IN-PERSON Lisbon Livable Cities. Section B

Abstract

Ideas of livable are explored through notions of reclamation and limits that pertain to Singapore’s physical size, resources, short history and especially the city’s ability to reinvent. The Singapore story from colonial administration to sixty years of independence is recounted through the National Gallery, located within the central district and bordering an ambitious land reclamation scheme that encompass the city’s financial heart, cultural sites and newest entertainment quarters. This repurposing of the former Supreme Court and City Hall into a public Gallery reveal government attitudes concerning cultural manifestoes, land use and economic policies that also correspond to the transition from hard to soft power. Here, architecture and ideology are allowed to simultaneously perform as microcosms of the city that explore questions of identity, conservation, heritage and adaptability through overlooked interventions that celebrate nuanced, layered and fragmented qualities. These are further reimagined through Colin Rowe’s arguments in Collage City, and Manfredo Tafuri and Walter Benjamin’s discourse regarding montage and the juxtaposition of material finds and intellectual dialogues that enable user specific creative readings. Multidisciplinary ideas of bricolage and polyvocality are deployed as catalysts to facilitate additional user-led, transitionary methods of habitation and use to address new attitudes toward living that respond to an evolving demographic, a maturing civil society and uncertain geopolitical challenges. The Gallery is absorbed by the city through the dissolution of physical and conceptual boundaries and Singapore’s ability to circumvent existing limits are manifested tangibly and intangibly, enabling new meanings of livable to be reclaimed, and defined by the people.