So I found myself at a recent tea session with some friends, all of whom were not in the occupation of architecture or urban planning. Over the course of the afternoon, it came to me that my friends had some interesting and very relevant concerns - literally a storm brewing in a teacup – they were worried about 23 Amber Road.

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.

More than being a case of green eyes and sour grapes with regard to foreign talent, the recent “foreign over local architects� debate actually demonstrates how we (the so-called passive, non-opinionated citizens) want to be heard in residential design – because nothing can affect us more than how we conduct our private lives.

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.

In this inaugural column (and the first part of a series), I think that it is most appropriate to firstly, broach the big topic about what local architecture means to each of us. Ideally, it should be both an expression of our past heritage and our hopes for the future. Whose heritage? Whose hopes? Whose future?