Source : Straits Times - 4 Feb 2009
WILLIAM Lim thinks that Singapore stands out from other Asian cities because it lacks vibrancy. ‘In the upscale, high-rise Tokyo district of Ginza, you need only walk 50 yards to see traditional Japanese low-density streets off the main road.’
Singapore, however, cleared out the back lanes and side streets along with main arteries of old districts during its many urban renewal programmes over the years. The clean-slate approach and rigid state control drained the streets of colour that characterised traditional activities in these areas.
Mr Lim should know. The 76-year-old urban theorist and retired architect was one of the brains behind Golden Mile Complex and People’s Park Complex, which were hailed regionally as cutting-edge projects when built in the 1970s.
He was president of the Singapore Heritage Society from 1988 to 1997, and currently heads Architectural Association (AA) Asia, a regional forum for architectural discourse.
When he turned 70, a group of friends, colleagues and family put together a series of essays to celebrate the man, termed by Australia’s RMIT University as ‘the social conscience of architecture in the region’. Contributors to the book No Limits: Articulating William Lim included architectural academic Robert Powell, art critic T. K. Sabapathy and diplomat Tommy Koh.
Mr Lim himself has written more than 10 books on urban Asia. His latest is Asian Alterity, which argues, among other things, for Asians to be more critical about the kind of Western-centric modernity being touted as contemporary design.
Dullness, he says, is still something that hobbles Singapore despite the more varied housing, shopping and entertainment projects pushed out in recent years. In this aspect, he feels the Government could take a leaf out of the underrated districts of Geylang and Little India.
He notes that these areas - crammed with old-style eateries, independent shops, red light zones and housing projects in side streets - are still vibrant because ‘they have not been substantially disturbed by road widening and clearances’.
Their charm, he adds, is ‘chaotic order’.
‘In this apparent chaos, there is a very unstructured order. Even though goods sold spill over onto the pavement, they don’t spill over onto the street. There is still space that allows people to walk through the area.’
The unpredictability of these areas generates creative energy that easily trumps the carefully planned glitz of Orchard Road.
Singapore needs more of such unpredictable areas which he calls ’spaces of indeterminacy’. This refers to ‘leftover spaces’ like void decks or land under flyovers, which he says should be used for anything as long as it is not harmful.
He also thinks the Government should set aside buildings earmarked for demolition - such as first-generation Housing Board flats - for use by the grassroots and arts communities in any way they deem fit.
Such a low-rental environment will give artists enough breathing space to mingle, explore and create works they would not otherwise do because they cannot afford the high rental for art studios.
‘Art is vibrancy for the community,’ he declares, citing the example of 798 Art District in Beijing, an artist enclave that grew out of decommissioned factories, now being compared to New York’s Greenwich Village.
‘It can be music, photography, writing, poetry. It’s a criss-cross of these ideas that generate energy,’ he says. For it to work, there needs to be enough buzz from not just successful artists but struggling ones too.
‘It’s very untidy and you have got to accept the untidiness,’ he points out.
Mr Lim, who is partial to experimental art, recalls meeting Andy Warhol in New York’s Greenwich Village in the 1970s through a mutual friend.
‘He was very down and out. He had all his Coca-Cola paintings but he couldn’t sell them. If I had asked him, he would have given me some of his paintings… Who would have known that he would become so famous and so important? So we don’t know. We don’t know.’
Asked about plans for the Bras Basah and Bugis district to be turned into an arts, entertainment and education hub, he says: ‘I’m not sure you can do an arts hub deliberately. These things have to grow on their own energy. You can’t push all the art schools into one area and then think, all these arts schools are there, and so it becomes a vibrant place.’
Vibrancy, he maintains, is a ground- up, not top-down process. Nightlife is an indication of vibrancy and Singapore needs a greater variety of it. He dismisses Singapore’s version of night markets or pasar malam in suburban areas, which he says sell cheap ‘discarded products’.
‘If you go to Taipei and Taichung in Taiwan, you find that the night market is one of the major centre points of contact. People will go there, drink coffee through the night and argue about politics and anything else…We’ve forgotten that there is another side of the coin, there are other activities that can go on.’
The financial district of Shenton Way and Robinson Road - currently dead at night and on weekends, can be used for night markets with a difference, that allow new artists to sell original works, he suggests.
But in order for that to work, the authorities have to ease up on their obsession with squeaky clean streets.
For example, making Shenton Way 100 per cent efficient would come at the expense of night life.
