June 30, 2008 | Event Reports

From 11th June to 15th June 2008, a party of people was brought together by their common interest in urbanism in Southeast Asia to a workshop called Thinking About Cities, set partly in Singapore.

Organized by MIT (Asian Cities Cluster) in collaboration with the Department of Architecture, School of Design and Environment, National University of Singapore and 5ft Creatives and funded by MIT, the Undergraduate Research Opportunities Program, this program saw diverse groups of people from disciplines across Architecture, Economics, Geography and even Literature come together to study urban plans and housing solutions in land-scarce Singapore.

The programme line-up was crafted in order to give all participants an understanding of the housing and planning issues that Singapore is facing from a variety of perspectives- the planning authorities, the architects and designers, the academics and perhaps most importantly, the people who reside in these public housing.

The workshop had its participants going around Singapore visiting places for talks and doing general sight and site seeing. For the locals, this entailed them finding themselves playing, at turns, tourists and tour guides.

A visit to the URA was first on the itinerary to give a macro overview of the issue. A quick overview of the policies, goals and also a history of Singapore’s urban morphology introduced all participants to the complexities of Singapore’s public housing issues. Visits to design firms such as Surbana, WOHA Architects and ARC Studio, all of whom very much involved in designing high-rise, high-density public housing projects, were also organised to understand the challenges and design considerations faced by the designers. Walks around the various public housing estates were also organised; Tiong Bahru-to show the first generation public housing project, Toa Payoh-to show the various types of public housing projects there and also to Sengkang- a public housing estate developed over the last few years.

To many of the Singaporean participants, attending the workshop in their home country presented a refreshing learning experience. Many felt that it was an exercise in seeing familiar things in new and intent ways. As Toon recalls, “It was exposure to the same things that I have always known all my life but now seen from a different angle.�

Toon, who enjoyed playing host to the participants from abroad, found her fellow workshop friends “easy to chat and banter with.�She also felt that a “lack of a hierarchy� between teachers and students “made the casual banter and learning more enjoyable and engaging.�

Most interesting for her was the “mix of people� that attended the workshop. It was this diverse group comprising of people from different disciplines (of economics, urban studies, architecture etc) and their unique questions and concerns that made the workshop extraordinary. She says, “I guess what architecture needs, is to have more engagements on these kind of levels, where the basic facts are still the same but it is the angle which differs.�

Hearing expert perspectives was also a major factor contributing to the enrichments of the workshop. Heather, a Geography student who went on the tour of the Urban Redevelopment Authority (URA), Singapore’s land use planning authority, says “Getting a glimpse of the URA from the inside was nothing short of illuminating.

Conservationist Kevin Ang provided fascinating insights into the history of urban planning in Singapore, the way planning is currently coordinated and articulated, as well as the controversies that inevitably arise when heritage and natural conservation conflict with the need to constantly redevelop and reinvent.�

Also seeking redevelopment and reinvention is Adib of 5ft Creatives, one of the organizing members of the event.

To him, the three day workshop was not so much about learning as it was about unlearning what he thought he knew about local housing and urban planning, and looking at them from a critical point of view with the help of friends from abroad.

He explains, “Much like how we miss home only when we are away from it, reflections and opinions from these new-found friends made me further appreciate the complexities of Singapore’s context.

The MIT party looked at Singapore with their American-educated lenses and their opinions about Singapore opened the path for me to look at Singapore’s housing model with fresher perspectives. With mind liberated, I can now seek to relearn the concepts of good housing in the city.â€?

Summing up his experience of the workshop, Adib quoted writer and futurist Alvin Toffler who said that “The illiterate of the 21st century will not be those who cannot read and write, but those who cannot learn, unlearn, and relearn.�

Lessons were also appreciated by Felicia of 5ft Creatives who coordinated the different groups of participants, planned the itinerary and who generally ensured that everything was in order.

She describes the workshop as “enriching� but felt that when it came to visiting the housing estates, “it might be more beneficial for the (MIT) students if they could freely explore the places, instead of being dictated on how to explore them.�

For the Singaporean participants, most of whom stay in public housing flats, the visits to the housing estates prompted more personal reflections.

Audrey, an Architecture graduate who toured the newly built Sengkang public housing estate with the group, went away examining the designer’s role in planning public housing:

“Are the buyers really looking at the aesthetic outlook as we all think they do? Or are they more concerned about the environment, the place, the unit, society? Living in a public housing myself, I’m more inclined to the latter. No matter how ‘nice’ my flat looks from the outside, it is still more important to me that my neighbors are friendly, that my unit has more space, that the estate has pockets or gathering space. Maybe it is time that we thought about what it is to live in a public housing development, and not simply pick on its color and aesthetics. Maybe if all designers thought this way, we would not end up with weird corners in our homes or alienated corridor spaces.�

The estate tours also prompted artistic responses. For example, Wenjun, an Architect student was moved by the Toa Payoh Estate tour to do a drawing of it, with an accompanying poem “Reflecting on a new town near & far�: (click to enlarge)

Familiar childhood sights and secret spaces.
Intermingling with that damn high tech stuff
A merchant prays at the local deity shrine.
Before selling vcds below that jumbo lcd screen
The hustle and bustle of residents
The old folks are at the chess game again
See the crowns of new kings 40 storeys high
Like bidding, come forward and bow.
Walking between the wooden louvred streets
Is like a walk home. A modern vernacular.
Feel the brick beneath. The louvres end.
Pauses. Are important. One pauses.
Hear the world move around you. Moves you.
The new blockbuster beckons. But i walk on.
See the old and the new. Like baggage?
A life’s inheritance. Memories turn material.
Today i walk. With trepidation.

- A Remembrance of Things Past….

The same tour also led to Debbie, in fact the leader of the Toa Payoh Estatetour, writing a poem called “Unplanned Lives�, in three parts set in different places within the estate:

I Town Square
On the weekends, they are there. The children – library book
drops turn into a game of tag – a tag, a beep.
R E T U R N E D ,
into a new cycle of ownership.

In the afternoons, they are there. The ones in checkered shorts - staring at
checkered boards - make a jump, in draughts.
C O N Q U E R E D ,
Hah! This bird-cage is mine.

II Kopitiam
Before I remember the ones I must forget again, let me learn
to love the trees around me. Would I know when again
I will sit
here to contemplate life and bus concessions
for the a-peks like me?
My wife is gone
now and I walk less
now, because she led the way.

III Playground
Well, I did not tell my mother that
I kissed S here.
Shsssh… shameful stupid girl, she would say.
Here, right under this colourful structure.
The one that’s right under
your nose if you only looked out
over the corridor. Just for once, from our 32nd floor – no, you will not fall.
No, you are not that dizzy. Will you please
get used to this already.

I kissed S here.
We hid in the one that looked like a house.
It was a Ronald McDonald house, with a plastic
red roof, yellow columns,
white windows (it probably came with a Happy Meal).

Well, of course you did not see
us, also fumbling
in our uniforms, the blouse you painstakingly pressed.
Creased… with need. Haha – what would you say?

For more reviews and recollections of the workshop, please visit the MIT students’ blog where they kept a daily record of the program.

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