USP Writing and Critical Thinking: Lens Paper

Through Darren Soh’s Lens:

How His Photography Addresses Apathy to the Loss of Singapore’s Social Spaces

            How well do you know your Singapore?

In the immensely popular 1999 movie The Matrix, Neo is an ordinary salaryman with a job in a software company by day, earning a wage and living much like anybody else. But by night, he morphs into a man searching for the truth of the world by means of his hacking.

Like Neo, we live in a relatively comfortable environment, the current state of a country whose narrative from Third World to First is largely known to all. We know Singapore well: we live here, see the greenery in the parks and along the roads, go to shopping malls for leisure, and return home to our HDBs, public housing made possible through the vision of our founding fathers and continued with the goal that all should own their own home. But sometimes, we find ourselves in Neo’s position, where things just don’t seem right and a hidden story remains to be discovered and told. This may come in the form of Singapore at night, which takes on an unfamiliar visage that we normally don’t see unless we don’t sleep. Or it may be the Singapore we never noticed as we go about our daily business of living. But what happens if we actually know this parallel world but are simply too comfortable being ensconced in a materialistic life to have ever paid much attention to it?

Darren Soh, in his 2004 monograph: While You Were Sleeping, takes into account the apathetic nature of his audience when he raises the problems we face when we accept the prevailing notion set by the state.  He argues that we have misconstrued progress as development and face the continual loss of a Singaporean identity built up only a generation ago. Through his book, Soh hopes to change our entrenched mindsets by literally confronting us with the uncomfortable reality of green spaces transformed into banality; and in so doing, contributes to a nation-wide discourse on belonging and identity. 

Figure 1. MacRitchie Reservoir, 16 October 2015.

           

     Some of Darren Soh’s photographic techniques can be seen from Figure 1, a photograph he published on his official Facebook account that did not make the cut into his 2015 sequel monograph, In the Still of the Night. Soh tends to take long exposures that showcase movement in nature, while always having a manmade element that serves to remind the viewer that this is indeed Singapore, a wholly urbanised nation-state. Without too much effort, we easily agree with Professor Chua’s foreword in the 2004 iteration when he speaks of Soh’s “aesthetic acts of interrupting the familiar and reframing [scenery]” to create art; Soh is “one who makes art, an artist”. MacRitchie Reservoir in this photograph is probably unlike what most of us have seen before, with its sky an unfamiliar purple, the vegetation becoming gradually more detailed and reflected in the water, and the presence of the small kayaking jetty – which, as Soh explains, “gives [us] a hint of the chaos [during the daytime], but the stillness while [we] were sleeping keeps that chaos at bay for now”. While we see that the reason why Soh takes his photographs at night is to show Singapore without human activities to block his viewfinder, in his artistry, Darren Soh also surprises the viewer with familiar places that look different and indeed beautiful in the night.

            However, when we consider Soh’s background, it becomes clear that he has reasons other than the making of art when he takes these photographs of the night. Professor Chua also alludes to this when he says that “the result [of Soh’s creating of art] compels the viewer-audience to look at the ordinary anew, to find new meanings.” Like Chua, Soh, as the author’s biography at the end of the book reveals, is a sociologist by training. Ostensibly a photographer by profession, it therefore isn’t surprising for him to use his pictures as a medium to explore Singapore’s social context.

To find out the social issues Soh is trying to capture through his lens, we have to look at both his monograph – his first – and his philosophy. Soh, in his introduction, acknowledges that in photographing the images in his book, he embarked on “a road to discovery”. The Esplanade, where his 2015 sequel and photographic exhibition will be held, asserts that this first book “[set] the stage for all that he would capture”. Whatever he discovered in the making of While You Were Sleeping is then presumably an important, lifelong exploration. In his open letter For My Son – ostensibly for his child, someone important to him – but also for the parents of today and their children, he laments that “Many places… are disappearing for one reason or another… perhaps [his] memories and [a book for his son] will be all that [he has left to show his son]”. The meaning behind his photography, then, is possibly tied to his claim as a “photographic documentarian of Singapore” who records memories of time past, as he states in an interview for the website SG Asia City.

Figure 2. Punggol, March 2004. While You Were Sleeping - 10th Anniversary.

            But this apparent reason of merely documenting Singapore’s disappearing places comes into question when we actually see Darren Soh’s photographs that are associated with his 2004 monograph. When we look at Figure 2 (a photograph Soh published on his Facebook account with the admission that it “should have made the book”), we see an abandoned lorry in the landscape. The lorry, a ferry for construction workers in the Singapore context, is transformed into a symbol that is a portent of the construction to come. The landscape itself contributes to the dreary emotional overtones suggested by the lone vehicle and the lighting. The lorry as symbol of construction resonates with Darren Soh’s audience emotionally, who know the story to come: yet another development will soon rise, and it will be as dull and lifeless as the typical flat. What Soh is trying to capture are not the objects in themselves, but what they represent. From the book as a whole, composed from photographs that individually tell a story and yet all adhere to the theme “While You Were Sleeping”, we realise that Soh is documenting for a purpose: he is making an argument for Singaporeans to “wake up” and notice what is happening around them.

To further understand what Darren Soh tries to capture through his lens, we may again look at what he posts on Facebook. He cites a speech by Associate Professor of Sociology Daniel Goh, a member of the Workers’ Party, as one that “really resonated with [him]”. Goh, in this year’s elections, was essentially arguing for the ruling government to continue planning towns with social centres. Soh elaborates with a wish that “the government [would] take a more consultative approach” as redevelopment often “obliterate[es] entire neighbourhoods’ social memories”. Soh laments the loss of a collective social memory that is “burned into the concrete”, as Goh succinctly puts it.