‘If you want Shenton Way to not have a single piece of waste paper in the morning when the businessmen go to work, then you are making the cleanliness of the city the priority, at the expense of allowing other people to use that space.’
‘Singapore,’ he says, ‘is perhaps too efficient. It has crossed its limits at the expense of innovation.’
Turning to the state of architecture in Singapore, he laments the lack of meaningful designs here, despite a host of world-renowned architects like Daniel Libeskind and Norman Foster leaving their mark on the landscape. Their projects, like the sculpture-like condominium Reflections at Keppel Bay and the spaceship-shaped Supreme Court, have been pronounced ‘iconic’.
But Mr Lim calls them ‘disasters’. Reflections is ‘an obscenity’, while the Supreme Court is ‘a very bad building by a very good architect’.
Reflecting concern among many Singapore architects about the high-budget designs that look like they could fit anywhere in the world, he says: ‘All these guys are flogging images with no historic or social relevance to the place. These designs are debunked all over the world now. Only Singapore and Dubai are buying them.’
The recent global appetite for ‘instant icons’ can be traced back to the success of Bilbao, a former industrial city in Spain that was regenerated with the addition of the Guggenheim Bilbao Museum designed by award-winning American architect Frank Gehry. The randomly curved building thrust the little-known city into the global spotlight, making it a tourist attraction, and fired the imagination of cities with similar ambitions.
But real icons, he maintains, ‘have to be people-inspired’ and get the right amount of support from the government.
‘The cultural and creative environment by the people and policy-makers must be there. Otherwise, even if you commission the best architect, they are unable to perform as you want them to.’
And often, the best design does not make it past the bureaucrats. ‘The authorities are generally not good at identifying and accepting avant garde and ‘out of the box’ designs,’ he laments.
He cites the case of Frank Gehry’s eye-popping glass-and-steel design for the Sentosa integrated resort, part of the proposal for Kerzner-CapitaLand in the 2006 request for proposal to develop the project. The bid was passed over in favour of the one by Genting International, on the basis that the latter bid had a broad mix of attractions to draw the millions of visitors that Singapore was seeking.
‘Not accepting one of Frank Gehry’s greatest works is a ludicrous aesthetic decision,’ he declares. The avant garde building had glass sculptures encasing fibre optics that would beam images of sea creatures. This, he says, is a more forward-looking concept than the tropical stone-and-wood combination of Genting’s bid.
Ultimately, he says architects in Asia need to be more critical and have better understanding of what it means to be ‘modern’, instead of taking on mainstream and Western-originated designs wholesale.
There is always room for ‘non-generic architecture that is rooted in local cultures’ like the Beijing National Stadium, now more popularly known as the ‘Bird’s Nest’. This need not always come from local architects, as long as the architect concerned stays true to the spirit of the place.
A more pressing need, however, is for architects to think up more solutions for the urban poor, like low-cost homes.
He writes in his book Asian Alterity: ‘Half the world population of 6.5 billion lack the basic needs of food, drinking water and shelter. Yet, much of the research on current environmental and design products is directed towards the better- off, especially the privileged minority.’
This, he pronounces, will be the direction he will take this year, through lectures which focus on the new economy, sustainable development and social justice.
‘The urban poor are citizens of the city too, they have to be treated with respect.’
ON HOW GLOBAL CITIES DO NOT EQUATE TO VIBRANT CITIES
‘Singapore is quite cosmopolitan, but that doesn’t automatically make a city vibrant. Melbourne is not a global city, but Melbourne is very vibrant. I talk to people in Bangkok, and they never bother about whether it is a global city or not. Who cares?’
ON ACHIEVING UNIQUENESS
‘The modernity of each society must evolve from within its own traditions and culture. We need to seriously study and acknowledge our past, but we must not carelessly replicate our history and cultural traditions without clear understanding of their core essence.’
ON EMPTY ICONS
‘The present rush of trading in iconic architecture is doomed to fail, as their fashionable theme park images are full of sound and fury, but signifying nothing.’
What other architects say about William Lim and his ideas
‘He’s a really important figure in the Singapore architecture community. He’s very ethical and principled, and sometimes that makes him critical. He has a different way of looking at things but it is not radical or revolutionary. He’s a very inspiring person.’ - Mr Richard Hassell from WOHA Architects
‘On the one hand, these ‘instant icons’ have no relevance to our identity and culture, but further down the road, they will have an impact on the how we see ourselves.’ - Mr Khoo Peng Beng, from Arc Studio Architecture and Urbanism
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