July 30, 2007 | Features | Q&A
Moving House.
This week, we talk to Tang Ling Nah, artist and part-time lecturer at LASALLE College of the Arts. The School itself is moving to its brand new location at 1 McNally Street, boasting a bold new look, a fresh attitude, and an electricity of creative energy. What is it like for a school and its inhabitants to move to a new building, after years in its old campus, almost over two decades later since its founding in 1984 by the late Brother Joseph McNally. FFW’s Adib J talks to Ling Nah to found out what she thinks about the move, and her random ruminations on the city.
July 29, 2007 | Reviews | books
Light Reading
The Reflections of Tokyo
Hiroya Kawabata
DESIGN OFFICE K Co. Ltd. 2005
ISBN: 4-902684-05-5
Light seems to cut both ways. Without it, there would be no depth to reality; no texture to perceive, no polish and shine to fathom. On the contrary, it reveals the inequities of man’s modern constructions, which strive for the immaculate, the precise, and the perfect.
Vertical Mullions and sharp, reflective panels of glass become pillows of golden light, superimposed on the city fabric – the perfect garnish to complement the already rich and cosmopolitan surroundings that is Tokyo.
The Reflections of Tokyo, as observed by Hiroya Kawabata, reveal a raw, incidental beauty, entirely resultant of materials and their inherent character. Light and shadow collaborate once again in often unusual but beautiful display of reflections in the city.
This is a collection of worthy, but pitifully small photographs of reflections in Tokyo, accompanied by the author’s occasional poetic interjections. The book ends with a novel flip-book section showing the movement of a reflection through the course of the day; reminding us also of the fleeting, temporal nature of the fast and instant world we now live in.
S$38.50
Available at Basheer Graphicbooks
#04-19 Bras Basah Complex
Block 231 Bain Street
www.basheergraphic.com
Email: enquiry@basheergraphic.com
Hong Kong: (852) 2126 7533
July 28, 2007 | Broadcast | News
Revolutionary Power
[Image Courtesy of WorldArchitectureNews.com]
Climate change is the single most serious environmental threat facing this planet today and renewable energy sources including wind are a key aspect of combating this threat. Wind turbines are some of the most technologically advanced and cost-effective renewable sources available at this time. Modern turbines are likely to be in operation for about 85% of the year, and have a service life of at least 20 years. continue >>>
July 27, 2007 | Broadcast | News
Possibly India’s Greenest Skyscraper
[Image Courtesy of WorldArchitectureNews.com]
FXFOWLE Architects’ design concept for India Tower was informed by Mumbai’s climate, the site, and the desire to create distinctive indoor and outdoor spaces with optimum views, inspirational settings, and personalized contemporary accommodations for all users. Designed to have the least possible impact on the environment, the tower will continue >>>
July 25, 2007 | Broadcast | Jobs
MULTIPLY Architecture + Design wants YOU
MULTIPLY LLP, a recently established Architecture + Design practice is looking for suitable candidates to be part of a young and dynamic team of architects and designers working on a variety of local and regional projects of various building scales/types.
July 25, 2007 | Broadcast | Events
Mailbox Forensics
15 mailboxes, designed and built by First Year Architecture students from the National University of Singapore will be on exhibit at the Basheer Gallery, from the 3rd of August to the 9th of August. continue >>>
July 24, 2007 | Broadcast | Events
Gossip. July 28 - Aug 17.
A building filled with memories, of past lives and dreams, one where the line between fact and fiction is blurred.
Built in the 50s, 139 Selegie Road stands today ghost-like in an urban landscape of continuous renewal. An architect, an artist and a photographer retell its story, through art installations, paintings and photographs. But which story is real? What can you believe? What is mere gossip? And what is the truth?
Come find out for yourself at 139 Selegie Road.
Featuring works by Randy Chan, Hong Sek Chern and Ung Ruey Loon
Curated by David Chew
Opening on July 27, 7pm.
Exhibition runs July 28 to Aug 17
Opening hours from weekdays 5pm to 9pm, Saturday noon to 6pm, closed on Sundays
July 24, 2007 | Broadcast | Jobs
a+i asia seeks motivated individuals
a + i asia seeks motivated individuals in pursuit of a challenging career both in architecture and interiors. Our extensive portfolio includes projects both locally and in the region.
a + i asia is currently involved in two key developments in Singapore, the business financial centre (BFC) and a six start hotel cum resort in Sentosa, designed by Foster and Partners.
Visit their website www.aplusiasia.com.