            Darren Soh also expresses his worry and hope for Singaporeans on New Year’s Eve in 2013. He mentions the rapid cycle of building, demolishing and rebuilding which we see in our daily lives, and is concerned that we “may lose [our] sense of belonging”. In an interview for Twentyfifteen.sg, a platform initiative of which he is a founding member, Soh further uses the old adage, “in order to know where we’re going, we need to know where we’ve been” to express his belief for “a country like Singapore”. When all these pieces of information are put together, we finally have his reason for his photographs: To document and preserve places that represent and hold memories in order to preserve a Singaporean identity. More than that, it is an argument that challenges the state’s emphasis on economic growth – more shopping centres! More apartments! – by showing that that has led to a loss of national identity. Singaporeans don’t know what else exists outside of their homes, workplaces, and malls; moreover, they fail to see that what has gone unnoticed will soon be gone. 

           

Figure 3. 021. Broken Light, Kranji Reservoir. 2003. While You Were Sleeping.

            This pessimistic tone is echoed in Soh’s 2004 monograph cover, a blow-up of the middle third section of Figure 3. The lonely lamppost below the title is the only manmade element penetrating the empty sky and almost takes on an anthropomorphic, human figure with head bowed low, as if to shine a literal light on what happens “While You Were Sleeping”. The impending sense of loneliness the reader gets is a primer for the contents of the book, which have the same characteristics as the photographs in Figure 2 and Figure 3: Largely sky, always taken with a long exposure that amplifies any artificial lighting to the point of garishness, and a lack of any human figure but always with a sign that man has been there. Together, they give the reader the impression of a surrealistic environment filled with profound loneliness and seem to beg the question: Is this progress? The reader looking at Punggol’s desolate landscape and the lamppost at Kranji Reservoir – ironically broken when it was supposed to shed light; and ironically making the night scenery much more palatable – would be hard-pressed to say yes.

Figure 4. 030. Under construction, Punggol. 2004. While You Were Sleeping.

            Soh ends off his succession of pictures with Figure 4. This time, the trees are all but overshadowed by the construction that is going on. This photograph seems to be a development of the ongoing work in Figure 2, and its presence at the end of the book raises questions more than trying to tell the reader a story. After thirty images, Soh’s audience has been faced with a multitude of developments in various parts of Singapore: Sengkang, Punggol, Jalan Kayu. The question that Figure 4 poses is: What next? What happens after these sites have been turned into the housing estates, shopping malls and parks that are ubiquitous across Singapore? It isn’t only Punggol that is under construction; it’s everywhere that the URA, the urban planning arm of the state, has eventually slated for development in the name of economic progress. Figure 4 drives home the pervasiveness of construction in Singapore.

            Darren Soh’s photographs tend to incite a emotional response from their viewer. In paraphrasing Soh’s quote of Roland Barthes, which comes after Figure 4 in the monograph, the local sees not a picture but rather a deeper meaning. The objects that are captured through Soh’s lens contain shared presuppositions and underlying connotations of construction and development shared by both Soh and his audience – and thus become emotionally resonant symbols that cause the viewer to replay these exigent issues in his mind. They paint a picture of Singapore as unrelenting in her drive to march onwards without care for the environment. They create an ideology of Singapore-style capitalism that Soh’s audience is repulsed by and eager to distance themselves from. In so doing, they persuade the viewer of the pervasiveness of this previously-invisible problem and the importance of a countermeasure.

The problem of loss of social memory that Soh’s monograph presents maintains its relevance even today. Today’s reader of the monograph when looking at 2004’s Punggol in Figure 2 and Figure 4 already knows the present-day Punggol, with its HDBs, BTOs, and LRT. Today’s reader is able to compare the Punggol past and present with other sites of development – an all-too-familiar narrative in Singapore. In this way, Darren Soh has created a book not only for a 2004 audience: his work remains relevant to a future audience as long as the predominant attitudes towards development remain.

Charmaine Poh, a local photographer-cum-writer, mentions that Singaporeans “have felt the tug of things lost” that “is not merely nostalgia, but the search for identity” in her recent essay on photography and Singapore on the Invisible Photographer Asia website. When we consider that the answer to this “search for identity” still has not been found, Soh’s work in 2004 takes on an increased poignancy today. Clearly, something is lacking from the state’s equation that links the economy directly to progress. In this respect, his 2015 recapitulation of the work that led him through a process of self-discovery is not merely personal, but rather, is part of a national quest to establish connections with the past and find out how best to move forward.

Darren Soh’s emotional argument in While You Were Sleeping gains further meaning not only to himself, but to the reader, when his monograph is considered as autobiographical. In another Facebook post, Soh quotes Robert Adams:

Landscape pictures can offer us, I think, three verities – geography, autobiography, and metaphor… the three kinds of information strengthen each other and reinforce what we all work to keep intact – an affectation for life.

While we have seen that Soh’s pictures deal with geography and are a metaphor for representing the social issues he deals with, the arrangement of his photographs reads as his autobiography when the first and last images are juxtaposed against each other. The first, depicting the BBC at Kranji Reservoir, is a reflection of Soh’s roots as a photography intern at the Straits Times Picture Desk. Figure 4, the last, is an image of a place under construction. It not only represents Singapore as under construction, but also Soh himself with his work in progress, and Soh’s determination to both improve his work and continue his documentation of and advocacy for his cause. The realisation that the photographer himself is present in his works leaves the reader with a strengthened impression of Soh as an artist with a story to tell. The audience is left eager to read meaning into Soh’s photographs – in effect, they become easier to persuade.

