Reading Response

I

~ingapore Portrait of a Potemkin Metropolis

~onglines ... or Thirty Years of Tabula Rasa

1995

Rem Koolhaas

1010

Fung Suay : old Chinese belief that client will continue to prosper

if he remains on original s ite ...

We want to guide the bulldozers to the right places.

- Singapore Green Plan

Singapore is a very small place in a very, very large , variable ,

changing world, and if it is not nimble , if it is not swift in making adju stments ,

it will perish and the people know that.

- Lee Kuan Yew, Straits Times , May 27, 1990

I turned eight in the harbor of Singapore. We did not go ashore , but I remember the

smell-sweetness and rot , both overwhelming.

Last year I went again. The smell was gone. In fact , Singapore was gone , scraped ,

rebuilt. There was a completely new town there.

Almost all of Singapore is less than 30 years old; the city represents the ideological

production of the past three decades in its pure form , uncontaminated by surviving

contextual remnants. It is managed by a regime that has excluded accident and random-

ness: even its nature is entirely remade. It is pure intention: if there is chaos, it is

authored chaos; if it is ugly, it is designed ugliness; if it is absurd , it is willed absurdity.

Singapore represents a unique ecology f?{ the contemporary .

1011

16e. Tel.: 42 .24.69.13. Devant l' Eg li se de Passy. De 11 ha 18h, brunch solide de 50 a 120F. Prevez egalement la marquise au chocolat. Gentilesse un peu na"ive de l'accueil et confort des fauteuils Rosel pour oublier Passy le dimanche.

PARLEZ Parlez en anglais, for Christ's sake. le ne parle pas fran\:ais .

PARODIES And the singers, they wear rhine- sto nes-and rhinestones , you see, are already parodies of diamonds, so you can't parody rhinestones .

PARTICIPATION A brilliant boyhood, a brilliant start in life: the road lay c lear ahead , th e future seemed within his grasp. Then sudd enly came four yea rs of war, in which Gropius played his part. As an officer he invented a specia l sig- nalling system.

PARTY The back pages of local newspapers are filled with phone numbers to ca ll to allev iate lo nelin ess. Sometimes the lone liness is generic; more often it is for a voice that will fi ll a jar- ringly specific hun ger. They are known, optim ist ically, as party lines . For as little as a dime a minute, you are hu rled ano nym ously into a cha t- tering mob of ot hers who share yo ur obsession-or, perchance, a staticky electronic void in which one other voice is callin g, faintly, " Hello."

PASS Pass by a tree or let some object pass by a tree but each time differently.

PASTED The world is steeped in good taste and ignorance pasted together.

PATCHWORK There is considerab le support for the view that brains a re not logical machines, but highly cooperative, nonhomogeneous and d istributed networks. The entire system resem- bles a patchwork of subnetworks assembled by a complicated history of tinkering, rather than an optimized system resulting from some clean unified design.

PATIENCE Patience, patience , Patience in the blue sky.

PCM (Paranoid-Critical Method ) "The spontaneous method of irrational

1012

2

1 a steadily growing island 2 the brainchild of one man : Lee Kuan Yew

./

Adapt, Innovate , and Prospe r

Like similar conditions of newness, it has been received with derision. As the notion of

the West becomes increasingly enfeebled. "we" will always remain in possession of our

ultimate weapon, the power of irony. A disproportionate amount of it is aimed at this ter-

ritorially negligible mini-Sparta: William Gibson calls it "Disneyland with the Death

Penalty"; 1 Deyan Sudjic, "Virtual City.''2

Our refusal to read Singapore on its own tenns is frivolous; our most sophisticated

reflections on the contemporary condition of 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. Singapore is a

paroxysm of the operational, therefore inaccessible to our imagination and interpretation.

Singapore is incredibly "Western" for an Asian city, the apparent victim of an out-of-

control process of modernization. The temptation is to leave it one of those conundrums

doomed, in a last polite little spasm of colonialism, to remain so, simply because they are

Asian, or Chinese.

This perception. is a Eurocentric misreading . The "Western" is no longer our exclu-

sive domain. Except perhaps in the regions of its origins , it now represents a condition

of universal aspiration. It is no longer something that "we" have unleashed, no longer

something whose consequences we therefore have the right to deplore; it is a self-admin-

istered process that we do not have the right to deny-in the name of various sentimen-

talities-to those "others" who have iong since made it their own. At most, we are like

dead parents deploring the mess our children have made of their inheritance.

Singapore is a steadily growing island, I 0 17' north of the equator, on the most

important passage between the Indian and Pacific oceans. It is 650 km 2; its coastline is

140 kilometers-20 kilometers less than the length of the Berlin Wall. It has a "unique

Multi-Ethnic Character": 1 75% Chinese. 15% Malay, and 9% Indian. It is the brainchild

of one man: Lee Kuan Yew. As an island-its territory is known-it is endowed with

indispensable elements for the construction of a mythology: it is small, it is threatened,

it has to be protected, it is finite-an enclave-it is unique.

1013

3

5

1 female female impersonators 2 brand-new intersection 3 traditional street life resurrected 4 in the control room : zoom in on each table, watch every stall. .. 5 stalls connected by dishwasher 6, 7 systematic variety

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6

7

Singapore can be weird. Five years ago it became clear that the upward curve of

tourism was about to intersect the downward graph of historical presence-in the rush

for development, history had been almost completely erased. On the exact site that had

been known in the now-laundered past for its extensive and varied sexual options-the

splendor of its transvestites-the state sponsored Bugis, a brand-new intersection of two

"traditional" streets, framed by entirely new Chinese shophouses. One of the streets was

declared "market"; the other accommodates a systematic variety of restaurants. On the

upper level are clubs , one-the Boom Boom Club-discreetly anticipating the possible

resurrection of the transvestite in the form of./{'male female impersonators.

The block is hypermodern. The seemingly individual food stalls are connected by

a single huge dishwasher-conveyor; on our first visit we are invited to the control room ,

a wall of monitors connected to hidden cameras that allows supervisors to zoom in on

each table, watch each transaction at every stal I.

It is shown with pride, not shame.

They think there will be no crime.

We think there can be no pleasure.

Singapore is clearly not free. hut at the same time it is difficult to identify what pre-

cisely is unfree, how and where the exact repression occurs, to what extent its magnetic

field-the unusual cohesion of its inhabitants-is imposed or, more ambiguously, the

result of a " deal," a perceived common interest: liberties suspended in return for the

unlimited benefits of a roller-coaster of development that, in 30 years, has only gone up.

Singapore stands out as a highly efficient alternative in a landscape of near universal

pessimism about a makable future. a pertinent can-do world of clearly defined ambi-

tions, long-term strategies, a ruthless determination to avoid the debris and chaos that

democracy leaves in its wake elsewhere .

1015

2

1 a hard-core Confucian shamelessness 2 the unusua l cohesion of its inhabitants - imposed or the result of a "deal " ?

1016

F ily as th e Basic Unit of Society

The next round of East-West tension will be fought over this question: whether

democracy promotes or erodes social stability; whether free speech is worth the cultural

trash it also produces; whether the health of a collective matters more than the unfettered

freedom of the individual. To the West this authoritarianism seems a temporary aber-

ration, a deviation from the norm; but it is more likely that a new norm is being synthe-

sized in Singapore: a hard-core Confucian shamelessness, a kind of ultimate power

of efficiency that will fuel Asian modernization. "The American view that out of con-

tention, out of the clash of ideas and ideals, you get good government and a healthy

economy ... that view is not shared in Asia."4 Singapore has developed its own way. "The

tenacious vitality of Confucianism lies in its combination of the dross of feudalism and

the cream of democracy:'5

Singapore seems a melting pot that produces blandness and sterility from the most

promising ingredients. I have tried to decipher its reverse alchemy, understand its geneal-

ogy, do an architectural genome project, re-create its architectural songlines.

An analysis of Singapore is also, inevitably, a close-up of the mid-sixties, revealing

once unassailable demographic urgencies-the brutal evidence of numbers that, on all

continents, presented an overwhelming need to construct unprecedented quantities of

new urban substance and offered compelling arguments for the discipline of urbanism

and the notion of urban renewal that have completely unraveled in the past 30 years

(or were successfully repressed).

It seems as if, in the world, only Singapore heeded these alarms and dealt with them,

developed a solution. Singapore is an apotheosis of urban renewal, a built answer to the

shift from country to city which was thought, 30 years ago, to force Asia to construct in

20 years the same amount of urban substance as the whole of Western Europe.

In unearthing its brand new archaeology, the most disconcerting question is: Where

are these urgencies buried?

1017

2 3

4

6

After 140 years of Br itish rule 1 overcrowded Chinatown 2 stylish colonial clumps 3 neglected hinterland 4 port 5 mess 6 the island "denatured": first industrial estates 7 multilevel factories 8 new harbor facilities

1018

Nation Before Community and Society Above Self

Intermezzo In 1959 Singapore-a British colony-becomes self-governing. The first full elections

sweep Lee Kuan Yew to power with his People's Action Party (PAP-subliminally close

to PAPA, DAD?). Nixon describes Lee as an Asian Churchill: "talkjng left and walking

right"; 6 at 35 he already has a number of tactical identities behind him, all later consoli-

dated under the ideological umbrella of neo-Confucianism.

The island he and his party inherit after 140 years of British rule is a mess: clumps

of stylish colonial enclave (it had been settled in 1819 by Sir Stamford Raffles), 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.

"During the fifties all visitors were struck by the extreme precariousness of living

conditions, the misery of the vast majority ... What is more, conditions were constantly

worsening: a galloping demography, pervasive tuberculosis, escalating joblessness, over-

crowding in inhabitable housing, all this against a background of economic stagnation ... " 7

The very direness of the situation-its unpromising ingredients-provides the under-

pinnings for the program of the incipient city-state in the fonn of an undeniable crisis.

