The Nation’s ‘Other’ Housing Project
Pearlbank, Pandan Valley, and Singapore’s Private High-rise Housing Landscape
DOI:
https://doi.org/10.7480/footprint.13.1.2136Abstract
Singapore’s privatised high-rise housing landscape is the nation’s ‘other’ housing project, emerging alongside the city-state’s dominant narrative of its successful public housing project since the 1970s. Unique to Singapore’s privatised high-rise housing developments was the intervention of the state in the close regulation of scarce land. Singapore’s private high-rise housing developments thus reflect a nation’s attitude towards its land as resource, and its subsequent imaginations and productions of more ‘land’ in the construction of high-rise housing estates. State intervention also maximised these housing developments as part of wider national aspirations to the status of a global city, and for its citizens, a ‘green and gracious’ Singaporean society. Taking the Pearlbank Apartments and the Pandan Valley Condominium as two key developments of Singapore’s emerging private high-rise housing landscape in the 1970s, this article examines the production of the nation’s aspirational housing in the confluence of Singaporean state-led vision and a people’s housing aspirations.
References
Cairns, Stephen, and Jane M. Jacobs. 2014. Buildings Must Die. A Perverse View of Architecture. Cambridge MA, and London: MIT Press.
Chang, Jiat-Hwee. 2016. A Genealogy of Tropical Architecture. Colonial Networks, Nature and Technoscience. London: Routledge.
Chee, Lilian, and Eunice Seng. 2017. ‘Dwelling in Asia: Translating Between Dwelling, Housing and Domesticity.’ The Journal of Architecture, vol. 22, no. 6 (September): 993-1000. https://doi: 10.1080/13602365.2017.1362145.
Chen, Huan-Hsing. 2012. Asia as Method: Toward Deimperialization. Durham: Duke University Press.
Chua, Beng Huat. 2011. ‘Singapore as Model: Planning Innovations, Knowledge Experts.’ In Worlding Cities. Asian Experiments and the Art of Being Global, edited by Aranya Roy, and Aihwa Ong, 29-54. Chichester: Blackwell Publishing.
Collier, Stephen J., and Aihwa Ong. 2005. ‘Global Assemblages, Anthropological Problems.’ In Global Assemblages: Technology, Politics, and Ethics of Anthropological Problems, edited by Stephen J. Collier, and Aihwa Ong, 3–21. UK: Blackwell Publishing.
Goldhagen, Sarah W. 2000. ‘Introduction: Critical Themes of Postwar Modernism.’ In Anxious Modernisms. Experimentations in Postwar Architectural Culture, edited by Sarah W. Goldhagen, and Réjean Legault, 11–23. Cambridge: MIT Press.
Goldhagen, Sarah W. 2005. ‘Something To Talk About: Modernism, Discourse, Style.’ Journal of the Society of Architectural Historians, vol. 64, no. 2 (June): 144–67.
Goldhagen, Sarah W. 2012. ‘Sarah William Goldhagen on Architecture: Living High.’ The New Republic, June 7, 2012. https://newrepublic.com/article/103329/highrise-skyscraper-woha-gehry-pritzker-architecture-megalopolis.
Guillot, Xavier. 2007. ‘Between “Asianization” and “New Cosmopolitanism”. Housing in Twenty-First-Century Singapore.’ In Cross-Cultural Urban Design. Global or Local Practice?, edited by Catherine Bull, Davisi Boontharm, Claire Parin, Darko Radović and Guy Tapie, 34–8. Oxon: Routledge.
Guillot, Xavier. 2008. ‘The “Institutionalization” of Heterotopias in Singapore.’ In Heterotopia and The City, edited by Michiel Dehaene, and Lieven De Cauter, 178–88. Oxon: Routledge.
Koolhaas, Rem. 1995. ‘Singapore Songlines: Portrait of a Potemkin Metropolis… Or Thirty Years of Tabula Rasa.’ In SMLXL, edited by Rem Koolhaas, and Bruce Mau, 1008-1087. New York: The Monacelli Press.
Latour, Bruno. 1987. Science in Action: How to Follow Scientists and Engineers Through Society. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press.
Lim, Ronald. 2008. ‘Singapore and the Megastructural Experiment.’ Singapore Architect, no. 250: 38–43. MICA (P) No. 088/02/2008.
Zacchaeus, Melody and Janice Tai, 2018. ‘Golden Mile, People’s Park Buildings Join Collective Sale Fever.’ The Straits Times, March 8, 2018. https://www.straitstimes.com/singapore/golden-mile-peoples-park-buildings-join-collective-sale-fever.