Soh further cements his good impression on his reader by invoking different personalities through quotations at the start and end of the book. For the discerning reader who knows Duane Michals as a maverick photographer, van Gogh as a key painter of the Post-Impressionist movement, and Roland Barthes as a theorist and philosopher who had written a book on photography and its meanings, Soh would rank highly as a scholarly individual worth his salt. Darren Soh, in essence, borrows the ethos of these famous people to elevate his audience’s perception of himself when they draw their inevitable comparisons. For instance, Soh invites comparison to van Gogh; not only is he an artist like the latter, but his photographs assume the status and meaning of paintings. Van Gogh ever said:

One starts with the hopeless struggle to follow nature and everything goes wrong.

One ends by calmly creating from one’s palette, and nature agrees with it and follows.

            Soh echoes this notion of creation in his introduction to While You Were Sleeping: “I brought to life a Singapore…”

            In other words, Soh – like van Gogh, who created a new, unique genre of painting altogether – has boldly stated that his photography is at the forefront of innovation. When the discerning reader sees Soh’s innovative photography techniques after the van Gogh quotation, which comes right before the first photograph, the notion that the book has more to offer besides artistic shots alone, á la Duane Michals, has a serendipitous effect not unlike that of realising that Soh’s autobiography is embedded in his work. Soh has managed to create a favourable impression of his ethos that contributes to audience identification with his emotional appeal in his thirty photographs.

So far, we have been discussing While You Were Sleeping as a standalone book. However, this may lead to the mistaken assumption that Darren Soh’s audience is simply those who are rich enough to buy his monograph. When we look at Soh’s portfolio as a whole, his target audience expands to include most Singaporeans. His status as co-founder of Platform.sg, which birthed the Twentyfifteen.sg initiative; his history of exhibitions of his work; and his collection of published works, one of which is his 2004 monograph – all lead to the conclusion that Soh treats his monographs as merely one form of outreach. In his 2015 exhibition, he explicitly states that his objective is “to get as many people to see the images as possible”. Even his Facebook page can be seen from a different perspective: it serves not just to voice his personal opinions to the public and to advertise for his work; but it is also another form of spreading his ideology to his audience. Through his constant advertising on Facebook, Twentyfifteen.sg, and other partner websites, Soh’s aim is in reaching as wide an audience as possible. If his photographs are viewed as argument, then Soh’s purpose in his diverse methods of outreach is to try and persuade as many people as he can.

Finally, we have to address the issue of apathy in Soh’s Singaporean audience. It is widely acknowledged that Singaporeans – and especially youth – are disinterested politically and even socially. Without going into any specifics of argumentation, we only have to look around us for empirical evidence of this statement. A consideration of apathy has repercussions in finally gaining a complete understanding of Soh’s monograph. The consequences are much greater when we choose not to take some form of action, but merely lament over what we’ve lost before going right back to studious ignorance. When we only care about things when they affect us, and blame our powerlessness on a nanny state, we remain in comfort without the knowledge of how pervasive the problem that development poses to our environment really is. When we see sleep as a metaphor for apathy rather than not noticing, the message of Soh’s photographs transforms itself into a warning: that before Singapore knows it, all her social memory and natural environments will be lost; the opportunity to establish some kind of national identity will vanish; and as Darren Soh predicts on Facebook, we get stuck in the rut of “building, demolishing and rebuilding. And then repeating the process again.” Rather than imploring to the reader to “wake up”, Soh’s pictures now aim to shock their viewer into the sheer nation-wide scale of development that appears to continue unabated, as Figure 4 ominously warns. Soh’s narrative becomes that of an alarm that sounds the harsh truth in order to startle them into action.

     Still, Darren Soh, in his elaborate effort for outreach, can be seen to maintain an optimism that things will change for the better. The “affectation for life” that he quotes Robert Adams in could be the real purpose of his photography: a desire for Singaporeans to look ahead to the future, while not forgetting the past and where they belong. In his open letter to his son, Soh writes: “Let’s see if ideas about redevelopment in Singapore change by the time you read this.” We realise that through his photography, Darren Soh’s eventual aim is for his photographs to help convert his fellow Singaporeans into having an increased sensibility for the built environment. In other words, his monograph is part of a vehicle to deliver his ideas to a broader public as a call to think twice before trying to develop, or redevelop, a place. Looking back at Figure 3, Soh’s hidden message is that sometimes, it is only when the light is broken that we are able to enjoy the beauty of the darkness. Although the lamppost remains as a human construct, the light, a metaphor for urban consumption, has gone out. This is Darren Soh’s hope in an opened Pandora’s Box.

In light of this, rather than asking: How well do you know your Singapore? – A better question might instead be: How well do you want to know your Singapore? Like Neo and his dilemma between the red and blue pill offered to him by Morpheus, we are faced with an implicit choice at the end of the book: to wake up from a metaphorical sleep and have to deal the hard truths and issues; or to continue living as if they didn’t exist.

In case we’ve forgotten, Neo chose the red pill.

Works Cited

Goh, Leonard. “TwentyFifteen Interview 01/20: Darren Soh speaks to Leonard Goh”. Twentyfifteen.SG. 1 Aug 2013. Web. 12 Nov 2015.

“In the Still of the Night (While You Were Sleeping)” Esplanade Presents: Festivals and Series – Visual Arts. n.p. n.d. 14 Nov 2015

Pew, Gwen. “Darren Soh makes Singapore look dazzling and dreamy.” Timeout Singapore. 28 Oct 2015. Web. 13 Nov 2015.