"The general features of the PAP's ideological system unfold from a central concern ...

the survival as an independent island nation. Survival has been the structuring and ratio-

nalizing centre for the policies by which Singapore [has been] governed since it gained

the right to self-government in 1959 ... The result was, and continues to be, an ideology

that embodies a vigorous developmentalist orientation that emphasizes science, tech-

nology, and centralized public administration as the fundamental basis for an export-

oriented industrialization programme, financed largely by multinational capital:'8

For Lee, advised by Western thinkers/futurologists of the caliber of Hennan (The

Next Two Hundred Years) Kahn and Alvin (Future Shock) Toffler, the post-colonial

period is in every sense a new beginning, a stunning overdose of newness. With un-

paralleled zeal, Lee's regime embarks on a campaign of modernization.

Immediately, a considerable section of the island is "denatured" to become a platfonn

for industry; at Jurong, in the southwest, preparations are made for a huge industrial city

of "flatted" (multilevel) factories connected to vast new harbor facilities. 9

1019

knowledge based on th e c ritical and sys tematic objectifications of delir- ious associations and interpretation s."

PC/VME The PC expansion card is not only standard to most DSPs; VME boa rd s have also proved to be a popular choice with se veral manu - facturers. Of course, they re prese nt a greater investment than PC cards. But flexibility of the VME sta ndard s does have its advantages especially if previous ly de sig ned sys tem s were based on it.

PERCEPTION Now since we perceive that we are seeing or hearing , it mu st either be by sight that so methin g perce ives that it is see in g or by so me other se nse. But given the consequent identity of the sen se that perce ives s ight and that which perceives the colour that is the object of sight , there will either be two se nses with the same objec t or the one se nse will perceive its se lf. Further, if th e se nse that perceives sig ht were some other se nse than s ight, [the] only alterna- tive to an infinite regre ss will be that there be so me se nse that perceives its se lf.

PERFECT I get so se ntimental when I see How perfect perfection can be .

PERISHABLE It was current consumer preference which determined product de s ign and not any Platonic categories; it was a full-blown , emphatic style banking on the assets of co mpetitive sex and as quickl y peri shable as the obsolescing produ ct it wrapped.

PERMANENT The rites of passage are no lon ge r intermittent-they have become per- manent.

PHILOSOPHERS A co uple of hundred years from now, maybe Isaac As imov and Fred Pohl wi ll be co ns idered the importa nt philosophers of the twentieth ce ntury, and the professio na l philoso phers will almost all be forgotten ... Whenever Pohl or Asimov writes something , I regard it as extremely urgent to read it right away. They might have a new idea. Asimov has been working for forty years on this problem: if you can make an intelli- ge nt machine , what kind of relations will it have with people? How do yo u

1022

Scenes from Toa Payoh

Racial and Religious Harmony

In the mid-sixties, such confidence is common. What is unusual in Singapore is the

scale of the operation-this time a city for 180,000 people-undertaken by a fragile,

emerging state. But again, it is not perfect. "From the Land Use Plan of Toa Payoh New

Town, one can easily detect that the HOB was still struggling in its experimentation ...

evidenced in the uneven distribution of facilities ... " 13 So it continues, a neck-and-neck

race between convulsive production and a dawning bureaucratic awareness that there is

"room for improvement."

1023

was practicaliy interchangeable with the interior of any other.

PLANETARY We belong to the planet now, Mama. Does it make sense to you that if we're no longer attached to one piece of land, we belong to the planet? Wherever we happen to be standing, why, that spot belongs to us as much as any other spot.

PLANKTON Holland is traditionally known as a country that contains various cities , some more important- like Rotter- dam, the Hague, and Amsterdam - and some less known like Utrecht and Arnhem. There is an intriguing phenomenon that of the 6 million people living in this region, only 2 million inhabit the historical cores . In that case, there are 4 million lost Dutchmen who live in the character- less plankton between the major cities.

PLANNING I find it interesting to understand the city no longer as a tissue, but more as a "mere" coexistence, a series of relationships between objects that are almost never articulated in visual or formal ways, no longer "caught"

attempt to modernize and develop the city centre in

preparation for the role Singapore will have to play ... "

(At this point, 1.6 million people live on the island,

900,000 in Singapore city.)

To increase the stakes, the UN experts first estab-

lish the urgency of the demographics: "We must prepare

for at least 3.4 million inhabitants by 1982 and expect

to pass the 4 million mark well before 1990 ... " 16 That

implies the construction of astronomical numbers of ·

new housing units per year.

Unfazed, they continue: "Because Singapore is a

fast-growing city, it will need more new housing than

re-housing, more new development than

redevelopment. However much we may wish

to concentrate on urban renewal" -clearly

implying the renewal of the existing city fab-

ric- "we shall have to build five new hous-

ing units for every old one we demolish."

To facilitate this coming upheaval, the

UN mission attacks the existing master plan,

last revised by the British in 1955, for its

lack of vision: "It is a plan for a medium-

sized town with rural hinterland, not a plan

for a metropolis:'

Like any master plan, the planners write,

it assumes "a society that is fundamentally

conservative in outlook and practically unan-

imous in considering the preservation of the

achievements and institutions of the past as a

main objective of all planning ... The mission

Social Responsibility, Social Attitude, Sl<ill

has been told that Singapore needs 'a more flexible plan ... a more positive approach. "' 17

What the transformation of the island needs is a manifesto. Instead of the master

plan, with its rigid procedures and emphasis on controlling the built, the UN experts pro-

pose to "guide, accelerate, and coordinate public development" under the umbrella of a

more fuzzy guiding concept, which will be decomposed in action programs 18 "compre-

hensive insofar as they should deal with all aspects of urban life: employment, shelter,

communications, traffic, education, welfare, capital formation, stimulation of savings,

community development, and public relations;' finally translated in "a mosaic of action

maps which will eventually cover the whole island ... "

Once the tripartite planning vehicle is defined-guiding concept, action program,

action map-they look for targets: " The central business district is flanked by mixed

commercial and residential zones"-the Chinese shophouses that form the vast majority

of the city's substance- "of spectacularly high density. Overcrowding of buildings and

streets reaches proportions known in few other cities of the world ... An earlier report by

a UN expert found that substantial sections were ripe for demolition and rebuilding: '

Probably aware that they are about to unleash a bureaucracy of almost communist

omnipotence, the experts see it tempered and complemented by private enterprise:

"Performance standards or soc ial principles are needed to ensure a healthy and pleasant

urban environment for all Singaporeans ... without stifling the initiative of the developer

or the inventiveness of the designer ... "

They extend the reach of the guiding concept over the whole island: " The first princi-

ple should be the acceptance of Singapore island and Singapore city as one unit. We must

look at the island as an urban complex which includes essential open spaces rather than as

a province or county containing 2 different elements, a town and its rural hinterland." 19

Then, daringly, they project-ex nihilo-the Dutch model, "the Ring City idea;· on

the newly prepared planning canvas: "A chain or necklace of settlements around a cen-

tral open area has been called a ' ring city.' The idea comes from Holland where a group

of major towns including Amsterdam, Haarlem, Utrecht, Delft, The Hague, Leiden,

Dordrecht, and Rotterdam forms a large circle around a central stretch of open country.

This constellation is the result of historic forces rather than of deliberate planning. Yet it

1027

Razed plane as the basis for a genu i nely new beginning .. .

Have Spontaneous Fun

Tabula Rasa With the sanction of the UN report , the Singapore bureaucracy is now unleashed on a

Promethean enterprise, limited only by the size of the island. It is conceived as the apo-

theosi s of the tabula rasa: the razed plane as the basis for a genuinely new beginning.

Still firmly marooned in underdevelopment, Singapore 's only resources are physical-

its land, its population, its geographical position. Analogous to the way poverty can

lead to prostitution, Singapore's transformation is conceived again and again in terms of

work on the body of the island itself Its territory-its ground-is its most malleable

material ; the housing program and the UN vision tum it into an infrastructural manifesto,

a palimpsest of Singapore's political evolution. Like the Dutch, who also fabricated their

country, Singapore is about selling and manipulation-an ideology, a population, an

island. This process starts innocently with New Towns, accelerates. with the UN report,

and radicalizes with independence in 1965, the official beginning of the Republic of

Singapore.

Some of the most drastic erasures and transformations are invisible. An amendment

to the Land Acqui sition Act of the British "empowered the government to acquire any

land it deemed necessary in the interest of national development, including acquisition

on behalf of private developers .. . The rate of compensation was to be determined by the

state itself. .. The act clearly violates the common laws that govern property rights ... "

But in the language of the HOB: "The majority of the acquired private lands com-

prised dilapidated properties or neglected land where squatters had mushroomed . .. The

government saw no reason why these owners should enjoy the greatly enhanced land

values .. . without any effort put in by them . .. " 21 In fact, such radical expropriation makes

any ownership provisional: any terrain can be claimed by the state for any reason. (Certain

sites have been requisitioned two or even three times over the past 30 years.) "During

a period of just over 20 years, from 1965 to 1988 , well over 1,200 sites were selected

for expropriation and nearly 270,000 families were displaced, i.e., about a third of the

country 's population: '

Further evidence of remorseless change is the creation of additional Lebensraum.

"In 1959, the total size of the country stood at 581 km 2. Still unchanged in 1965, it has

1031

1958

2 1987

3

4

5,6

~I · ~,~~~~~~==''-'==~~, T \ t...,,i.m.., S.i...-g ,......... SllwP....don ··-

1 1958: section through S ingapore island 2 1987: section through Sin gapore island 3 1958: Singapo re island 4 1987: Singapore island , en larged 5 " Th e expansion .. . 6 wil l co ntinu e .. . " 7 number of flats built each year 8 1957: distribution of population 9 1980: distribution of population

1032

Come on Singaport, Let's AB Be the Best We Can Be

since increased steadily, reaching 626 km 2 by 1988. In 1991 it is probably 640 km 2 over.