If you wish to join in pursuit of design excellence and a rewarding career, please forward resumes to info@aplusasia.com
July 23, 2007 | Uncategorized
Protected: Thoughts of an Architecture Freshman
July 22, 2007 | Broadcast | News
Magical Spaces Project Update: 22 July 2007
Its been slightly over a month since we launched the Magical Spaces Project and its been going really well, thanks to everyone who has supported us!
The Project so far.
To date, we have 35 Moleskines circulating around the country and we’ve got graphic designers, architects, artists, photographers, students, educators, curators, and a whole range of other professions all across a range of age groups and from what we’ve seen, it is turning out to be a really exciting project! If you are one of those who haven’t got hold of one of these notebooks, its not too late! Drop us an email and we will contact you with further details.
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Magical Spaces on Facebook.
Magical Spaces have also spread its wings to FACEBOOK and we’ve got some interesting reads and images there. 73 members to date and counting! Do join The Magical Spaces Group and post your thoughts and images on it.
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Magical Spaces publication and exhibition
Like we mentioned, 5ft Creatives will be producing a publication and an exhibition for this project and we’ve got some updates on that too.
The publication is being conceptualised at this moment in time and we hope to release some preliminary images of the publication and its retail price within the next couple of weeks. We’ve also identified a few locations for the exhibition and we are also working on that. Tentatively, the exhibition will be held in End October 2007. We will be posting updates on that right here on Five Foot Way Magazine so keep checking back..
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Once again, thanks for all the kind words, great support, nice sketches,photographs and engaging discussions about Magical Spaces. See you around at the Five Foot Way…
July 22, 2007 | Reviews | books
Temporary Urban Spaces
[Image: Cover and contents of Temporary Urban Spaces. Photograph by JJ Yeo. All copyrights of book belongs to their respective owners]
TEMPORARY URBAN SPACES: Concepts for the Use of City Spaces
Edited by Florian Haydn, Robert Temel.
Published by Birkhauser.
ISBN-10: 3-7643-7460-8
ISBN-13: 978-3-7643-7460-0
â€â€Ã¢â‚¬â€Ã¢â‚¬â€Ã¢â‚¬â€Ã¢â‚¬â€
New approaches to the planning and the use of public and private space have begun to spring up in cities the world over. Here, the spotlight is no longer on the master plan, or the making of long-term arrangements. Instead, the ephemeral, trial and error, and the unplanned are gaining legitimacy in many cities the world over. Temporary uses are both indicators of this development and beneficiaries of a new way of seeing.
This not-so-temporary journey (it gets quite wordy) starts off with a brief definition index, exploring the meanings and implications of words and issues like the temporality versus the temporal nature of such events. Strategies, as long term solutions, are compared to tactics, as short term guerrilla solutions, which are aimed at achieving a certain short term goal in a given period of time, maybe in hope for permanent deployment in the future.
Covering the use of temporary spaces in the urban context, this volume features 10 essays from 10 experts on the topic, supported by 35 fully photographed sample projects that have been instrumental in establishing temporary use of city spaces of late, in the United States and Europe. Not so much a coffee table read, Temporary Urban Spaces seems more a useful glossary of examples from which to take reference from.
Singapore’s very own local creative-collective, otherwise known as FARM, would have been a worthy addition to this collection of temporary use projects, with their ongoing series of ROJAK events; currently running a “Save the Modern Buildings” series where ROJAK proceedings are held at a different ‘endangered building’ each time, to raise the awareness that architectural icons of the city’s past are fast disappearing in lieu of the ongoing construction boom.
Read this book, and I dare say you’ll be getting creative with your own HDB void deck sooner than you can say ‘Temporary’.
S$68.90
Available at Basheer Graphicbooks
#04-19 Bras Basah Complex
Block 231 Bain Street
Singapore 180231
www.basheergraphic.com
Email: enquiry@basheergraphic.com
Singapore: (65) 6336 0810
Malaysia: (603) 2713 2236
Hong Kong: (852) 2126 7533
Thailand: (662) 391 9815
Indonesia: (6221) 720 9151
July 22, 2007 | Features | Q&A
I am a Farmer.