Poh, Charmaine. “On Land: Photography and the City-state of Singapore”. Invisible Photographer Asia. 7 Nov 2015. Web. 13 Nov 2015.

Sethi, Mrigaa. “These surreal Singapore landscapes will blow you away.” SG Asia city: The Insider’s Guide to Singapore. 11 Nov 2015. Web. 14 Nov 2015.

Soh, Darren. “Darren Soh, Photographer”. Facebook.com. Web. 14 Nov 2015.

Soh, Darren. “For My Son”. Twentyfifteen.SG. 6 Aug 2013. Web. 14 Nov 2015.

Soh, Darren. While You Were Sleeping. Singapore: National Youth Achievement Award Council. 2004. Print.

*All images taken from Darren Soh's Facebook/Web page. 

If he protests, I will remove this post immediately.

Lecture Response 2

Christoph Ingenhoven, Presented by a+u                                                            29 Sep 2015

This is the second (and only other) talk I attended during which I asked a question.

Ingenhoven really talks about his entire oeuvre the whole time, which I feel may not be that beneficial to discourse. However, there were still many things to learn from him.

Ingenhoven proposed the concept of ‘supergreen’, green architecture that doesn’t merely meet environmental standards, but also encompasses people and their daily activities. As the brief says it all, his architecture is about combining ecologic architecture with aesthetics and technology.

He has his own studio, Ingenhoven architects which is one of the world’s leading practices in sustainable design.

In Singapore, he is doing the Marina One project.

He first mentions his design philosophy with relation to the future of the world.

In 2050, 70% of the world’s population will live in urban areas. Right now, Shenzhen, Guangzhou: largest city contains 120 million people, and Tokyo, 37 million people. They are examples of hypercities, metropolises containing more than 20 million lives. 40 of the world’s largest cities represent 18% of the world’s population but represent 66% of the economy. Cities take up 3% of the surface; but 80% of the carbon emissions.

With all these being said, it is only right to focus on urban cities, which (in my general knowledge) have the potential to be efficient consumers of energy. We passed the point where over half the world’s population is living in an urban rather than suburban area already. Cities are what we need to develop architecture in relation to.

He talks about his works as follows:

RWE tower – one of the first skyscrapers to be naturally ventilated. 1996. Skin facade.

Toranomon Project, Tokyo, is a residential tower and office tower as well. Every balcony has both horizontal and vertical landscaping.

Breeze, Osaka. It has a double-skinned façade with natural ventilation. 50%. A 7-story podium is tucked under the building, with concert halls and shopping etc. Building has relationship to the others around it.

Kobogen 2 Dusseldorf. Positioned between a public park and something else. Ingenhoven’s practice looked for the types of trees with golden-brown leaves during autumn, kept during winter snows, and slightly more green during spring. Type of species is important. This creates a varying landscape through the course of the year as the seasons change.

Lufthansa HQ Frankfurt. Very surrounded by noise, yet the most approachable building around. Beside high-speed train tracks and the airport’s runway. The idea of a concrete shell with steel and glass. Each office is oriented to gardens. Not heated nor cooled. (gardens in between buildings. Kinda like a greenhouse. Louvres that allow for air circulation in the roof. Also opening windows ventilates the office.) There is heating in winter and cooling water through the floor slabs during summer. Vents in the ceiling ventilate as well as let smoke out (??? Thought smoke goes down)

European Investment Bank, Luxembourg, has a timber facade! This doesn’t radiate coldness and people can seat nearer to it. Very interesting idea, that his architecture is indeed climate responsive. It is a curved, v-shaped building (a series connected together like a W) and this helps reduce sound. Triangular glass panels for facade also.However, the Venturi effect throws a wrench into the ventilation. The shape of the building helps to counteract this effect.

Lanserhof Lake Tegern. A rural and nice getaway area. Designed similar to a monastery. All rooms oriented to the outside. Material: wood. Ingenhoven likes simple reduced elegant design. Luxury comes from the space and the landscape that the architecture supports.

Main Station Stuttgart. Ingenhoven saved most of the existing station and built downwards. 28 light-eyes allow light into the excavated interior. Heating and Cooling are done by the trains coming and leaving. So zero energy needed. The Light-eyes are above the train platforms. In winter, the minimum is 14 degrees Celsius and in Summer max of 28 degrees when it’s 34 degrees outside. Also facilitated by the shading of trees outside. The light-eye: 30cm thick at the extreme ends/thinnest. Great engineering to make things appear very light. Thickest part is 1.5m. Also have vents in them. There was also a need to build a temporary railway station (imagine a waterfall and making it flow earlier first while treating the original.) So does the architect need to design the interim structure well too? 7-8 years...

International Criminal Court, The Hague. This INTERNATIONAL court tries to cater to all nationalities, appearing first and foremost as a place of law. So dispense with the old stone building, the Greek pediments etc. Instead thin colonnades rising to hold up a light ceiling. Very transparent and light (both meanings.) IT’S HARD to get the energy balance even with a great climate, not too hot nor cold.

Alexanderplatz Berlin: A residential tower in the middle of Berlin. The volumes jut out to random extents. 3D shape. The first few floors provide a safe feeling for the pedestrians. Welcome. Facade played a big role.

University Dusseldorf. Surrounded by trees, nature, a body of water. Using the environment to cool, for aesthetic, etc... Ingehoven is very sensitive to the exact environment his buildings stand in. Harmoniusly blending in. The sun shines directly on the rows of steps leading to the building and letting the building and students interact with the lake and nature.