According to declarations made by the Minister of National Development, the expansion

will continue, Singapore reaching 730 km 2 by the year 2000 . .. "22 (a growth of 25% in

35 years, equivalent to adding the combined territory of Texas, Georgia, and California

to the US).

This enlargement is achieved through landfills that radically alter the geography of

the island: as the coastline expands, hills disappear; 23 Singapore becomes larger but

flatter, more abstract. (Later, whole islands are bought from Indonesia, swallowed, and

transplanted, to reappear on the map as part of Singapore.)

The redistribution of inhabitants, which turns the entire island into a modernistic,

dismantled Chinatown, proceeds according to plan too. "In 1959 less than 9% of the pop-

ulation was sheltered in public housing, by 1974 nearly 43 % of the population lived in

HOB flats, and by 1989 the proportion was 87%; i.e., 2.3 million persons. Twenty New

Towns encircling the original urban core cover 16,000 hectares, or a quarter of the

national territor/' 24

Farming is displaced, replaced by housing. Pushed into the sea, farmers become

fish farmers.

Low-cost housing in the New Towns and urban renewal in the old city-or what

remains of it-are "communicating vases:' The enormous volume of new construction

creates room for the destruction of the old. According to the urban renewal program

launched by the government in 1965, the entire island will be covered with New Towns,

the city renewed beyond recognition.

In Singapore, this moment-1965-represents a showdown between doing and

thinking, won hands down by doing. The civil servants-the bureaucracy of Singapore-

are obsessively active. Like the horsemen of the Apocalypse, they will not rest before the

entire island is plowed over, made utterly unrecognizable.

They force all others, especially those handicapped by a need for reflection (i.e.,

Singapore's intellectuals) into different degrees of more or less humiliating passivity

or complicity.

Its young architects, trained in Europe and America and ideologically still in their

1033

in architectural connections . . . But if you have come to the insight that connection is no longer necessary, in a way you put a bomb at the base of your professional existence. If plan- ning is not necessary, or irrelevant ... why "plan"?

PLASTIC Each year 14.4 million tons of plastic are thrown away in the United States.

PLAY Play needs firm limits, then free movement within these limits. Without firm limits there is no play.

PLENUMS And part of that liberation is finding a way as well to develop services so that the walls themselves act as whole plenums. Instead of having ducts here and ducts there, you take two planes and incline them. Instead of a ceiling and a wall plane in a room you could take the two and incline them or you could taper them as well and the very elevation of that wall could be a plenum that also expresses the volume of air; the minimum air, the maximum , etc. Those are the kinds of explorations we do.

PLOT Eating oysters with boxing gloves, naked, on the nth floor-such is the " plot" of ... the 20th century in action .

POETIC You shouldn't try to be poetic. It doesn't, somehow, go with your face.

POINT If you want to get to Cherry Tree Lane all you have to do is ask the Policeman at the cross-roads. He will push his helmet slightly to one side, scratch his head thoughtfully, and then he will point his huge white-gloved fingers and say: "First to your right, second to your left, sharp right again, and you ' re there. Good day."

POLES 1 Enduring art cannot be founded on a negative statement. Art requires an assertion of belief. Yet the age of architectural ideology is over. There are no rules ; only choices and inventions. What is left as a design process is the critical synthesis of what T. S. Eliot has suggested are the twin poles between which creativity oscillates: tradition and individual talent.

1034

Third World/Developing Country phase, underestimate both

the determination and the ability of the regime, do not realize

that a miracle is taking place before their eyes, that their skep-

ticism now will disqualify them later from full participation

on anything but the regime's terms: something that offends

their sixties sensibilities.

By the mid-sixties, the darker side of urban renewal is

well known. The prewar urbanism of the modernist heroes

that had depended on the tabula rasa had been discredited.

The war had razed entire cities that had been rebuilt from

scratch with mixed results: they were "soulless:' In America

slum clearance was increasingly suspect in its in'!bility to

transform anything except physical conditions, leaving a cul-

ture of poverty unchanged. Yet Asian cities, neglected by

wan.ing colonial regimes, now had to prepare for massive

renewal to accommodate both city dwellers living in intol-

erable conditions and invasions from the countryside.

"The tremendous increase in urban population clearly

justifies the warning that, after the question of keeping world

peace, metropolitan planning is probably the most serious

single problem faced by man in the second half of the 20th

century;' claims the World Health Organization.25 "In the next

40 years we must rebuild the entire urban United States:'

asserts President Lyndon Johnson.26

Compared to its sheer numbers, the existing substance of

Singapore is in every sense insignificant. The tension

between these anticipated quantities and cultivation of what

exists is acute.

An evasive consensus is developing: urban renewal, but

without tabula rasa; a new beginning, but not from scratch.

Being First Is Second Nature

"There is nothing less urbane, nothing less productive of cosmopolitan mixture than raw

renewal, which displaces, destroys, and replaces, in that mechanistic order;' writes

Fumihiko Maki in 1964 in Investigations in Collective Form , a small but influential book

that is an early Asian voice in the so far almost exclusively Western debate.27

But in Singapore it is as if Maki 's diagnosis is taken as motto, becomes the new

republic's blueprint, its dystopian program: displace, destroy, replace.

In a delirium of transformation the island is turned into a petri dish: gigantic clear-

ances, levelings, extensions, expropriations create laboratory conditions for the import-

ation of social and architectural cultures that can be grown under experimental protocols,

without the presence of anterior substance. Singapore is turned into a test bed of the

tabula rasa.

The transformation of the entire island in the name of an apocalyptic demographic

hypothesis is in apparent contrast to its smallness and its permanent land shortage,

which would suggest a careful husbanding of the territory and the definition of long-

term ideals-guiding concepts-that could be slowly implemented. But the true impli-

cation of this herculean rush is that, since the island is considered changeable in its

entirety, no version is ever definitive. After the first wave of transformation, there will

be further conversions, new destructions, a second wave, a third ...

A regime like the one in power in Singapore is a radical movement: it has trans-

formed the term urban renewal into the moral equivalent of war, based on a "patchwork

manifesto;' an improvised amalgam of Confucian ethos, UN support, economic ambi-

tion, demographic urgency, " a loosely organized complex conceptual system that devel-

ops over time with an ever-expanding network of concepts, as the ruling group copes

with solutions to problems in the body politic. However, this expanding conceptual net-

work is not entirely random; rather, it is an expansion guided by a few core concepts." 28

Singapore 's regime installs a condition of permanent instability, not unlike the "per-

manent revolution" proclaimed by the students of May '68, but with a Confucian agenda:

"The common people can be made to follow a path but not to understand it:' 29 The

entire operation ambiguously combines the fulfillment of some basic human needs with

the systematic erosion of others-tradition, fixity, continuity-a perpetuum mobile

1035

2

3

1 In Singapore ... 2 ea c h perspect ive ... 3 is blocked .. . 4 by good intentions ... 5 locations of Housing and Developm ent Board projects

1036

4

LOCATION or HOO OCVCLOPMCNT!'.I

Clean and Green

where what is given is taken away in a convulsion of uprooting, a state of permanent

disorientation.

All the new housing, accommodated in high-rises, close together, entirely devoid of

the centrifugal vectors of modernism, obscuring both sky and horizon, precludes any

notion of escape. In Singapore, each perspective is blocked by good intentions.

"The overwhelming presence of more than half a million completed dwelling units is

a constant reminder ... of the government's achievement. The extensive public housing

programme is symbolically, hence ideologically, a powerful sign of the existing regime's

ability to fulfil its promises to improve the living conditions of the entire nation." 30

How can the republic now known for establishing the ultimate capitalist environment

begin with a quasi-socialist transformation of its entire territory? Turning the island

into one huge housing project created the most brutal evidence of i.ts "taking care" of its

people, proof of the Confucian dictum "to give extensively to the common people and

bring help to the multitude." 31

The mystery of how-on an island almost antipodal to its geographical origins,

for a people completely removed from its implied scenarios-the strategy of modem

housing that failed in much more plausible conditions could suddenly "work" is left sus-

pended between the assumption of greater authoritarianism and the inscrutable nature

of the Asian mentality.

1037

2

3

4

5 6 7

Empire of Semantics I 1, 2 "Asian" Village 3 "Chinese" garden 4 Chinatown- authentic subversiveness 5 respect ... 6 given to ... 7 each specific culture ...

1038

Total Leisure Plan

Barthian Slate

In 1967 Roland Barthes publishes Systerne de la Mode , an analysis of the system of sig-

nification created by the seemingly arbitrary manipulations of fashion designers-the

up-and-down journey of the hemline, the present or absent waist, the roughness or luxury

of fabrics . In 1970 he publishes Empire des Signes; it decodes the signs of Japanese cul-

ture. Both are unmaskings of the seemingly inscrutable-or rather, his method describes

inscrutability itself, finally, as a sign.

Singapore is perhaps the first semiotic state, a Barthian slate, a clean synthetic sur-

face, a field at once active and neutralized where political themes or minimal semantic

particles can be launched and withdrawn, tested like weather balloons. Singapore is run

according to Machiavellian semantics- not in an attempt to decode what already exists

but as a prospective construction of political meaning. The resulting realm is not an

"empire of signs" but an "empire of semantics: '

America adopted the metaphor of the melting pot; Singapore is an ethnic "cuisine"

where ingredients are kept separate, contamination is avoided. In its place is the manipu-

lation of identities , through which the respect given to each specific culture-its ethnic,

religious heritage-is an alibi for avoiding the serious demands-for more and more

freedoms-of modem culture.

