SINGAPORE BAT-SONG

 

This was my favourite among the paintings we saw at the National Gallery of Singapore on Saturday. There is always a balance to be struck between the representation of a subject and the abstract qualities of the paint.

In this case both are on offer in lavish servings. Your imagination can run riot over the bustling activity of a far Eastern port in times gone by.

But equally there is the rich impasto of paint laid on in buckets. Glorious dollops of the stuff, and yet, as you step back the mind sees distinctive human characters, busy with their work.

I strive to paint like this. But with less success 🙄😂

 

 

Definitely back in Dubai. A dry, desert-wasteland kind of beauty 🤣🤣🤣 Snapshots from my first early morning walk since sleeping off the travel.

Here in International City there's definitely plenty of "move fast and break things" but at a low-tech level. It's not the most conventionally beautiful of suburbs, but it provides opportunies for people of many nationalities to climb those first few rungs on the ladder of success.

For me, ladder climbing was never much of a thing, but this place has allowed me to slide off sideways and avoid the snakes that threaten to plunge us down again in old age.

I enjoy the serenity of my 5th floor apartment, with the chaos and energy all around at my feet. So dry compared to Singapore, and still pleasantly cool in the mornings.

Good to be home.

 

Flashback post.

A pre-birthday dinner for me at Marina One, followed by a bit of a walk through Downtown at night. I'm going to miss this place. But what a refreshing break it's been while still managing a fair bit of remote work, thanks to #bim360 or whatever it's called these days 🤣🤣🤣

Dubai and Singapore, compare and contrast. I'm not interested in arguments about which is better, let's just say there are lots of parallels but also significant differences : climate, culture... 

 

 

Bound to be something I reflect upon over the next few weeks. I first visited Singapore about six years before I moved to Dubai, and this visit is about six after my previous (3rd) one. It's felt a bit like one of those movies with multiple flashbacks.

Memory seems to be a dense web of connections. Reentry at any point triggers a whole series of associations in multiple domains. There must be an evolutionary story to tell there.

 

 

Is it a butterfly, is it a bat?... No it's an air vent 🤣🤣🤣

My sources go with the bat symbology. Be that as it may, I found a couple of hours to have a go this afternoon with my BIM pencil. All part of my Singapore shophouse explorations.

 

I thought I might have to make it fixed size, or manually resizable. But I ran a quick trial on a detail component and figured out a pretty stable version with three parameters.

From there it was quite easy to roll out a basic vent with a projecting border, as a wall-hosted family. Placed it into my model and tweaked the size. Next step will be burglar bars.

Of course there are all kinds of variations on the theme. One step at a time.

 

Quite cool this morning with the sun hiding behind low clouds. Perfect for a walk

The abandoned building site is next door but one and has been like that for at least a dozen years. I don't quite remember when the building work stopped) I view this as part of the "move fast & break things" culture here. Not to be misread as decline.

It would be quite nice to see the land utilised I suppose, but from a purely selfish point of view I see it as a romantic ruin (in the tradition of John Soane) that punctuates my morning walk.

The wide sky in the lower view displays more conventional beauty perhaps. But it's a much bigger disappointment to me that the promised park in this area has not materialised. There is no dead forest of half-built columns here, just hoardings and wasteland.

One big public space would make such a difference to this densely populated suburb. Opportunity squandered in my view.

 

 

BOUNDARY DETAILS

 

Boundaries are important in all aspects of life, indeed cell walls allow life to happen, to control what comes in and what goes out. But these borders are defining the edges of terracotta floor tiles with granite strips and steps.

Together these two materials define the varied floor plane that runs through "shophouse world" like a connective tissue.

There is a rugged quality about granite, a no-nonsense material with rough edges that gets the job done and endures for generations. And yet it supports a level of subtle detailing in experienced hands.

Can that experience by passed along and nurtured in a world without boundaries? Biology suggests that boundaries with a controlled level of porosity are crucial to evolution, perhaps to the emergence of life itself in the porous rocks of deep sea vents.

Boundaries of stone and living clay, quite the combination.

 

 

Second time to visit the Urban Redevelopment Authority where they have the most amazing models of Singapore. Caught an early ride again which is essential.

Great to look at this area on the model with much better understanding having done my own studies in Revit. The upper models are as it was originally built, the lower one as it is now

The way they go about planning the development of Singapore in full view of the public is really impressive. Democracy is one thing but transparency is another. Direct comparisons to Europe don't seem relevant.

Just my opinion based on a few short visits, but there's something quite special about this place.

 

Beautiful panelled doors where I am staying with my son and daughter-in-law. The building is less than 30 years old, but still chose an old-school approach to the internal doors. I doubt you could specify teak of this quality in a condo development today.