Swarovski Lake Zurich. U-shaped building. View of lake is emphasised. The interior U-shape is conceived as a public plaza to give back to the people of the village. (the two pointed ends face outwards to the water). Again as with the university previously, usage of lake water to cool the building. Very green.

1 Bligh Sydney: People sit on the steps (lots of steps) and eat lunch, there is interaction with the public. Talking through the curtain (facade) of the building. The building has no ‘back’ to it!  Apart from the openings for bicycle and carpark, it is meant to be viewed 360-degrees “in the round” like a sculpture. The atrial space, first few floors are given back to the public. The atrium is a space for looking across, up and down floors, into the transparent space, facilitating interaction, fostering community.

Google HQ, Palo Alto: Designing for climate change. California, LA, turning into a desert because of the drought. So how does one design something so big, make people feel as if they’re nerdy students when working, and yet cater to such a climate?

Other small projects that were skimmed past: House 61; Strandkai Hamburg; UCD University College Dublin.

Marina One Singapore: The tropical city is the city of the future. The countries likely to experience population growth tend to have this climate. Tropical areas need wind for people to feel good. Building designed to facilitate wind movement and ventilation. So, the design is such that wind speed and turbulence is enhanced. Air flows from the bottom to the top because hot air rises and is blown away. Everyone gets a little wind.

The plot of land given is right in the centre of the Marina Bay reclaimed area, and will not be affected by future land reclamation. Ingenhoven designed Marina One to be insular first until the developments for the next decade or two are completed and there is harmony between buildings in the district. Pedestrianisation and public space take place on the ground level – public space and the atrium. Rule to bring back about 25% of the greenery taken away. Eventually, 3000 will live and 30k people work here.

Questions:

Did your education in any way influence your future career path towards greening/sustainability?

Green party created an entire political agenda focused on “green politics”. The shift in German culture in the 70s caused the end of modern architecture being taught in German universities. Swing from modernism to postmodernism based on white, rose-striped buildings, turned the attention onto an artistic, intellectual, diverse form of architecture, whereas modernism was more rational.

Out of studying heritage and preserved buildings come many of the solutions for contemporary architecture. Brazil has a strong tradition of good architecture under difficult economic, political, climatic conditions. Singapore is on the edge of whether or not to develop an identity. Identity comes from dedication and being keenly attuned to local issues, while finding local solutions.

Certification is important, but boring. This is not the holistic approach to green and sustainable buildings. There may be things which do not contribute to any award rubric, but is still important to the building. You are not forced by the system to give back more land than you use, but you can do it anyway. That is the supergreen mentality.

For countries which do not enforce green and sustainability standards, is it the responsibility of the architect to create it in your design?

Is there anyone who would reject green design? So far in my personal experience there has been no one “forcing” me to create a green building or “forcing” a non-green building. Everyone usually agrees to do the right thing. Hence, if it is a realistic idea, do not be afraid to put such ideas on the table for discussion.

Firstly, I have learnt more about green architecture and the way the world is going from Ingenhoven. Granted, some statistics I already knew, but through his repeated examples of his own work, I gradually understood the key tenets of his philosophy. Architecture has to cater to high-density, high-rise living, such as that already found in Hong Kong, Singapore, and Tokyo for example. We need to cut down our energy usage and instead utilise the natural environment. (Perhaps some lessons could be taken from vernacular architecture and the shophouses of Singapore and adapted to a new concept of Tropical Architecture.) Architecture has to co-exist with the environment around it. Existing buildings should be conserved and made use of as far as possible, as cultural icons and to reduce wastage. Climate and micro-climates and ecosystems can be made use of and factored in to design. Perhaps, the issue of greenery and sustainability can be woven into the very process of design, present in the parti, and fulfilling part of the function. Architects need to proactively factor the concept of ‘supergreen’ into their designs, and not simply do it for the sake of the accreditation. It needs to be part of how we look at the world.

But then again, on a less ‘architectural’ note, what I didn’t like was the fact that he only talked about his own work. I’m not sure how many principal architects do this, but I know that I prefer to work for someone who is more collaborative and perhaps not as egoistic as to only bring across his own work while talking about his philosophy of ‘supergreen’. Perhaps a more nuanced discourse could be achieved by discussing other firms’ approach to this ongoing movement in architecture and then trying to lay some ground for the future and perhaps inspire others. I believe that two and a half hours on an oeuvre may indeed be too long and doesn’t serve to hold the audience’s attention. With that said, Ingenhoven has sadly lost a little bit of credibility with me. That, and that I expected more breaking of new ground. Since the future of architectural growth is likely to be in tropical cities, how can architecture adapt itself to the climate more? What kind of changes might sustainability take on in the near future? I think that these are questions that I will have to ask myself.

The question that I asked him was about whether he, in his architecture, was looking for a new typology. The high-rise, so ubiquitous and necessary in the urban city, and providing offices, private and public housing for people to live, work and play in: has he, or are there, new attempts to redefine a new typology, or is the concept of “supergreen” itself a new typology that is catering to the new requirements for energy efficiency and greenery and so on?

I honestly didn’t get a very satisfactory answer, but I felt that his reply was a sort of closure at any rate. Ingenhoven told me (more or less) that a new typology is not looked for; it is found, in the process of trying to adapt to the problems faced with every new building: site constraints, the client, the cultural and world context. While I have no way of verifying his words as of yet, if I take them as true, I suppose that it is so. Sustainable architecture, while being the next big thing, and even required by BCA for buildings to fulfil certain criteria, seems to have produced new elements: the green wall, the green rooftop, new types of skyscrapers with a void in the middle with a terrace garden and bringing a hint of nature into the building. Is that not a new typology when compared with the concrete office towers of the past? I gather that architecture evolves with the times, is a reflection of the current movement in the world, as quotes from the few Ideas lectures that I have attended (for the sake of curiosity) put it.

