workers. The people park complex itself is made up of an outer shopping area and an inner shopping area. The shopping centre had incorporated the first "city room" or atrium in Singapore, a concept that was introduced under the Metabolist Movement in the 1960s. The shops in the shopping mall surround the large internal space, which consists of two multi-storey interlocking atriums. The "city room" serves to retain the busy character and atmosphere of the olden Chinatown Street.








Today People Park Complex seems no different from when it is just built. The varieties of the shops there are more than what we found in most shopping malls. Most new shopping malls have spa, fashion, food court and gifts place. However in People Park Complex, there is far more choices of needs. Where do you go when you need a good cheap travel deal? Yes, it is People Park Complex. Moreover, we may be surprised at what shops we can find here. There is authentic foot reflexology, massage shop, acupuncture, Chinese medicated shop, fortune telling and even ghost buster. However as Chinatown becoming an elderly populated place where elderly get seated around playing chess and chats, many under the blanket activities started to creep into the People Park Complex. Many massage parlors begun to open in mass. There are a number of small massage places offering "other" services. The KTV and karaoke clubs are also providing more than "singing". There is a whole big group of freelancers with regular customers and spread of word through mouth. There was a period that prostitution is even more active than the standing ladies in Geylang or Desker Road area. Finally, the police raids become frequent and People Park Complex had tarnished its reputation. When I was there with my guy friend, I do not know that there are these kinds of activities going on. Initially I just thought that it was kinda of weird that why the massage parlors are mainly standing outside the entrance and they are wearing very skimpy clothing. More badly, they are making eyes to my guy friend when I was not looking. The feeling is awkward and I was feeling naked with their eyes scanning all over us. I can only take a couple of pictures before a security guard asked me to stop taking photos. I suspect that the security and the authority know about this kind of obscene business, but they do not wish further new reports on this. It is really sad that such thing is moving into one of the Singapore world-class architecture. I feel that People Park Complex may be on the chopping block in the near future. So now, we should really appreciate People Park Complex and try to keep the building from future demolition. In our rush to rebuild Singapore, the government had knocked down many old and quaint Singapore buildings. Only after years later that Singapore realise we were actually destroying a valuable part of our cultural heritage that we were demolishing what tourists found attractive and unique in Singapore. That is exactly what Gibson condemns Singapore about.

Saturday, September 5, 2009

Nosing Around a Singapore Scent Trail

This article sees Singapore from the perspective view of a foreigner who just stepped into Singapore. If tourists follow the Singapore tourist guides and website, they will be able to tour Singapore with ease and learn about the usual places of interests such as Sentosa and Orchard Road. However, these places certainly do not present the whole picture and real cultures of Singapore. “Nosing Around” brings us to explore Singapore by physically touring Changi, Orchard Road, Tekka Market, Geylang and Esplanade.
Why do everything comment that Singapore is a fake greenery country, with no cultures left of this society. Standing in the perceptive of a tourist, I will analyse Singapore by nosing around. Even when I first started at Changi, I can see why Singapore has fake greenery. Orchid, being our national flower really resembles our country well. However, it is not in a good way. Do you ever realize that Singapore orchid planted around Changi airport are scentless and fake. The orchid flower is planted and manicured in charcoal in order to prevent its colour. However, in Singapore’s attempts to bring out the best colour beauty to the tourists, it sacrifices on its real nature and characteristics. Similarly, Singapore has also manicured its environment and urban development so much like it manicured the orchid growth such that critics comment that Singapore is uninteresting with no cultures to explore. Is a scentless orchid still considered a beautiful flower? Is a culture-less country still considered a interesting and successful country? I wouldn’t say an absolute yes.
The tourist’s first attraction is in Orchard Road. Reaching Orchard Road by MRT, I can take the passageways south towards Wisma Atria, and the huge Ngee Ann City mall, or east towards Tangs and Isetan without ever needing to expose myself to the open air. There is no nature to be seen in the urban development of Orchard Road, only through the packed underground tunnels which seem to leave minimal private space for each individual. We are well-directed by the spaces created by the structure design of Orchard Road. That determines our shopping direction (either to Wisma or Wheelock)and what we are viewing. For example, unknowingly we have looked at the wall posters along the tunnel. However, Singapore is also very successful in looking after its population, did so much as in even able to manicure our environment such as Singapore River, toilets and public housing.
Tekka Market serves to be one important place to really learn about Singapore. Here, it is an intensively smelly wet market where fresh pork, chicken, fish and vegetables are sold here and the floor is accumulated with wet dirty water. Unlike the supermarket concept of clean, hygiene shopping environment, tekka market illustrates the true weather condition and environment of Singapore, where it is actually humid and hot when away from air-conditioner. Over here, we are finally away from the manicured direction and city that the government keeps creating for the tourists. Tekka Market is one place where tourist will never see it in the tourist guide, as this is not a place government will hope to create a first impression. Only those who stay long enough in Singapore are able to see the real culture and Singapore’s personality here. In this market, there are a lot of cross-cultural bargaining, commerce and exchange of fresh food products which alike the trading period during the Raffles colony. Here, even our multi-racial society, bargaining of selling takes place with our fingers, faces and a mixture of Singlish and Malay.
Geylang, as known to tourist is popularly known for its local delicacies and red-light district. The geylang structure is like the previous duplication olden time shophouses, brothels, food and durians. However, Geylang is also a place that shows the history tracks of early immigrants. Over there are Buddhist institutes, lion dance headquarters and clan associations. Many do not know that Geylang was once a performing ground for Geylang stadium, Gay world amusement park and Chinese Wayang. With government manicured smells and geylang is now distinguished as a well-known red-light district for food, prostitution and clans. The ‘clean and artisitc’ performance theatre ground has to shift elsewhere away from the stinky regular Singapore smell to the manicured, coordinated clean smell. We can’t deny that Singapore government is really manipulative in what we smell, such as air-conditioner in mall, the scentless orchid smell, supermarket fresh smell and non-smoking and no durian smell on the public transport.
Esplanade, our Singapore art house has no smell at all. The truth behind a real art performing centre is that they reveal cultures and accept artistic way of nature. Even the messiest area can be seen as the most beautiful landscape. However our esplanade ‘Durian’ is a manicured building with manicured artistic atmosphere.