Each identity is a vessel carefully emptied through the efficiency of earlier cultural

uprooting. (It is shocking to experience the authentic subversiveness-one of the most

debased signifiers , resemanticized here through savage recontextualization-of life in

one of the "streets the bulldozer forgot" in what remains of Chinatown against the over-

whelming quantity of hygienic newness around it. Like an overdone film set, it seems

"tropical" in its sense of dirty, lazy, corrupt, drugged-absolutely other.)

Education is enlisted in the creation of semantic orphans: there is a tabula-rasa

quality even about the language ("I cry when I think that I cannot speak my own mother's

tongue as well as I can speak the English language ... "), 32 a sense that no one in

Singapore speaks any language perfectly. But in the interest of global communication,

the erasure continues. "Since 1987 English is the first language in all schools , with

Chinese or another mother tongue as a second language ... " 33

1039

2

Empire of Semantics II 1 seemingly unserious interdictions 2 very effective advertising

1040

Many In On e

Even Singapore's notorious system of seemingly unserious interdictions (chewing

gum) and serious penalties (death, caning) has to be seen as a sign. While Nevada once

achieved identity through suspending a maximum number of laws to establish a climate

oflicentiousness, Singapore performs a legalistic redesign in the opposite direction-

severity-that plays the role of very cheap and very effective worldwide advertising.

In Singapore-modernization in its pure form-the forces of modernity are enlisted

against the demands of modernism. Singapore's modernism is lobotomized: from

modernism's full agenda, it has adopted only the mechanistic, rationalistic program and

developed it to an unprecedented perfection in a climate of streamlined "smoothness"

generated by shedding modernism's artistic, irrational, uncontrollable, subversive ambi-

tions-revolution without agony.

1041

2

3

The sixties: anxieties and inspirations 1 "we may be turning the world into a place peopled only by little glass and concrete boxes ... " (drawing, Saul Steinberg) 2 the injection of non-Western sources (Bernard Rudofsky, Architecture Without Architects) 3 Kenzo Tange, Tokyo Bay project

1042

Th e Responsible Corporate Citizen

Architectural Context The mid-sixties are maybe the last moment of architectural confidence. Urban renewal,

ostensibly at its zenith, has exponentially expanded the scope of the urbanist. By con-

sensus, the urban designer is "charged with giving form, with perceiving and contributing

order." 34 At the same time there is a gnawing doubt about urban renewal's assumptions,

a feeling that the entire thrust of its performance could be flawed . In the words of

Christopher Alexander, "The prospect that we may be turning the world into a place

peopled only by little glass and concrete boxes has alarmed many architects too ... " 35

Team X makes an effort to humanize the central vision/model of CIAM, partly

through the injection of non-Western sources-African villages, Yemenese desert

towns-and other foreign associations. Rumblings are heard from Egypt; Christopher

Alexander tests his theories on Indian villages. 36

The ideological foundations are prepared for a critical reverse idealization in which

the inarticulate masses of the Third World are felt to offer an antidote to the sterility

of modernization: the "values" of underdevelopment are presumed to _incorporate an

anti-materialist ideology; lessons are extracted from "unspoiled" lands like China,

Vietnam, India, Africa-cultures more collective than those of the individualistic,

atomized West; new concepts are harvested from Asia, presumably of greater subtlety,

inscrutability, stoicism.

The mid-sixties are also the moment when , for the first time in the male whiteness of

prewar modernism, "other" architects emerge from their "exotic" cultures to participate

in the Oedipal skirmishes that have developed around the central dogmas of modernism.

On its way to ultimate globalization, Western civilization creates and must recognize

thinkers at the periphery.

The most exciting movement of the early sixties is Japanese. The new awareness of

huge quantitative obligations that have to be discharged in a climate of acceleration

and instability has sponsored the metabolist movement, a loose federation of Japan 's

thinking elite-Tange, Kurokawa, Maki, Isozaki-combining organic, scientific, mecha-

nistic, biological , and romantic (sublime) vocabularies . Kenzo Tange's Tokyo Bay

project stuns in the way an entirely new doctrine seems immediately convincing. It is the

1043

first time in over 3,000 years that architecture has a non-white avant-garde .

What makes these architects exciting-and maybe what makes them Asian-is that

they do not avoid, like their European contemporaries, the central issue of quantity-the

masses-that had propelled the prewar modernists.

European cousins refine, rediscover the small scale; metabolist Asians-conscious

of, even inspired by, demographic pressure-imagine other richer, more spontaneous,

freer ways of organizing congestion. (Paradoxically, Singapore's pragmatic, thoughtless

HOB New Towns, with their absence of detail, their sheer pileups of numbers , can be

read simultaneously as decadent modernism and as proto-metabolism produced by the

regime's almost biological thyroid overdrive.)

With his Investigations in Collective Form, Maki-educated and frequently teaching

in the US-asserts an explicitly Asian presence. Like so many architecture books of the

period, Maki 's brochure is an amalgam of more or less coherent theoretical insights,

illustrated by more or less theoretical projects. Which came first-theory or illustration-

is ambiguous.

As a Japanese Harvard graduate, Maki straddles two worlds. His treatise is a know-

ing exploitation of the slack in between. Unlike the "original CIAM theorists;' he sug-

gests, "we must now see our urban society as a dynamic field of interrelated forces. It is

a set of mutually independent variables in a rapidly expanding infinite series. Any order

introduced within the pattern of forces contributes to a state of dynamic equilibrium-

an equilibrium which will change in character as time passes ...

"Our cities are fluid and mobile. It is difficult to conceive of some of them as places,

in the real sense of that word. How can an entity with no discernible beginning or end be

a place? It is certainly more apt to think of a particular part of a city as a place. If it were

possible to articulate each of the parts of the city more adequately, to give qualities of

edge and node to now formless agglomerates, we would have begun to make our large

urban complexes at least understandable, if not 'imageable.'"

The rigidities of early modernism are now undermined by the instability that it itself

has proclaimed: "The reason for searching for new formal concepts in contemporary

cities lies in the magnitude of ... recent change in those very problems. Our urban society

1044

Global City for the Arts

is characterized by: (I) coexistence and conflict of amazingly heterogeneous institutions

and individuals; (2) unprecedented rapid and extensive transformation in the physical

structure of the society; (3) rapid communications methods; and ( 4) technological

progress and its impact upon regional cultures."

In those conditions, the instrumentality of urbanism , obsessed with fixity, is obso-

lescent, as the UN experts had also suggested: "Our concern here is not , then, a ' master

plan ,' but a 'master program '. .. As a physical correlate of the master program, there

are 'master forms' which differ from buildings in that they .. . respond to the dictates

of time."

Out of this interpretation , Maki produces " collective form"-its name alone a hidden

rebuke to the individualism of Western practice. "Collective form represents groups of

buildings and quasi-buildings-the segment of our cities. Collective form is, however,

not a collection of unrelated , separate buildings, but of buildings that have reasons to

be together."

For Maki, it exists in three kinds: compositional f orm , megastructure, and group

form.

Obviously bored by composi tional form ("commonly accepted and practiced con-

cept in the past and at present"), he is fascinated by megastructure and group form. " The

megastructure is a large frame in which all the functions of a city or part of a city are

housed . .. It is a manmade feature of the landscape ... Urban designers are attracted to the

megastructure ... because it offers a legitimate way to order massive grouped functions."

But Maki is skeptical: " If the megaform becomes rapidly obsolete ... it will be a great

weight about the neck of urban society." 37

Maki 's real affinity is with group form, where "the elements create extremely well-

differentiated communal formal and functional factors, which are then developed in con-

nectors. The elements do not depend on the framework; instead they establish a group in

which an organic interdependence exists between them and the framework ... " 38

The coex istence of these categories is conceived as a new urbanism, a new city:

"The ideal is a kind of master form which can move into ever new states of equilibrium

and yet maintain visual co nsistency and a sense of continuing order in the long run ."

1045

POLES 2 Why settle for lighting pole function alone? You can also have lighting pole personality-to complement, contrast, or signature-the exterior lighting for your next project! Whether you require historic period lighting, environmental sensitivity, or 21st century flash, Union Metal has the poles you want.

PONTIFICATE "Ah!" said the fisherman, "my wife wants to be pope." "Go home," said the fish, "she is pope already."

POODLE If it's not true that art has become a trained poodle of the techno social elitethen how do you explain Wayne Thiebaud's oils of pastry in The Chez Panisse Dessert Cookbook? a coming together of art as culturescape and food- as-meaning-of-life into a chocolate cream pie of kitsch of which each consumer will get an equal slice.

POOL 1 In Tokyo there is a new indoor swimming pool equipped with a basin of intensely undulating water in which the swimmers remain on the same spot. The turbulence pre- vents any attempt to move forward, and the swimmers must try to advance just to hold their position. Like a kind of home-trainer or con- veyor belt on which one moves in the direction opposite that of the belt, the dynamics of the currents in this Japanese pool have the sole function of making the racing swimmers struggle with the energy passing through the space of their mutual encounter, and energy that takes the place of the dimensions of an Olympic pool just as the belts of the home trainer have been replacing stadium race tracks .

POOL 2 One day they discovered that if they swam in unison-in regular syn- chronized laps from one end of the pool to the other-the pool would begin to move slowly in the opposite direction.

POOL3 They wanted a swimming pool on the roof, which I found very unpleasant because I wanted to do a project with- out a swimming pool for once.

1046

1047

POP I don't want to be a woman . What we're doing is all pop culture. We're totally TV-age.

POPULAR Some people criticize Stallone, but you've got to give him credit. I mean, here 's a man who is just forty-one years old, and he 's already created two of the all-time-great characters, Rocky and Rambo . . . He knows what the public wants and he delivers it.

POSITION SI I think the thing to do is to either sit up or lie down or stand up: I ' m not sympathetic to in-between positions .

POSITIONS 2 To become aware of one's own posi- tion , one must situate oneself and others in some way. To question positionality can become the most rigid position.