However – and this in retrospect, since this response is written more than a month after the lecture – perhaps new typologies really can be defined after all. At WOHA’s talk on their BTO at Dawson, Richard Hassel also questioned, why make skyscrapers the way it is done now? The trees should be on the ground and the rooftops of different buildings blended into a homogeneous whole at a specified height – that way, they don’t cast shadows on each other and minimise the efficiency of solar panels. He also proposed that the stepped terrace (a la Chan Soo Kian’s Dawson) be turned inside out and the terraces climb outwards instead from the inside; protected and creating a central green atrium. If this is not the creation of a new typology (were it put into actual practice), then what is it?

I feel that Ingenhoven has broken new ground for sure, but other architectural firms would do good to follow his example and build upon it and continue to challenge the notion of sustainability and green architecture even more. 

Lecture Response 1

THE ONLY WAY IS UP [SHELTERED: DOCUMENTS FOR HOME]Panel discussion.                                                                                 6 Nov 2015 NLB LVL 1Firstly, an excerpt (mixing in some views of mine).-          Prof Jane M. Jacobs, Head of Urban Studies and Director of the Division of Social Sciences at YNC. Expertise: urban studies, postcolonial studies and qualitative urban methods.
Book! Buildings must die: a perverse view of architecture (MIT Press, 2014)-          Debbie Loo. Studying doctoral at NUS. Project, Passages Home.
-          The Saturday Projects (Felicia Lin, Jolene Lee, Wong Zihao). Familiar landscapes with unstable, unfinished or unwritten expositions.-          Moderator: Dr Lilian Chee. UCL doctorate; A.P. at Arch. NUS. She conceptualized the architectural essay film 03-FLATS (2014) which formed the initial impetus for Sheltered.The only way, it seems, is up, sometimes... The verticality of HDB, while being a success story, has also generated a whole complex of unanticipated movements.Prof Jane:She talks about home as something banal. While the HDB has achieved all these fantastic accolades, and Singapore has achieved what nobody has done with public housing, but there’s still another definition of home beyond that. Home links to identity. A person’s identity, our nation’s identity. Home is about the intangibles as well. It can be mobile and fluid, a concept rather than a concrete physicality.She quotes Liu Thai Ker. (Side track: He’s the director of RSP Architects Planners and Engineers! His father is Liu Kang, a local pioneer painter. He was head of HDB and URA. Chairman of National Arts Council. STPI Chair. Etc etc etc.) – HDB, as big as residents can afford.
Can the HDB be more than pragmatism? Or is it already?An example of a magazine – Our Home. In Oct 1983: with a HDB as the background; in the foreground, a NDP kind of party with people dressed in red and white, holding up the HDB flag (red on white). If we look at it in terms of rhetoric, we see a message of the heartland starting to emerge. HDB built these; HDB employs the common man, proud to serve and live in these flats; HDB as an icon and backdrop to Singaporean life. We can see it not only as propaganda, but also as an instrument of national building (on the flip side).But at the same time, are there correlations between high-rise living and suicides? She cites a paper, a thesis written in the 1980s. Applying sociology to architecture; high-density living and its negative aspects. As a new way of life, new typology of buildings they led to new forms of social conflict, such as washing clothes and with dirty water from a mop dripping down. The paper shows that a high ‘worry index’ is linked to living on higher floors. Is there a correlation?**********************Firstly, her talk about the stresses of high-rise living brings to mind some booklet I took from NLB before the panel discussion. About how Chinese coolies smoked opium, partly as a means to forget about their cramped conditions… So now that Singapore doesn’t have all these vices, how do people relax?Also, is high-density living really a new typology? When we know that HDBs were built to replace the slums, shanty towns, coolie houses, as a social good. Perhaps it may be more accurate to frame the social conflicts as what happened when people are inconsiderate and forget that others live above and below. How has the situation changed now? The study tried to imply that people are more stressed on the higher floors. But it seems that nowadays we like living on higher floors to catch the breeze. New HDBs – think BTOs like Skyterrace@Dawson – are up to 40 stories high. How has our ‘happiness index’ changed with time?I feel that there are more questions than answers to be had for Jane’s short talk. But I guess that her main point is that home is more than just four brick walls. It’s also a concept. Home – Singapore on a macro scale. Propaganda-like images help to influence that for sure. But more often than not, we live in Singapore. Born and bred here. I think it’s no surprise that people get attached. It’s more than just HDB living, but also about the lives we lead around it that wrap around the architecture, give it greater meaning. No matter how big or small the flats eventually turn out to be, there has to be a degree of sentimentality, especially if (since) a good enough job has been done of making a way of life.Perhaps, as our definition of ‘home’ changes, the architecture has to adapt to the needs of the people. How does the architect find that expression in the façade of a building for instance? Especially as in Singapore, the buildings seem to get torn down every so often. Perhaps the look of our public housing will have changed with the times in a generation.Debbie Loo:She started off with a poem like thing which I cannot remember.What she did recently is to go to pearls centre, located at 100 Eu Tong Sen Street, upon the invitation of her friend who lived there, and it became an obsession to her to document the lives of people unseen. She showed pictures of the intangibles of a home, and of people making homes where there wasn’t supposed to be one: umbrellas hooked and hidden behind doors, a fridge in a smoke stop lobby, signs of habitation, graffiti on the walls in Chinese that ask for the return of Imperialism and the emperor – an explicit denial of capitalism.It is clear that the residents have taken over the building and that whatever intent the architect originally had for it is now subsumed over the years by the various tenants of the building. We have to bring in Yangtze Cinema, which started off showing wuxia films, but changed to softcore porn (R rated flicks) upon its re-opening in 1995. Along with that came a reputation for seediness and sleaze.Debbie’s photographs remind me of my Intangible City assignment where we were supposed to go about Singapore and take 12 photographs and write a poem. There it already was, a building full of character and characters with words in it that existed to be taken, and she captured it perfectly through her lens, showing the exact same subjects I wanted to show – the ageing of architecture, the lines and blackened dirt marks telling volumes of the stories untold that we could all see, if only we looked a little harder. Debbie talks of Paul Auster, who makes scribbles of a detective who traces someone through a building and eventually comes up with fantastical routes that seem to trace out letters that perhaps are the echoes of the building itself. Debbie does rubbing on the floors and parts of Pearls Centre and leaves some of her marks behind, as her own contribution to the place. What has been left there – torn-off posters, scribbles of I-love-yous, all speak of the history of the place just as her marks do. And she says, someone will come along and interpret them and add his or her own mark too, and so it continues, until the building is torn down and demolished (which it was in August).