Understanding Singapore’s Relationship with Preservation through the Golden Mile Tower

The Golden Mile Tower is hardly the most popular brutalist darling from Singapore’s 1970s. It’s not even the most popular building with ‘Golden Mile’ in its name! But it is a 295-foot tall commercial center that has remained proudly standing despite the mounting expectation of being sold.

Location

Most Singaporeans know two things about the Golden Mile Tower. It is where you can catch the bus to Kuala Lumpur, and it is a pain to get there. My position regarding the unique location of this tower is shared in the article about the Golden Mile Complex. It is straddled between the Nicoll Highway and Beach Road, both streets only passable by people through pedestrian bridges. This presents something of a challenge that can discourage visitors and be a chokehold to internal economics.

Regardless of the perception of emptiness, there are quite a diversity of shops in the building, including the indie cinema theater, The Projector, and the Rex Cinema movie theater, which screens Tamil and Hindi films.

The architecture firm Zarch Collaboratives has their offices on the fourth floor of the tower. The firm proudly displays their name for all pedestrians to see. The principle architect of Zarch, Randy Chan, is a vocal proponent of conservation. Speaking with Peak Magazine, he said, “we are almost out of time, but it is not too late. It is vital that we enact the gazetting of these modern landmarks before the sales are finalised,” (source).

Architect

If any building could succeed at this location, the Golden Mile Tower would be it. The building was designed by Goh Hock Guan, a Malaysian opposition politician from the Democratic Action Party and a close friend with Singapore’s founding father Lee Kuan Yew. The Golden Mile Tower is one of the few, if not the only, project Goh completed in Singapore. His most significant projects were in Kuala Lumpur, including several malls and the international airport. In a poetic way, this Malaysian architect’s project has come to be a symbol of what ties Singapore and Malaysia together despite deep political divides. It’s a shame that the building isn’t in a better position.

A Popular Singaporean Sentiment on Preservation

I found a good paragraph to illustrate the popular sentiment of preservation in Singapore. This quote is taken from an article in Rice Media by contributing editor, Benjamin Lim, written after visiting the building for several hours. Near the conclusion, he writes of the Golden Mile Tower, “With the lack of business operators, it’s amazing that Golden Mile Tower still operates in its decaying state. Built in 1974, its age certainly shows as you look at it juxtaposed against the new, modern looking hotel that has sprung up right beside it,” (Rice Media). This demonstrates an expectation of modernity and vibrance that is perhaps overly ambitious for any city: to be sustainable both culturally and environmentally. A forty-five-year-old building is hardly old; its architectural style is only just beginning to be reflected upon, hallmarked by the MoMA exhibition in 2018 on Yugoslavian Brutalism.

Lim goes on to say, “...there is little purpose to its existence. And given the gentrification that is occurring along Beach Road, where a new shopping-hotel complex situated opposite is currently under construction, I don’t see how Golden Mile Tower might remain standing in its current form for much longer,” (Rice Media). It’s disheartening to hear such defeatism when it comes to architecture. The environmental cause is perhaps the most emotionally compelling reason to not demolish a huge skyscraper.

The wasteful environmental consequences of demolition simply to rebuild should make it unthinkable. There are better alternatives that can still completely redefine the usability of the tower, and “...refurbishment of buildings can achieve similar levels of energy performance to new buildings whilst avoiding the GHG emissions of demolition and construction of new buildings,” (UCL).

The economic argument to retain older spaces is compelling as well. Startups and creative endeavors almost always require the cheap real estate of older buildings in order to cultivate their new ideas. For an economy to remain agile and vibrant, the retention of older real estate is vital. The cycle of keeping newer and newer buildings will only advantage those who already are wealthy.

According to a nine-year-old article, the average of larger commercial buildings in Midtown Manhattan is 57 years old. The Flatiron building, a lucrative residential and commercial center, is already 117 years old. The Empire State Building at age 89 is still a significant commercial stronghold after countless renovations and rebrandings. This evidence for how a city can turn age into a commodity offers a hopeful counterpoint to the market-driven attitudes that might just turn one of Singapore’s most significant brutalist icons into a pile of concrete rubble.

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