POSTCARD The sightseer measures his satisfac- tion by the degree to which the [Grand Canyon] conforms to the preformed complex. If it does so, if it looks just like the postcard, he is pleased ; he might even say, "Why it is every bit as beautiful as a picture postcard!" He feels he has not been cheated. But if it does not conform, if the colors are somber, he will not be able to see it directly; he will only be conscious of the disparity between what it is and what it is sup- posed to be. He will say later that he was unlucky in not being there at the right time. The highest point, the term of the sightseer's satisfaction, is not the sovereign discovery of the thing before him; it is rather the measuring up of the thing to the criterion of the preformed sy m- bolic complex.

POSTCARDS 1 It makes me think-of someone slot- ting an assortment of beautiful land- scape postcards into the mailboxes of an apartment building. Many sets of fantastic scenery develop in a series that suggests a concrete im<1-ge for renewal of life.

POSTCARDS 2 What I like about postcards is that even if in an envelope, they are made to circulate like an open but illegible letter.

POST-MODERNISM Basically that is what post-moder-

1048

3

4

2

I • '1i I

,, ...... ~ •"ili6t• • I -·~,," ~ I r:.' ··'•"

1 Fumihiko Maki : Japanese Harvard graduate 2 model of K-project, Tokyo 3 compositional form, megastructure, group form 4 "medi ating public space ": the city room

Save Dur Heritage

Like Team X, Maki is obsessed with connections. To achieve the master form-

a form of "weak" coherence-he proposes: "Link: Linking, or disclosing linkage, are

invariant activities in making collective form out of either discrete or associate elements.

In operational terms there are a number of linkages-physically connected link, imply-

ing link, built-in link .. . By the same argument, the rapidity with which the urban system

expands suggests that there must be some means for linking newly established parts with

parts not yet conceived. In short, there is need of something that may be termed 'open

linkage.' " 39

He considers "the most important factor in group form ... the treatment of mediating

public spaces" -analogous to acupuncture- "creating organic public places centering

on traffic focal points throughout the city [that] would significantly affect the rehabilita-

tion of city centers ... In terms of urban design we must create city corridors, city rooms

and transportation exchanges at strategic points in the city; and second we must realize

that these new focal points become urban energy generators. The architect does not con-

cern himself with the ways city corridors and rooms will be used ... " 40

Maki 's booklet then offers an inventory of contemporary prototypes, all of them

buildings as accumulations with diffused identities, collectively describing "the city as a

pattern of events" more than as a composition of objects.

The prototypes range in scale from programmatically charged "shopping walls" to a

"district shopping center" (a semi-solid base of multilevel shopping with additional civic

functions) to the Dojima redevelopment project for Osaka, a vast public socle/shopping

center with two major excavations-city rooms-and superimposed programmatic con-

tainers of offices, housing, art center, etc. The diagrams portray it as one of the new

"organs" of the city, with people "pumping through like life blood .. . "

Finally, K-project, on a site of 100 x 1000 meters "along a rapid transit terminal near

downtown Tokyo," proposes the development of "a complex of buildings, which consists

of medium and small size stores, a terminal for local and express buses, a wholesale

department store (one like the Merchandise Mart in Chicago), and educational and social

facilities ... This whole concept suggests a 'master form,' that would preserve the essen-

tial concept of the design principles, at the same time providing certain flexibility."

1049

2

3

4

1, 2 movement diagrams for Dojima redevelopment project, Osaka 3 model of Dojima redevelopment project 4 model of K-project

1050

Grooming Talent for the World

It is not Maki 's theory that is most important but his anticipation of a regional color-

ing of the architectural debate, which will result, paradoxically, from its global dissemi-

nation. He warns discreetly: "We predict that in a coming decade the investigation of

regional expression in collective scale will become one of the most important and fasci-

nating issues of architecture and planning." As such a regional expression, Maki 's work

is unapologetically concerned with "shopping" -in the Asian context not a simple con-

sumerist frenzy but an authentic essence of urban life, its equipment Asia's equivalent of

the agora. It is one of the signs of a new root of international architecture. As Maki dryly

notes, "Le Corbusier limits generative human qualities in urban architecture to ' air,'

'green,' and 'sun' while exponents of group form find a myriad of suggestive activities

to add to that list."41

1051

nism is, a moving backwards. It was a process that took from original copies, copies of copies , imitations of interpretations, all timidly following the past. This not only ransacked our past, but more importantly robbed us of our present, obliterating our future.

POST PON E See JUDG EMEN TS.

POWER Bentham laid down the principle that power should be visible and unverifi- able. Visible : the inmate will con- stantly have before his eyes the tall outline of the central tower from which he is spied upon. Unverifiable: the inmate must never know whether he is being looked at at any one moment; but he must be sure that he may always be so.

POWE RC UT But suddenly, at twelve o'clock , on the very birth of the New Year, the fireworks ceased. For some inex- plicable reason, Big Mo uth stopped singing "Auld Lang Syne;' slurring off the lyrics right in the middle with a tinny whine. The billions of upward turned faces were bewildered. The holiday mood instantly vanished. Something was up, people said to each other. But what?

POWERLESS Seven months ago, I could give a single command and 541,000 people would immediately obey it. Today I can't even get a plumber to come to my house.

POWER LESSNES S Measure at least your highness as a man who knows , with your power- lessness as a man who can.

PREGNANCY It was like a second pregnancy of the same conception .

PREGNANT Moreover, tales of pregnant men were fairly common in folklore and mirac le stories from the twelfth to fifteenth centuries.

PRESENCE Absence is the highest form of presence.

PROBABILIT Y Here one might raise questions like: is it only very probable that 464 + 272 = 736? And in that case isn't 2 + 3 = 5 also only very probable? And where is the objective truth which this probability approaches ? That is , how do we get a concept of

10 52

2

3

1 a new incentive: the first issue of SPUR 2 William S. W. Lim, 1993 3 Tay Kheng Soon, 1993

AH igher Level of Professionalism

SPUR SPUR (Singapore Planning and Urban Research Group) is formed in 1965 by William

Lim and Tay Kheng Soon; influenced by Constantinos Doxiadis, the founder of Ekistics,

the so-called Science of Human Settlements; and encouraged by Jacqueline Tyrwhitt,

Lim 's teacher at Harvard, to believe that "the cause of physical planning in Singapore

can be enhanced if the interested public is al so involved in the process ."

SPUR: the name suggests the ambition to offer a new incentive, stimulus, but at

the same time an awareness-if not an inferiority complex-about a lineage off the

main line.

The position of SPUR-it groups Singapore's architectural intelligentsia-is from

the beginning uneasy: eager to play a role in the ongoing experiment of radical trans-

formation but unwilling to abandon a critical position. SPUR is sandwiched between

"a population which is docile and inarticulate on matters relating to our environment;'

for which it considers itself the spokesperson, and "a bureaucracy which is efficient

and aggres sive . . . "

In spite of the intensely visible nature of the government's actions-in terms of de-

and construction-its blueprint had been kept secret, its intentions transparent only to

insiders. SPUR protests: "The UN report was not made available to the general public . . .

Plans were . . . unveiled when approved-too late for participation."

In this informational vacuum, SPUR-20 members with another 20 occasional par-

ticipants-undertakes its own research studies, participates in public discussions, talks ,

forums , organizes symposia, sends letters to the press, submits various memoranda to

government authorities , produces alternative policies, together constituting a massive

involvement and frantic claim for direct participation in the experiment in renewal that

is Singapore.

They produce two publications, SPUR 65-67 and SPUR 68-71 , impressive collec-

tions of data, arguments, analyses, criticisms , impact studies; the tone is serious for an

architectural magazine: on a total of 180 pages, there are only three illustrations.

From the platform of SPUR-sometimes it sounds like a parallel government-

Tay and Lim, ideologically fixated on the public sector, demand with mounting but

1053

./',..-/'-

"A . -sia7To~orrow" ----- .. . •' ----- . · -·-·-·- .

Nature and History, Hea lth and Recreation, Spirit and Soul

various centres of activity are linked up ... centres of entertainment and culture in the

heart of the city that light up in the evening ... Imagine clean parks and roads free from

scores of hawkers and street vendors, and open drains unlittered. This is our Asian City

of Tomorrow."

The absence of Asian signs stuns-but that is exactly the point. In the context of

the issue as framed- "Apropos with the Asian population explosion every one of us

must inevitably ask what will happen to human settlements in our portion of this planet

in years to come"-the "Asian" is a sentimental diversion, even for SPUR. "Cities are

the results of evolution. We would want local character and local identity to be pre-

served, but on the other hand we must not make the mistake of identifying the require-

ments of modem living and the process of industrialisation with de-orientation:' What is

inevitable, considering the same demographics, is density. "Anyone .with any apprecia-

tion for the sense of a city will agree that a true city is a congested city-congestion not

of cars but of people drawn close together by a multitude of related activities ... High

buildings will be the norm rather than the exception."43 It is exactly this "new" density-

the high-rise explosion of which the HOB housing blocks were only the beginning-

that will be the sign of the Asian .

It is one point on which SPUR and the regime agree completely. Sometimes Lee

Kuan Yew even plays along with SPUR visionaries. At an exhibition of SPUR 's alterna-

tive propositions, he announce s, "Once the back of the housing problem was broken by

1963 our targets were inevitably raised ... " 44

In the late sixties, SPUR 's frustration over its continuing exclusion mounts. Reduced

to the status of spectator, it interprets the simultaneous political explosions in "Watts,

Amsterdam, Paris" as signs of a potentially global conflagration of contested power.

When Lim writes in "The Impending Urban Crisis" about "peasant revolts, civil wars,

and revolutions;' there is a barely suppressed disbelief and irritation at the riots that did

not break out in Singapore, alarm that the expected Third World uprising has been turned

into an idyll in his own backyard.