*******************************************This was honestly the talk that made the most impression on me, because it resonated with me. In reading up more on Pearls Centre, I discovered just how sleazy it was. On Coconuts Singapore, Robin Hicks talks about old men who go to the cinema to masturbate and satisfy their desire for intimacy. But more than that, it reflects an undercurrent for “Singapore’s biggest social ill – loneliness” and the Yangtze cinema is a market for a specific audience on coping with this. I really began to see the dark underbelly of Singapore. This draws parallels with stories I’ve heard of aunties and uncles going to floating casinos over the weekends to gamble, and with the current work we’ve been doing – looking at the busy metropolitan lives of the people in the city and what consequences they may have – Debbie’s work came across as apt.Many questions were raised (in my head) that may not have answers to them: what happens when the architect is gone? When the architecture is no longer needed, slated for destruction and for a new building to takes its place – in paraphrasing Hicks’ words, to make way for yet another shopping mall even more soulless than an airport? When people start forgetting and the building doesn’t really exist anymore because it is being treated as though it isn’t there anyways, and both it and its residents wait for death like old people in a geriatric home. It’s just so sad. And I wondered, who will remember? Who will come by to pick all these memories up? Who will document and make sure we remember? So what, even if that happens? What will change, or is anything meant to change? And what can the architect do about it, if he can even do anything about it?I asked Debbie the question of whether she thinks that buildings can be designed to prevent this from happening – that hopefully we can design ourselves out of this problem of old, forgotten buildings and people. With the preamble during the open-floor discussion – that architects are increasingly involved also in the end-stage of a building’s life, in conservation and documentation and even redevelopment – are architects only to document and move on? Does a building just die? Or can it live on indefinitely while preserving its heritage?While she did not answer my queries directly, I sort of found my own answers through the discourse that followed. I came to the conclusion that buildings do, eventually, die. Prof. Jacobs’s view that “buildings must die” led to revelations on decay and consumption – that architecture can be treated as a process, not as a product. The architect’s job seems to be over once the building is completed, and tenants take over and give the space added meaning instead. Perhaps one more question should be: how can the architect be further involved in the life of a building? Debbie treats buildings as having a life as well; they age as society ages. But dying is a natural process. Perhaps it may be too idealistic to want to save each place in words, photographs, videos. Sometimes, all we can do is to preserve memories of important, iconic buildings past their prime; document; and these serve as reminders of a bygone era. And the new building erected in its place will hopefully try to remember what stood in its place before and reflect that in some way.But likewise in a metropolis, there is ever-growing consumption and buildings may just get conserved and repurposed. As ‘new’ buildings, they, too, have to then reflect their heritage in some form; pay homage, and tell the world not to forget what it was in its previous incarnation.Maybe when architects design, we have to try our very best to understand every aspect of the plot of land. All the better if the building hasn’t been demolished. We need to understand its history: what was growing on it before; what significance did previous buildings have; what does the client need and how do we take the past into account and design, for the present, a place that grows into the future, grows old along with its residents and tenants.It strikes me that in much of what I’ve learnt about history so far, it always seems to involve the Hegelian dialectic in some way or another. Let me amend his words to a slightly different meaning of current and counter-current: for every movement, there is always an anti-movement; and then something else appears to synthesise the two; and then another counter-movement appears, and so on and so forth. For the ‘Dark Ages’ and Gothic, there was the Renaissance; for that, there was the Baroque; for the Baroque, there was the Rococo; for that, modernism and its multifarious smaller movements that comprise it; for the busyness of every life in Singapore, we Singaporeans have developed a deep nostalgia for pretty much anything from our childhood or that survives to be more than forty-odd years old. What will be the next synthesis that we come up with?The Saturday Projects:By three architectural assistants more or less fresh out of architecture school (I assume). Jolene is in Harvard on further studies.They talked about the architect not as the main maker, but rather, the tenants are those that take over. They are the second part of the story that has been left out (so far), the human, social aspect of architecture.They also examine and ask questions on what happens when the HDB flat, in all its ubiquity and hence anonymity, becomes a place of violence. Anonymity becomes a camouflage, makes the familiar unfamiliar – something they explored with their exhibition that uses everyday objects whitewashed to become recognisable, but yet not the same.They ended by encouraging the audience to go for the NUS museum exhibition Sheltered.***************They imply that when we study architecture, we need to consider, again, architecture not as a product of the architect, but also as a process that doesn’t really end until the building is gone – and even then it may live on in things erected in its place, or in memory, or as a hollow shell, much like our Chinatown of today, and especially as it was in the 1980s.Undoubtedly, though, their views have filtered into my response to Debbie’s talk.A question by Dr Lilian Chee, At what point does architecture become irrelevant? :This is my own interpretation of the discussion that happened.Somewhere, someone talked about the lifespan of buildings getting reduced from hundreds of years to tens of years, primarily because of the material used (I feel), because concrete is so ubiquitous. It seems as though buildings that have been erected are knocked down, too soon, in Singapore especially. Perhaps architects can make each building so unique, so special and emotion-provoking, that they don’t deserve to be knocked down after a few decades? This links to the idea of impermanence raised by one of the panellists. Architecture itself will never become irrelevant. But pieces of architecture most definitely will. It’s part of the whole system: build, destroy, raise a new piece of architecture, and repeat. It’s bound to happen in land-scarce Singapore. But in the process, are we losing something? Are we losing our identity? And if there were a resource crunch of the future, then perhaps it would be prudent to cater less to a consumerist culture and instead design for more permanent structures instead.Comments from a sixtysomething-year-old man who asked interesting questions, giving tidbits of information such as the moving of the previous occupants of Pearls Centre to People’s Park Centre and Complex:Along with Hicks or some other online article I read that said that the tenants simply move to another part of Chinatown, where they feel at home in a certain environment: If we extrapolate, when will this moving about stop? Will there always be places like Little Thailand in Golden Mile Complex, or Yangtze Cinema? Or will they eventually fade away when the government reaches out and crushes it? What will happen then? This brings to mind Invisible Cities, by Italo Calvino, talking about the hidden aspects of cities. My belief, though, is that every city will always have its hidden dark side, and that when one part of it is exterminated, it simply grows back somewhere else, finds a way to survive on the fringes.
*In conclusion, I’ve attended fourteen talks so far since the start of school, beginning with the ArchiEducator’s Forum. I believe that these discussions and lectures are part of a vital discourse on architecture. As architects continue to design, we must continue thinking about these essential questions, find our own answer to them, and adapt our ideas as times change, and influence the rest of the construction and civilian world when we really have a strong message to bring across. 