[ Image: Rojak 8 @ National Stadium. Source:Torrance Goh ]
FARM. An area for growing of crops or rearing of animals. Or if you are referring to FARM.sg then it’ll be about the society that nurtures local artists and designers. With their recently concluded STAMP campaign, and their fast growing spatial design arm, FARMworks, Torrance of Farm.sg is getting really busy lately. Five Foot Way Magazine’s Adib J takes a little out of his time for a chat about Farm and the built environment. continue >>>
July 22, 2007 | Broadcast | News
Free Lighting
Image Courtesy of Hamiltons Architects and World Architecture News.com
As part of the long awaited regeneration of London’s Elephant and Castle, acting as a catalyst for future development, Multiplex and Espalier’s pioneering 43 storeys 147m high residential building provides an exciting and dynamic addition to London’s skyline. Designed by Hamiltons Architects, three 9m wind turbines top of the building generate sufficient power to drive the energy efficient lighting to the building, an integral part of the sustainable credentials for the building as a whole. - WAN
July 21, 2007 | Broadcast
Would you rather Real trees?
Image Courtesy of LA Patterns Inc. & www.WorldArchitectureNews.com
They didn’t quite plant trees, but what LA Patterns Inc. have done is to create what seems to be a forest of plastic that lives symbiotically with the aerial plants it supports. As the architects state on the WAN website, “Following the lineage of the Schindler house as an experiment in modern living in close relation to nature, our proposal “Fake Plastic Trees” is an attempt to investigate the formal, spatial and atmospheric potential of a vertically sustainable garden in synch with the most advanced technology for plant growth.” - Find out more on WAN
The part where water is actually pumped to the branches from collection reservoirs is commendable; nutrients that nurture aerial species of vegetation are pumped through the branches. One could imagine living screens of forested green that could rival even the best of wooden or metal-louvred facades; and greener cities filled with these prostheses that are actually alive and teeming with life. But one cannot resist wondering how long this would last.
In a chapter of his book The Shock of the Old, David Edgerton writes on the issues of technology and maintenance, nudging us toward the fact that perhaps we’re too reliant on technology (and too in love with it) and too blind to the fact that most technology requires maintenance - nevermind giant plastic branches that pump water. Technology is climbing higher and higher, and we’re very happy to lap it up while ignoring the fact that computers need constant servicing; aeroplanes need entire teams to be fixed, repaired, and readied for flight; and that the Internet is going to be here forever, since electricity is never going to run out. Sometimes, it might be true that the higher you climb, the harder you fall. To be the devil’s advocate (as a friend of mine would say) maybe all the investigations should lead to something really sustaining and self sufficient; and not - as the name itself implies - Fake Plastic Trees.
July 20, 2007 | Broadcast | News
Vying to be the Tallest
A scoop from CityBloc.com, featuring a collection of buildings looking like fantasy projects; each trying to outdo the next in man’s bid to reach the heavens. Haven’t they heard we’ve landed on the moon? See more here.
Image Courtesy of CityBloc.com
July 18, 2007 | Broadcast
I think they’ll still call it Orchard Turn
Image Courtesy of Channel News Asia
Well it doesn’t really matter what they call it, does it?
Ever since the beginning of time, we humans have coined and nicknamed places - not according to their given names - but with identities that have held true to their character and places as much as our memories have allowed us. Tangs Shopping Centre (now home to the Marriott Hotel) is still known to many Singaporeans as C.K. Tang, named after its famous founder; Raffles City is still known to many locals as Sogo, and as far as we’re concerned, it’s still the Westin Hotel too. And we needn’t look at our shopping district for clues. Just ask anyone what shopping centres there are in the Thomson area, and they’ll tell you Thomson Yaohan. Now that’s a name you haven’t heard in a while; continue >>>
July 17, 2007 | Broadcast | Jobs
A Cool Job, Just FUUR You.
FUUR Architecture is looking for bright, easily excited, hardworking but also hardplaying interns and staff to carry out ground-breaking, boundary-pushing work.
*Latest from FUUR - “We are NOT OMA! For some unfathomable reason we have been confused with OMA by esteemed critics!”*
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* Interested People can contact ken@fuur.com. *
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July 15, 2007 | Features | Q&A
Thoughts on Singapore Architecture [part 2 of 2]
![Thoughts on Singapore Architecture [part 2 of 2]](http://www.fivefootway.com/wp-content/uploads/2007/07/thoughtssingaporearchi_2.jpg)
[Image: Mr Tai Lee Siang, Source: Mr Tai Lee Siang].
In the first part of the interview, FFW Magazine and Mr Tai Lee Siang talked about the relationship between architecture and the society at large. This week, their conversation focuses on the Singapore architecture scene itself, examining the local architecture scene and their position within the larger realm of architecture. continue >>>