This misreading reveals a cruel paradox. The most progressive architects have an

emotional interest in perpetuating backwardness, and a corresponding degree of bitter-

1057

2 + 3 's really being a certain number, apart from what it seems to be?

PROCRUST ES Procrustes was the robber who made his victims fit his bed by stretching or lopping them .

PRODUC TI ON An analysis of (contemporary) pro- duction shows that we have passed from the production of things in space to the production of the space itself. The past left its marks, its inscriptions, but space is always pre- sent space, a current totality with its links and co nnections to action. In fact, the production and the product are inseparable sides of a process.

PROGRAMME The slow realization that the excite- ment of a scheme is ·not in its outra- geous components, but is the most modest programme.

PROGRESS The no-man's-land between the two strips of the wall, a void watched over by armed border guards to pre- vent Germans fleeing from Germany to Germany, became an open space in the center of Berlin that other metropolises might actually hope for. This empty zone in the urban center offered itself for occupation as long as the obstacles of political reality in the foreground did not obscure the gaze toward the archi- tectural horizon into the fantasies of urban life. Through the polemical device of collage , one had only to affix to a postcard of the Branden- burg Gate an airborne jet rising above the corridor in the center of Berlin as an icon of progress, like the inevitable zeppelin of Leonidov. Thus a new chapter of the metropo- lis could be opened.

PROPOSITION It is only in a language that some- thing is a proposition. To understand a proposition is to understand a lan- guage. A proposition is a sign in a system of signs. It is one combination of signs among a number of possible ones , and as opposed to the other possible ones. As it were one posi tion of an indicator as opposed to other possible ones.

PROPR I ET Y Lindsay was a good baby. She ate and she slept and she grew.

PROTECT The primary purpose of a building 's

1058

2

1 May '68, Paris 2 May '68, Singapore

Ready for Entrepreneurial Direction

ness at the success of policies whose failure they predicted and whose attractions they

underestimated; they look in disbelief at the apparent malleability of a population whose

resistance and incorruptibility they overestimated.

SPURned The profoundly disconcerting truth is that, for once, politicians have imagined and

installed a solution, one oblivious to the architects' amendments and expectations of

imminent failure. The razed plane of Singapore island has become a vast metabolic

estate, a governmental playground. With 30-year hindsight, some of the projects in their

demented density acqu.ire an almost avant-garde, metabolist sheen.

Only when the regime finally relents at the end of the eighties--: presumably because

its job is done-do Lim and Tay console themselves that they have belatedly won over

the government on preservation. Lim-unprophetic author of"The Case Against Tall

Buildings in Urban Centers of the Third World" -feels it is because his voice is finally

heard; but it is also true that there is almost nothing left to bulldoze.

1059

• • •

1063

2

3

4

1 Beach Road area, development model , 196 7 2 Go lden Mile Tower, Goh Hock Su an design team 3 the Plaza, Design Metabol ists Arch itects 4 Woh Hup (now Golde n Mil e) Complex , Design Pa rtner ship

1068

A Mini·-UO'N nto wn in You r Own Backyard

A similar " metabolist mile" develops parallel to the coast on Beach Road: the Plaza

(Design Metabolists Architects); the 22-story Golden Mile Tower (Goh Hock Suan

design team)-"another landmark .. . a complex arrangement of form and mass that

reflects the shapes and volumes of the spaces within. Though finished in the raw con-

crete it is made of, the structure is softened for the eye by the use of rounded edges and

comers and detailing in metal windows and railings:' It contains a 1,896-seat cinema,

200 shops, a 16-story office tower, 539 parking spaces.

At the end is the most ideologically and architecturally advanced-Wah Hup (now

Golden Mile) Complex-where the components are no longer separate and autonomous

but absorbed in a single sloping 16-story multi-use complex. "The building is a stepped

terrace and was the first building in Singapore to utilize this design. It affords the offices

an unobstructed panorama of sky and sea. adequate terraces for developing small sunlit

gardens and on the north-west side, the stepping of the floors means the floor above

shields those below from the high temperatures of midday sun:' 49 It accommodates 370

shops, 500 parking spaces, and offices.

The Golden Mile Complex represents the first Asian segment of megastructure real-

ized anywhere: a dream conceived in 1928 in Walter Gropius's enigmatic Wohnberg

(housing hill) project and rediscovered in the sixties, when Tange (first in a Boston study

with MIT students, then in his Tokyo Bay project) made the splitting of the volume and

its attendant creation of a monumental interior nave a potent theme of resistance against

the banal orthogonality of slabs (echoed later in Portman 's Atlanta Marriott atrium and

still ricocheting in debased fonn as recently as Dominique Perrault's ESIEE building in

Mame-la-Vallee).

Megastructure spells the end of the pristine volumes of modernism. While the origi-

nal containers of the prewar period have an almost infinite capacity to absorb diversity

while remaining monolithic, enigmatic , and neutral, now-in the name ofhumanism-

pressure develops for symbolic access, understanding, perception, openness. As if by huge

crowbars, the parts are pried apart, the slabs split, the halves positioned on monumental

A-frames, the towers twisted so that a new collective may be exposed and inspected.

Architecture becomes understandable (important step toward disappointment?).

1069

2

1 Golden Mile Complex , looking up, November 1993 2, 3 Golden Mile Complex , sections and elevat ion

1072

A New Asian Identity in a Changing Global Culture

In the tropics , this prying open can be seen as a genuine, almost ecological wish to

expose the hidden interior to the breezes of a beneficial climate. There is no segregation

of the interior but a condition of mutual exposure and utmost urban permeability.

In these projects, Singapore's center is theorized as a prototype of the modem Asian

metropolis: the city as a system of interconnected urban chambers . The climate, which

traditionally limits street life, makes the interior the privileged domain for the urban

encounter. Shopping in this idealized context is not just the status-driven compulsion it

has become "here" but an amalgam of sometimes microscopic, infinitely varied func-

tional constellations in which each stall is a "functoid" of the overall programmatic

mosaic that constitutes urban life.

In the late sixties, Singapore architects-savagely synthesizing influences of Le

Corbusier, the Smithsons{feam X, self-consciously Asian speculations derived from

Maki, a new Asian self-awareness and confidence-crystallized, defined, and built

ambitious examples of vast modem socles teeming with the most traditional forms of

Asian street life, extensively connected by multiple linkages, fed by modem infra-

structures and sometimes Babel-like multilevel car parks, penetrated by proto-atriums,

supporting mixed-use towers: they are containers of urban multiplicity, heroic captures

and intensifications of urban life in architecture, rare demonstrations of the kind of

performance that could and should be the norm in architecture but rarely is, giving an

alarming degree of plausibility to the myths of the multilevel city and the megastructure

that "we;' in infinitely more affluent circumstances, have discredited and discarded.

1073

2

1 Singapore now: tenuous quality of a freeze-frame ... 2 that can be set in motion again at any time ...

1074

Eco-Tourism

Promethean Hangover: The Next Lap From one single, teeming Chinatown, Singapore has become a city with a Chinatown.

It seems completed.

But as a (former) theater of the tabula rasa, Singapore now has the tenuous quality

of a freeze-frame, of an arrested movement that can be set in motion again at any time

on its way to yet another configuration; it is a city perpetually morphed to the next state.

The curse of the tabula rasa is that, once applied, it proves not only previous occu-

pancies expendable, but also each future occupancy provisional too, ultimately temporary.

That makes the claim to finality-the illusion on which even the most mediocre architec-

ture is based-impossible. It makes Architecture impossible.

The anxiety induced by the precarious status of Singapore's reality is exacerbated

by the absence of a geometric stability. Its courage to erase has not inspired a new

conceptual frame-guidin g concept?-a definitive prognosis of the island's status, an

autonomous identity independent of infill, such as the Manhattan grid. Singapore's

proliferating geometry is strained beyond its breaking point when it has to organize the

coexistence of the strictly orthogonal super-blocks of average modernity that comprise

the vast majority of its built substance. Singapore's "planning"-the mere sum of

presences-is formless, like a batik pattern. It emerges surprisingly, seemingly from

nowhere , and can be canceled and erased equally abruptly. The city is an imperfect

collage: all foreground , no background.

Maybe this lack of geometry is typically Asian; Tokyo is the eternal example.

But what does that make the present, almost worldwide condition? Is Paris encircled by

an Asian ring? Is Piranesi 's Roman Forum Chinese? Or is our tolerance for the imper-

fection of "other" cultures , "other" standards a camouflaged form of post-colonial

condescension?

The resistance of these assembled buildings to forming a recognizable ensemble

creates, Asian or not, a condition where the exterior-the classic domain of the urban-

appears residual , leftover, overcharged with commercial effluence from hermetic

interiors, hyper-densities of trivial commandments, public art, the reconstructed tropi-

cality of landscapiqg.

1075

3

Lee Kuan Yew, former prime minister, and his successor, Goh Chok Tong 2 a more relaxed version of Sparta 3 "New Orientations" diagr,am

1076

Singapo re: Your Giobal Business Architect

As a manifesro of the quantitative, Singapore reveals a cruel contradiction: huge increases in matter, the overall effect increasingly unreal. The sinister quality of the win-

dows-black glass, sometimes purple-creates , as in a model-railroad landscape, an

additional degree of abstraction that makes it impossible to guess whether the buildings

are empty or teeming with transplanted Confucian life ...

In spite of its colossal substance, Singapore is doomed to remain a Potemkin

metropolis.

That is not a local problem. We can make things, but not necessarily make them real.

Singapore represents the point where the volume of the new overwhelms the volume of

the old, has become too big to be animated by it, has not yet developed its own vitality.

Mathematically, the third millennium will be an experiment in this form of soullessness

(unless we wake up from our 30-year sleep of self-hatred).

After its monumental achievement , Singapore now suffers a Promethean hangover.