Pow, Choon-Piew. 2009. ‘Public Intervention, Private Aspiration: Gated Communities and the Condomisation of Housing Landscapes in Singapore.’ Asia Pacific Viewpoint, vol. 50, no. 2 (August): 215–27. ISSN: 1360-7456. https://doi: 10.1111/j.1467-8373.2009.01394x.
Phua, Rachel. 2017. ‘Pearl Bank Apartment Makes 4th Attempt at En-bloc Sale.’ Channel News Asia, July 8, 2017. https://www.channelnewsasia.com/news/business/pearl-bank-apartments-makes-4th-attempt-at-en-bloc-sale-9015632.
Rizor, John. 2011. ‘AD Classics: Pearl Bank Apartments / Tan Cheng Siong, Archurban.’ Arcdaily, September 18, 2011. https:// www.archdaily.com/157679/ad-classics-pearl-bank-apartments-tan-cheng-siong.
Seng, Eunice. 2014. ‘Habitation and the Invention of a Nation, Singapore 1936–1979.’ PhD diss., Columbia University.
State of Buildings Singapore. 2013a. ‘Pandan Valley Condominium.’ Interview with Architect Tan Cheng Siong. Accessed April 23, 2018. https://stateofbuildings.sg/places/pandan-valley-condominium.
State of Buildings Singapore. 2013b. ‘Pearl Bank Apartments.’ Interview with Architect Tan Cheng Siong. Accessed April 23, 2018. https://stateofbuildings.sg/places/pearl-bank-apartments.
StudioKALEIDO. 2013. In collaboration with National Library Singapore, for the Singapore Memory Project. Brutarch. The Unabridged Pocketbook of Brutalist Architecture in Singapore. Singapore: National Library Board.
Sung, Bailyne. 1972. ‘Futuristic Look For Singapore Skyline.’ The Straits Times, October 22, 1972: 2.
Tai, Janice. 2018. ‘Pearl Bank Apartments Likely to Be Demolished Despite Calls to Conserve Building.’ The Straits Times, February 17, 2018. http:// www.straitstimes.com/singapore/housing/pearl-bank-apartments-likely-to-be-demolished.
Tan, Abby. 1972a. ‘Up Goes the Price of Houses. Condominium Concept Brings a Property Boom Here.’ New Nation, October 31, 1972: 19.
Tan, Cher Soon. 1972b. ‘Architects to Help With Condominiums. Study Will Be Carried Out Soon.’ New Nation, May 23, 1972: 5.
Tan, Szue Hann. 2008. Foreword in ‘Singapore and the Megastructural Experiment.’ Singapore Architect, no. 250: 38. MICA (P) No. 088/02/2008.
Wong, Pei Ting. 2018. ‘En-bloc Sales Fracture Communities, Veteran Architect Says.’ Today Online, February 10, 2018. http://www.todayonline.com/singapore/en-bloc-sales-fracture-communities-veteran-architect-say.
Wong, She-Reen. 2008. ‘Cultured Pearl.’ Singapore Architect, no. 250: 48–53. MICA (P) No. 088/02/2008.
WOHA, and Patrick Bingham-Hall, ed. 2009. WOHA. Singapore: Pesaro Publising.
WOHA. n.d. ‘The Grove, China.’ Accessed April 20 2018. http://www.woha.net/#The-Grove.
Velayutham, Selvaraj. 2007. Responding to Globalization: Nation, Culture and Identity in Singapore. Singapore: ISEAS Publishing.
__________. 1972. ‘Designers Back That New Estate Plan.’ New Nation, May 17, 1972: 2.
__________. 1972. ‘Developers Cash in on C-Plan Concept. House Prices Go Up.’ New Nation, July 27, 1972: 3.
__________. 1972. ‘Don, Architect Win Award to Study Condominium Development.’ The Straits Times, July 14, 1972: 10.
__________. 1972. ‘Doubt Over New Plan For Homes, Few Guidelines’ New Nation, November 23, 1972: 3.
__________. 1972. ‘Up Goes the Prices of Houses. Condominium Concept Brings a Property Boom Here.’ New Nation, October 11, 1972: 17.
__________. 1993. ‘Six Out of Ten Singaporeans Dream of Living in Private Residences, Says Survey.’ The Business Times, August 25, 1993: 2.
__________. 2006. ‘“Eyesore” at Beach Road: No Relief in Sight.’ The Straits Times, March 7, 2006: 7.
Downloads
Published
Issue
Section
License
- Authors retain copyright and grant the journal right of first publication with the work simultaneously licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution License that allows others to share the work with an acknowledgement of the work's authorship and initial publication in this journal.
- Authors are able to enter into separate, additional contractual arrangements for the non-exclusive distribution of the journal's published version of the work (e.g., post it to an institutional repository or publish it in a book), with an acknowledgement of its initial publication in this journal.