Few could blame me when I took a double-take the other day as I read about Pittsburgh placing 10th as the cleanest city in the world. Yes, industrial Pittsburgh- the one where you can literally feel dust latching onto skin the moment you hit the tarmac while twitching your nose in disdain. Being the Singaporean that I was, I hastily scoured the list for our tiny island nation. Guess what? We were placed 50th.

Tang Guan Bee, the pioneer architect and a fervent supporter of experimentation, delivered a lecture at the National University of Singapore in January: it was nothing short of a thinly veiled critique of the current state of architecture in Singapore.