In the absence of formal conservation status for many of these residential developments, private citizens have taken on the challenge. One of the most comprehensive organisations is Docomomo, an online archive of modernist architecture with chapters in cities around the world operating independently. The Singapore chapter is one of the most prolific in Asia, with […]
Lalita, a 24-year-old woman, lies next to her newborn baby inside her ‘hut’, a structure made out of thin branches supporting a blue tarpaulin sheet. “The baby was born here yesterday,” she told me as I scanned the face of the baby and the mother, both looking dangerously underweight. Lalita is a migrant construction worker […]
Read More… from The Uneasy Relationship Between Architecture Practices and Labour
FuturArc Prize (FAP) 2022: Reinterpretation—one theme with the highest realisation potential in FAP’s 14-year run—asked students to reinterpret existing corporate/private/state-owned entities in Asia to transform them into civic/public spaces that give back to the community and are good, inviting, safe and sustainable. This challenge was set in the hope that the visions proposed could one […]
Read More… from What our jurors say about FuturArc Prize 2022 Entries
RAW focuses their practice on the process of building as much as on the products of architecture Practising architecture in a developing economy like Sri Lanka compels one to confront a number of interconnecting challenges with respect to the technological environment, labour skills and industrial organisation. Technologically, the building industry is fragmented into isolated socio-technical […]
Read More… from Imagining a Building Culture Revived on Architectural Robustness
With the gap exacerbated by COVID-19, no single organisation, or even government, can tackle the housing deficit problem alone. The world gained a new word—COVID-19—in 2020 and lost precious lives over the two-year pandemic. When Omicron was declared a variant of concern in late November 2021, the media had referred to it as the dress […]
The story of Auroville serves to highlight the changing aspirations and consciousness of India as a country, a land of mysticism and spirituality, which it still is, while being one of the biggest consumer markets in the world. Juxtaposed with Aamby Valley and its wealth-driven ideals, it is this heady mix of ancient culture and […]
Read More… from Aspirations Versus Realities of Utopia in India
When one grows up living in a city-state such as Singapore, one would not have much of an idea of difference between living in a city and outside of it, such as in the suburbs (there’s not much ‘suburbia’ in a small city-state). Thus, living in a city from young does veil one from the […]
Read More… from How Can We Design Cities to Be More Equitable?
Late last year as the Covid-19 pandemic entered a second wave in Singapore, more than 90 per cent of the cases were counted among the residents of migrant dormitories. A consumer economy that imports the majority of its goods and services, Singapore relies on labourers from throughout Asia for manufacturing and other manual labour, as […]
Read More… from Intersectional feminism for a sustainable future
In theory, sustainability should allow us to continue to meet the needs of this and future generations. That was the point made by the Brundtland Commission in their definition of sustainability. But that does not address a more basic question of whether or not we should be continuing the current situation. The ecosystems that support […]
A CRISIS OF PERCEPTION For centuries, cities evolved gradually in terms of their physical and population size. This trend, however, dramatically shifted in the last 50 years, with urban growth occurring at an exponential scale and rate as urban population numbers spiked. By 2050, two-thirds of the world’s projected 9.7 billion population will live in […]
Read More… from Rethinking Sustainability: Form Follows Systems
Where do we go from here? Well, that would depend upon whether we have actually learned something from the COVID-19 pandemic. But it seems we have not. The powers-to-be are poised, waiting for improved conditions so as to continue their unsustainable business as usual. Humankind never learns, not even from major catastrophes. Complacent with money […]
Read More… from The Future of Cities: Sustainability’s Deceptive Dream
The conversation appears to have stalled. Almost every student I teach or practitioner I talk to, when asked what s/he thinks is sustainable design, replies, “a Green building, right?” The conflation of Green and sustainable is unsettling. It troubles me. It should concern every designer who is alarmed by the planetary crises that we confront […]