The bullnose projecting "architrave" is an unusual feature, with the long dimension perpendicular to the wall. This extra depth provides a solid stop for the skirting board which is also a little unusual and impressively solid.

Raised and fielded panels very neatly fitted with a moulded bead. Stunning really. Nice handles too. It's been an absolute privilege to stay here with one branch of my dispersed family. The mix of remote work, personal research and vacation has worked out really well.

Just a few days left now.

 

 

Language is a fluid human activity. Words are transformed by use. I am always bemused by the wish to freeze meanings to a single interpretation.

I'm going to suggest non-standard word pairs to express something about these images, some connection to other, distantly related forms.

Fluted Tuscan and Chinese Baroque. These are not commonly accepted labels, but they serve a purpose for me. As I take several hundred images during this trip, labels help me to organise what I have experienced.

Making connections, finding patterns, integrating new thoughts into the tangled thicket of my brain. Just trying to build useful memory banks to inform future "BIM pencil" meanderings.

 

Two classical buildings from the inter-war years which were converted to create the National Gallery of Singapore. From the outside their is just a very subtle connection,whereas inside the spaces have been transformed in more dramatic ways, but without disrespect for their original form.

Somehow this place seems to have a nack for doing things well, maybe it's a tradition stretching back a couple of centuries. Of course there is always another side to the coin, whichever period of Singapore's history you take, but on balance... impressive.

 

 

I have a soft spot for this blend of classical and modern when it's done well. There's a richness here that neither style could summon on its own. Hands reaching out across time, evoking continuity of culture.

We need more of that.

 

 

RUDOLPH BEACH

 

 

Got up early, grabbed a lift to the Beach Road and spent about 90 minutes taking photos of buildings. That's the right time slot for me and the climate here.

Drop off point was The Concourse by Paul Rudolph. Looking pretty good for a 1980s project. Architects 61 were the local consultants.

The Airport Control Tower style glazing is an interesting choice. Must have cost a bit but it definitely contributes to the inverted pagoda effect. Modern and abstracted but a clear nod to regional identity. Not an easy thing to pull off.

I may attempt a rough massing model of this to add to my Revit map of Singapore. Some subtleties there I would like to engage with.

 

First couple of hours with my BIM pencil exploring the tricky geometry of Paul Rudolph's 1987 tower in Singapore.

Fun fact. That's the year my youngest son was born, and 36 years later I'm staying with him for 3 weeks as an experiment in what I'm calling "hybrid retirement"

That means a mixture of remote work and doing this kind of "way we build" private study that started with my blog and has blossomed out in various ways.

It also means continuing to base myself in Dubai and to visit the physical office regularly. Face to face is still essential for some aspects of my day job.

But now I'm also trying out the idea of rotating around my three children, floating between continents for up to a third of the year.

People talk about the hybrid office. I don't have a conventional retirement plan, so... Hashtag Hybrid Retirement. Pilot scheme is going well.

 

Family outing this morning. Taken to Joo Chiat Road area too see something a bit more suburban. Peranakan Houses, purely residential, but clearly related to the shophouse tradition which is also in evidence in this neighbourhood along with a sprinkling of more modern types.

Some nice fretwork at the eaves with classical festoons and dentils forming a frieze below. The scale of the front gardens and verandas is spot on, for my money.

You can imagine a main drag of three storey shophouses with residential side streets like this forming a tight little neighbourhood.

That would be a great little collaborative project for a group of architectural technology students, learning to use Revit, embedding data as an introduction to BIM, and gaining deeper insights into local heritage.

Just a thought.

 

 

Progress on my Revit map of Singapore.

After the challenge of Paul Rudolph's Concourse, the next two buildings on Beach Road were a doddle. These are just rough sketches : "good enough to recognise"... and I'm only placing the older buildings that are significant to me at present.

I visited The Gateway by I. M. Pei soon after it was finished, in 1997. I was working on an office tower in Harare at the time and had been sent on a short trip to get some inspiration.

I was given a marketing brochure for the project. Sadly I never digitised that. It must be languishing in a cardboard box in Zimbabwe methinks.

This exercise is starting to pay off in terms of it's main purpose which is helping me to think about Singapore : its geography, architecture, history etc

More to come

 

The shophouses I saw on my first little foray of this trip originally had separate entrances for the upper floors. This leads to a straight flight passing through the ground floor, morphing into a dogleg further back.

Some of the doors look original, and there are glimpses of older handrails, but the treads and risers had all been refinished. This is a different configuration from the one I used in my Revit study, and ones I have seen in hand drawn cutaways.

My guess is that each new building project was an opportunity to switch the design around a bit, and there are many different elements that can be varied.

It would be interesting to see a thorough analysis of the basic plan typologies that were in common use in the heyday of these delightful buildings.