A small conclusion to Semester 1

Before starting to blog I must say that it is kind of therapeutic to blog about architecture and what I've learnt... But anyway... yeah the stress is coming back because it's 3+ a.m. and I have 4 guest lecture responses to do which were due yesterday according to my schedule. Sigh.


I learnt that it's good to keep an open mindset. (some stuff I learnt before or knew or thought about before hand, but let's just talk about my perceptions now without any other links to past stuff.)
Because architecture links to so many things. And also why, O why would I want to forget about the past? All the things I studied before and loved so much... all that knowledge that I was proud to have learnt and had a great time learning about. I must find a way to apply them in architecture. Draw links somehow from everything... The architect has to put himself in the shoes of so many. Think about what people sense. Who to design for? Why? So many things to answer, so much to learn.

I learnt that we must always question and look at context. When you know culture, when you know precedence, then you will understand fully. It's important to read widely and I'm thankful I can indulge. Read, question critically, form thoughts, apply, look at your own work critically and improve on it, always improve on it. Architects are always critical of themselves. You have to look at your own works objectively so that you can improve on them.

Dare to change everything, but also keep in mind the past and the future, walk onward while looking back. Think about everything both small and large. Dare to ask. Dare to explore. Dare to challenge.

Keep in mind context, look at tropicality if you're in Singapore. Think about progression. Know that the architect merely is part of the equation. The architecture is born, but then it takes on a new life and ages and grows with the people who inhabit it, grows old, and one day it is time to reinvent or die or something else. And when that time comes, there's a need to do something about it.

Art and architecture are linked. Art for architecture, architecture for art, architecture as art.

Pictures (Week 9 Architecture assignment)

Short buildings, middle buildings, tall buildings, tall buildings getting taller,

Blocks upon blocks upon blocks.

Brick and mortar, stone on stone, timber rarely, glass and steel mostly.

Green and brown blend in with a sea of whitish grey against an upward sea of blue and white and a downward sea of black and whitish grey.

Grids square grids diagonal grids up down left right all around.

Planes up in the sky slice planes in the sky

Lines on planes on grids

Dots that become lines that become planes that become grids

Perfection, it is unattainable. An abstract reality does not exist. Only the mind thinks it is beautiful.

Time weathers, washes away emotions, renders utopia otherwise, marching on, entropy

Knocking on the door, shouting that it is

Time,

Time to wake up from a dream.

Time nurtures the wrinkles in the old man and old lady, the little patterns scratched on the skin growing,

Deeper and deeper, Time feeding them nourishment of some kind,

Growing is what these do, in all directions and

Feeding upon themselves and

Growing from the inside out and outside in.

They stay strong despite the assault.

The spirit can never be crushed!

Sometimes only a skeleton is left, but the memory remains, what was once gaudy and

Young and idealistic,

But meaning, that most idiosyncratic and arbitrary of things,

 is as nurtured by Time as are wrinkles.

One only learns to savour the bitter with Time

But how sweet is the bitterness!

Dots grow into lines grow into adult lines grow into old big caverns that

Eat themselves from the inside out and turn into

Nothing.

But dots become crooked lines become crooked planes that intersect on

Crooked grids intersected by

Crooked streets walked on by

People who are bittersweet and equally chipped off on the

Inside, as things are from the outside.