A sense of anticlimax is palpable. The "finished" Barthian state is grasping for new

themes, new metaphors, new signs to superimpose on its luxurious substance. From

external enemies, the attention has shifted to internal demons, of which doubt is so far

the most unusual.

Lee resigned in 1990 but remains prominently in the background as an eminence

grise. His successor, Goh Chok Tong, must assure the transition from a hyper-efficient

garrison state to a more relaxed version of Sparta.

It is a period of transition, revision, marginal adjustments, "New Orientations"; after

urbanization"'comes " leisurization:' " Singaporeans now aspire to the finer things in life-

to the arts , culture, and sports . .. " 50

The recent creation of a Ministry for Information and the Arts is indicative. As Yeo,

its minister, warns, "It may seem odd, but we have to pursue the subject of fun very seri-

ously if we want to stay competitive in the 21st century . .. "

Singapore is a city without qualities (maybe that is an ultimate form of deconstruc-

tion, and even of freedom). But its evolution-its songline-continues: from enlightened

postwar UN triumvirate, first manifestation of belated CIAM apotheosis, overheated

metabolist metropolis, now dominated by a kind of Confucian postmodernism in which

1077

1, 2

1, 2 Confucian postmodernism: early housing slabs rehabilitated 3 shopping center atr i um, Orchard Road 4 city as shopping center 5 global consumer frenzy 6 Nge Ann City, roofscape

1078

A Future with a Past

the brutal early housing slabs are rehabilitated with symmetrical ornament.

In the eighties, the global consumer frenzy perverted Singapore's image to one of

repulsive caricature: an entire city perceived as shopping center, an orgy of Eurasian vul-

garity, a city stripped of the last vestiges of authenticity and dignity. But even in a termi-

nal project such as Nge Ann City, the elements of former ideological life are present,

latent under the sheen of garish postmodernity (granite, brass, brick) which, in the new

rhetoric, is based not only on Asian life but on the resurrection of Asian aesthetics: the

Chinese Wall, pagodas, the Forbidden City, etc. Under the forms and decorations it is

still a stunning urban machine, with its lavish parking decks on the 11th floor, the diversity

of its atriums, the surprising richness of its cellular department stores, mixing Nike with

Chanel, Timberland with Thai food: Turbo-Metabolism.

History, especially colonial history, is rehabilitated, paradoxically because it is the

only one recognizable as history: the Raffles Hotel, painstakingly restored in the front,

is cloned in the back to accommodate a shopping-center extension that far exceeds the

original in volume.

Paul Rudolph reemerges from limbo. Somewhere in the city one of his American

prototypes-it started its conceptual life in the sixties as a stack of mobile homes hoisted

in a steel skeleton-stands realized in concrete.

In 1981 he had been part of the Beach Road experiment-presumably unknowingly.

For a developer, and without contact with his Singaporean colleagues, the American

designs a metabolic project: a rotated concrete tower next to a deformed bulge of a podi-

um, one of the first manifestations of the independent atrium. Thirteen years later, it too

stands realized, but in aluminum, the rotation of the tower replaced by indentation, a

metallic corncob, its "American atrium" more hollow than its Asian counterparts.

Singapore's center will be hyper-dense; a massive invasion of stark, undetailed

forms crowds the city model on the top floor of the planning office. On newly reclaimed

land, the last center pieces are being fitted with contextual masterpieces: a "Botta;' a

posthumous "Stirling:' But how can buildings be sympathetic to their environment if

there is no environment?

Various anxieties (repressed? imported?) come gingerly to the surface, most insidi-

1079

3

4

2

1, 2 the center will be hyper-dense : city model at Urban Redevelopment Authority, top floor, November 1993 3 "a ll of our efforts are marked by the desire to balance development with nature" 4 Lee Kuan Yew launches tree-planting campaign, 1963 5 after development, Eden ...

1080

Promoting National Teamwork

ously about the di sappearance of history. "There is a call to preserve and explore our rich

cultural heritage ... "

Goh has identified his reign as the Next Lap (it supersedes Vision 1999). At his

November 1990 swearing-in he proclaims, "Singapore can do well only ifher good sons

and daughters are prepared to dedicate themselves to help others. I shall rally them to

serve the country. For if they do not come forward, what future will we have? I therefore

call on my fellow citizens to join me, to run the next lap together ... " 51

But the name alone betrays an inbuilt fatigue, like a marathon run around a track.

Goh 's Next Lap is like an invitation to join him on a treadmill.

Mostly, the Next Lap represents further work on Singapore 's identity. "Our vi si on is ...

an island with an increased sense of 'island-ness' -more beaches, marinas, resorts, and

possibly entertainment parks as well as better access to an attractive coastline and a city

that embraces the waterline more closely as a signal of its island heritage . Singapore will

be cloaked in greenery, both manicured by man and protected tracts of natural growth

and with waterbodies woven into the landscape." 52 Altogether, Singapore is poised to

evolve "Towards a Tropical City of Excellence."

In this climate of relative recons ideration , if not contemplation, nature itself is a

prime candidate for rehabilitation , sometimes retroactively. "All of our efforts are

marked by the desire to balance development with nature ... Sometimes, as elsewhere

around the world, we have tended to over-develop a few. In some such cases, there is a

need to roll back time , remove the buildings and rehabilitate the old vegetation." Almost

ominously, it even seems as if nature will be the next project of development, throwing

the mechanics of the tabula rasa into a paradoxical reverse gear: after development, Eden.

Already in 1963, Lee Kuan Yew "personally launched a tree-planting campaign"

as prophylactic compensation for the urban renewal programs that were to be initiated.

"Active tree planting was carried out for all roads, vacant plots , and new development

sites."

Parallel to the intensification of urban renewal, a "garden city" campaign was started

in 1967, " a beautification programme that aims to clothe the republic in a green mantle

resplendent with the colors of nature .. . " 53

1081

4

1 "Tropical Excellence" 2, 3 outdoors: Potemkin nature 4, 5 indoors: shopping Eden, Raffles City, 1993

1082

2

Reducing Vulnerability

Now the state is about to complete a "park network;' an ambitious web implemented

through a "park connector system" that will convert Singapore into a "total playground."

Worldwide, landscape is becoming the new ideological medium, more popular, more

versatile, easier to implement than architecture, capable of conveying the same signifiers

but more subtly, more subliminally; it is two-dimensional rather than three-dimensional,

more economical, more accommodating, infinitely more susceptible to intentional

inscriptions.

The irony of Singapore's climate is that its tropical heat and humidity are at the same

time the perfect alibi for a full-scale retreat into interior, generalized, non-specific, air-

conditioned comfort-and the sole surviving element of authenticity, the only thing_ that

makes Singapore tropical, still. With indoors turned into a shopping Eden, outdoors

becomes a Potemkin nature-a plantation of tropical emblems, palms, shrubs, which the

very tropicality of the weather makes ornamental.

The "tropical" in " tropical excellence" is a trap, a conceptual dead end where the

metaphorical and the literal wrestle each other to a standoff: while all of Singapore 's

architecture is on a flight away from the heat, their ensemble is supposed to be its

apotheosis.

The only tropical authenticity left is a kind of accelerated decay, a Conradian rot: it

is the resistance to that tropicality that explains Singapore's uptightness. "It corresponds

to a deep primordial fear of being swallowed up by the jungle, a fate that can only be

avoided by being ever more perfect, ever more disciplined, always the best . . . " 54

1083

1 Liu Thai Ker interviewed 2 "after the pavement , beach " -move beyond irony ...

2

Totai Business Capabilities

Finally, in a move beyond the reach of irony, the island is now being outfitted with a

perimeter beach. "By the year x, through reclamation and replanning, the amount of

accessible shoreline is almost doubled, while the inaccessible areas are correspondingly

reduced. There are ample opportunities for us to create beaches, promenades, marinas,

resorts, etc."

Singapore now becomes a willed idyll- "like in May ' 68;' the former chief planner,

Liu Thai Ker, whispers to me. It is a subtle revision. Not "under the pavement, beach;'

but "after the pavement, beach."

1085

thermal insulation is to control heat transfer and thereby protect a build- ing from excessive heat loss during cold seasons and heat gain during hot seasons.

PROVOCATEUR The architect proceeds as the avant- garde does in any battle, as a provo- cateur. He saps the edges of taste, undermines the conventional bound- aries, assaults the thresholds of respectability and shocks the psychic stability of the past by introducing the new, the strange, the exotic and the erotic.

PROXIMITY 1 Anyway, these two nuns were sitting next to me, and we sort of struck up a conversation.

PROXIMITY 2 As Jong as two buildings share the same space or are in each other's proximity, whether the architect wants it or not, or whether anybody cares, they do have a re lationship. It is an enormous farce to believe that to create a relations hip, one thi ng has to be like another thing, or one thing has to adjust to another thing. As anybody who shares the world with anybody else knows, the simple proximity-the simple juxta- position of things-creates a rela- tionship that is there, almost inde- pe hdent of the mutual will of the people who created these objects.

PSEUDONYM No, I'm not Thomas ~ynchon . I am, however, John Fowles, uh , I'm John Ba:rth, and I used to be Flannery O'Connor-but I killed that one off.

PSYCHOGEOGRAPHY Psychogeography is the study of the specific effects of the geographical environment, consciously organized or not, on the emotions and behavior of individuals.

PURGE I felt stifled. Everything I looked at reminded me of myself. I opened wide the doors of my wardrobe and threw in all the debris from the floor. I pulled the sheets, blankets and pil- lows off my bed and put those in too. I ripped down pictures from the wall that I had once cut out of maga- zines . Under the bed I found plates and cups covered in green mold. I took every loose object and put it in the wardrobe till the room was bare. I even took down the light bulb and

1086

Intelligent Island

Postscript: Metastasis As it stands, the Singapore model-sum , as we have seen, of a series of systematic tran-

substantiations which make it, in effect, one of the most ideological of all urban condi-

tions-is now poised to metastasize across Asia. The sparkle of its organization, the

glamour of its successful uprooting, the success of its human transformation, the laun-

dering of its past, its manipulation of vernacular cultures present an irresistible model for

those facing the task of imagining-and building-new urban conditions for the even

more countless millions. More and more, Singapore claims itself a laboratory for China,

a role that could lift its present moroseness.