Thursday, September 3, 2009

"Singapore Songlines" by Rem Koolhaas

Koolhaas has argued that Singapore has totally become a new town, the city now represented the ideological production of the past three decade in its purest form, it is managed by a regime that has excluded accident and randomness: even his nature is entirely remade. Singapore has become incredibly “western” for an Asian city; it is like an apparent victim of an out of control process of modernization. The refusal to read Singapore on its own term is frivolous; our most sophisticated reflections on the contemporary condition of the city are completely disconnected from the operational; our incapacity to “make” the city, internalized to the point where any evidence of its fabrication is by definition suspect and unbelievable. Koolhaas feel that Singapore is a paroxysm of the operational, therefore inaccessible to his imagination and interpretation. Furthermore, Singapore is clearly not free and it stands out as a highly alternative in a landscape of near pessimism about a marketable future, a pertinent can-do world of clearly defined ambitions, long term strategies, a ruthless determination to avoid the debris and chaos that democracy leaves in its wake elsewhere.

In 1985, years after Queenstown was constructed, HDB admits that in the first stage of public housing development, urgency to find a solution to the problem of housing shortage in Singapore did not allow time for research. The transition from the English slum to the estate was traumatic, the leap from the Chinese shop house- topology that packs store, factory, family living quarters together in a single block around a courtyard – to Singapore’s high-rise containers is even more merciless, not only in term of material difference; from the Asian to the Western; but because the new inhabitants begin cut off from the connective network of family relationships, tradition, habits, are abruptly forced into another civilization.

In 1959, Singapore – a British Colony – become a self govern ate country, with Lee Kuan Yew to power with his People’s Action Party (PAP). Singapore during that time was in a mess: clumps of stylish colonial enclave, shabby military bases, a port, embedded in a huge, overcrowded Chinatown with a neglected hinterland of marsh, jungle, incidental farming, largely covered by squatter encampments. To overcome this situations, polices have been structuring and rationalizing to help in Singapore’s survival. The result was, and continues to be, an ideology that embodies a vigorous development orientation that emphasize science, technology, and centralized public administration as the fundamental basis for an export oriented industrialization programs, financed largely multinational capital.
In 1963 three experts came to Singapore and they have prepared a report to the government of Singapore; subject of the mission is “the general development of the island… with the specific objective of recommending the right strategy for Urban Renewal. They then articulate Singapore’s dilemma which was clearly a dilemma in the 1964; the question that an urban renewal programme must face and resolve is whether to make a commitment to the retention of some of its area or to raze them and create something different in their place.
First they identify Singapore as the “the first Asian city to embark on a programme of Urban Renewal. This programme is not intended to be an exercise in conversation or restoration but a bold attempt to modernize and develop the city.

In 1960s, Housing and Development board was formed, within month’s construction of Queentowns begun. 160,000 inhabitants lived in it, Queenstown can be said to be “lived in”
In 1966, a second new town was launched. This time round the city is for 180,000 people but still it is not perfect reasons is simple, that is one can easily detect that HDB was still struggling in its experiment.
During the period of just 20 years, from 1965 to 1988, well over 1200 sites were selected for expropriation and nearly 270000 families were displaced; i.e about one third of the country’s population. The redistribution of inhabitants, which turns the entire island into a modernistic, dismantled Chinatown, proceeds to plan too. In 1959 less then 9% of the population was sheltered in public housing, by 1974 nearly 43% of the population lived in HDB flats and by 1989 the proportion was 87% (2.3 million persons). To be precise, twenty New towns encircling the original urban core over 16000 hectares, or a quarter of the national territory.

Sadly there is no space for poetry and dreams in Singapore city as the government force all others, especially those handicapped by a need for reflection into a different degree of more or less humiliating passivity or complicity.

Our young architects, trained in Europe and America and ideological still in their third world/ developing country phrase, underestimate both the determination and the ability of the regime. Their skepticism now will disqualify them later from full participation on anything but the regime’s terms which is something that offends their sixties sensibilities. As quoted from “Investigation in Collective Form” by Fumihiko Maki 1964; “There is nothing less urban, nothing less productive of cosmopolitan mixture than raw renewal, which displays, destroy, and replaces, in the mechanistic order.” It has becomes the new republic’s blueprint, its dystopian program: display, destroy, replace.