The sums are stark: "Eighty percent of China 's population is still rural;' argues Liu

Thai Ker, former head of the URA, now in private practice. "The mere shift of one

fourth of them to the city over the next 20 years-an implausibly low figure-would

imply a doubling of all their urban substance."

It is unlikely that the deconstructivist model, or any of the other respectable contem-

porary propositions (what are they anyway?), has a great attraction in these circum-

stances. Singapore represents the exact dosage of "authority, instrumentality, and vision"

necessary to appeal. In numerous architectural offices in Singapore, whose names few

of us have ever heard, China's future is being prepared. In these countless new cities the

skyscraper is the only surviving typology. After the iconoclasm of communism there

will be a second, more efficient Ludditism, helping the Chinese toward the "desired

land": market economy-but minus the decadence, the democracy, the messiness, the

disorder, the cruelty of the West.

Projecting outward from Singapore, an asymmetrical epicenter, there will be

new Singapores across the entire mainland. Its model will be the stamp of China's

modernization.

Two billion people can't be wrong.

Exit Singapore mantra: don't forget to confirm your return flight.

1087

light shade . Then I took my clothes off, threw them in and closed the doors. The room was empty like a cell. I lay down on the bed again and stared at my patch of clear sky till I fell as leep.

Q QUANTITY

Mies van der Rohe said, "The least is the most:• I agree with him com- pletely. At the same time, what con- cerns me now is quantity.

QUASI-HISTORICAL But of course, the modern architec- ture in OMA's scheme of things is not Ville Radieuse rationality, nor Hilberseimerian sobriety, nor megastructural systematicity. It is already a quasi-historical modernity which harks back to the decade of the twenties in Russia and in America. It recalls the abstractions of Malevich and Lissitzky, the idealities of Chernikov and Leonidov, the sensuous, wayward and episodic in a way which has not been seen since the early days. All that strange variety of modem architecture in the days before Pavilion Suisse defined the canon ofrationality and commercial expediency once and for all, returns now in OMA to haunt us with the possibilities of a future which we had already thought was over.

QUERY Dame Mouse went to the Sun and said to him , " Sun, do you know why I have come to you?" "How should I know?"

QUOTE 1 I hate quotations .

QUOTE 2 I am a foreigner to myself in my own language and I translate myself by quoting all the others.

R RADIUS

Since the internal radius of turn of a commercial vehicle is about 8m,

1088

Notes

The author gratefully acknowledges

William S. W. Lim, Tay Kheng Soon, Chua Beng Huat, and Liu

Thai Ker for contributing their time

and insights: nevertheless, the ideas and opinions expressed in this text

are those of the author.

1. William Gibson, "Disney- land with the Death Penalty;·

Wired (Sept.-Oct. 1993) .

2. Deyan Sudjic, "Virtual City;' Blueprint (February 1994).

3. Official slogan.

4. Lee Kuan Yew.

5. Lim Chee Then , " The

Confucian Tradition and Its Future in Singapore: Historical ,

Cultural, and Educational

Perspectives," in Yong Mun

Cheong, Asian Traditions and

Modernization (Times Academic

Press, 1992), p. 214.

6. Richard Nixon, Leaders

(New York: Warner Book s, 1982 ),

p. 311. 7. Jean Louis Margolin, 1989,

as quoted in Rodolphe de

Koninck, Singapourlre: An Atlas

of the Revolution of Territory

(Montpellier: Redus, 1992), p. 25.

8. Chua Beng-Huat, " Not

Depoliticized But Ideologically

Successful: The Public Housing

Programme in Singapore,"

International Journal of Urban

and Regional Research 15 , no. I

(1991), p. 27.

9. At the moment of writing, Singapore is poised to overtake

Rotterdam as the largest harbor in

the world. It is already the most

efficient.

JO. First Decade in Public

Housing (Singapore: Housing and Development Board, 1969), p. 18.

11. Aline K. Wong and Stephen H. K. Yeh, eds., Housing

a Nation: 25 Years of Public

Housing in Singapore (Singapore:

Housing and Development

Board/Maruzen Asia, 1985) .

12. First Decade in Public

Housing, p. 26.

13. Wong and Yeh, Housing a

Nation, p. 95.

14. Charles Abrams, Susumu

Kobe, and Otto Koenigsbe rger,

"Growth and Urban Renewal in

Singapore" (report to the UN. 1963), pp. 7, 109.

JS. Abrams, Kobe, and

Koenigsberger, "Growth and

Urban Renewal in Singapore;·

pp. 121-22 (italics added) .

16. Abrams, Kobe, and

Koenigsberger, "Growth and

Urban Renewal in Singapore," pp. 9, 10 (italics added). In 1994,

Singapore has 2.7 million

inhabitants .

17. Abrams, Kobe, and

Koenigsberger, "Growth and

Urban Renewal in Singapore:·

pp. JO, 11, 45 (italics added). In the subsection "The Silent

Assumption of British Planning,"

the tone is surprisingly anti- colonial/anti-English.

18. Political name under

People 's Action Party.

19. Abrams, Kobe, and Koenigsberger, "Growth and

Urban Renewal in Singapore,"

pp. 59, 16, 12, 61.

20. As noted in "Growth and

Urban Renewal in Singapore;'

the term Ring City was coined by

Professo r Jacobu s P. Thij sso in hi s

paper " Metropolitan Planning in

the Netherlands" (Conurbation

Holland , UN , 1959). In Holland,

the "central stretch of open co un-

try " is called its Gree n Heart.

Abrams, Kobe, and Koenig s-

berger, " Growth and Urban

Renewal in Singapore;' p. 63.

21. Chua, "Not Depoliticized

But Ideologically Successful,"

p. 29. 22. De Koninck, Singapour!re,

pp. 84, 37.

23. "At the tum of the sixtie s,

the Jurong di strict was till cov-

ered with hills ... 30 to 40 meters

high ... By the early eighties , the

hills have nearly all bee n leveled."

De Koninck , Singapour!re , p. 44 .

24 . De Koninck, Singapourlre,

p. 88. 25. World Health Orga nization ,

in Donald Canty, "A rchitec ture

and the Urban Emergency;' Archi-

tectural Forum, Aug.-Sept. 1964,

p. 173 .

26. President Lyndon John son ,

in Canty, "Architecture and the

Urban Emergency:'

27. Fumihiko Maki , In vesti-

gations in Colle ctive Form (St.

Loui s: Washin gto n University

School of Architecture, 1964),

p. 34.

28. Chua, " Not Depoliticized

But Ideologicall y Successful ;'

p. 26. 29. Confucius, The Analects,

VIII/9, tran s. D . C. Lau , in Lim ,

" Confucian Tradition."

30. Chua, " Not Depoliticized

But Ideolo g icall y Successful ,"

pp. 35-36.

31. Confuciu s, Th e Analects , .

VI/30, in Lim, "Confucian

Tradition."

32. Lee Kuan Yew, as quoted

in Ian Buruma, " Singapore;' New

York Times Ma gazine, June 12,

1988 , p. 58.

33. " Many traditional Chinese

language te xtbook s are no

longer suitabl e for use because of

the students' lower level of profi-

ciency in the language." Lim,

" Confucian Tradition," p. 215.

34. Maki , Inv estigations in

Colle cti ve Form , p. 3. 35. Chri stopher Alexander, "A

City Is Not a Tree; ' Architectural

Forum , April 1965 .

36. In the introduction to

"Notes on the Synthesis of Form ;' Pete r Bla ke writes that Alexander

"s pent severa l month s in India

planning th e development of a

small village, which he now

admits to havi ng organized as

a tree."

37. Maki , In vestigations in

Collective Form, pp. 3, 34, 4 , 5, 6,

8-11 (italics added).

38. Fumihiko Maki , " The

Theo ry of Group Form;' Japan

Architect , Feb. 1970, pp. 39-40.

39. Maki , In vestigations in

Collecti ve Form, pp. 11 , 27-35 .

40. Maki , " Theory of Group

Form;' p. 40 .

41. Maki , In vestigations in

Collective Form , pp. 82, 84, 85,

23 , 2 1.

42. SPUR 65-67. pp. 1-2, 29,

34, 38, 52.

43. "The Future of Asian

Cities;' Asia Ma gazine, May 1966,

pp . 5, 7, 8.

44. Lee Kuan Yew, lecture, in

SPUR 65-67. p. 58. 45. Chua, "Not Depolitic ized

But Ideologicall y Successfu l;'

p. 30.

46. Its di stance from the coast

has increased si nce, through addi-

tional land reclamation.

47. William Lim , Cities for

People (Singapore: Select Books,

1990), p. 8.

48. Urban Redevelopment

Authority, Chronicle of Sale Sites,

1967, p. 25.

49. Urban Redevelopme nt

Authority, Chronicle of Sale Sites,

p. 30.

50. The Next Lap (Singapore:

Times International Press, 1991 ), p. IOI .

51. The Next Lap, p . 3.

52 . Urban Redevelopment

Authority, Living the Next Lap :

Towards a Tropical City of

Excellence , 1991.

53 . Lee Sing Ken g and Chua

Sian Eng, M ore Than a Garden

City (Singapore: Parks and Re-

creation Department, 1992), p. 8.

54. Buruma, " Singapore ."

In so me cases, through the perva-

sive ness of the interior conditions,

there is an acute point of reversal:

it is as if the exterior is the unu su-

al condition, see n through plate

glass like a window di splay.

1089