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All in Archive Dive
There are a few buildings I regret not getting betters photographs of while I lived in Singapore. The Gateway twin skyscrapers, designed by I.M. Pei, jumps to mind immediately. They are neither particularly tall nor centrally located. However, their mind-bending simplicity and structural engineering will never cease to capture the pedestrians' imagination as they look up at a paper-thin cliff of metal and glass rising from the ground to defy gravity and reason.
There is no more calming a ride than through the tropical archipelago surrounded by emerald waters. As we float through the limestone cliffs in Hạ Long Bay, I am first struck by how uniformly tall they are. They are not looming over me like the skyscrapers on Wall Street, more like the co-ops on the Upper East Side. Bit of a niche analogy, I know. Alas. There is no moment of jaw-dropping wonder, which is perhaps what I expected. Instead, there is a humble majesty to the prancing islands, relentlessly impressive from the start.
I love markets! They are the engine of the city, where commerce and culture clash together. From Chelsea Market and Wall Street in Manhattan, to Singapore’s Tekka Market, and even in Hoi An, the best of them are a magnetic force that come to define neighborhoods and cities. In my years of traveling, I have never experienced anything like the Zhongda Fabric Market. Located on the Haixinsha island in the global city of Guangzhou, its history sets it apart from anything else. In just over thirty short years it grew from four small villages into a major hub for the multi-billion dollar international garment industry.
A year ago, I got to visit one of the most impressive buildings of the 21st Century. It’s the Walt Disney Concert Hall, designed by Frank Gehry. The final product is a confluence of neo-futurist and post-modernism that defies architectural convention only rivaled by the architect’s own design for the Guggenheim Bilbao in northern Spain. While I had expected it to appear futuristic after some two decades, I had not expected such a colossal icon in modern architectural history to feel small.
The Qutb Minar is an ancient tower in India’s capital city, Delhi. While its exact purpose is debated, it reflects the collision of culture experienced by the subcontinent in the late 12th Century, when forces from Turkey introduced Islam to the land by establishing the Delhi Sultanate. The grand column was commissioned by the Sultan Qutb ud Din Aibak, a former Turkish slave who rose up to lead the Mamluk dynasty.
Little India has been a central part of Singapore’s history since the very beginnings of the island’s colonial history. The area was originally named after Serangoon Road, a significant thoroughfare connecting the port with the island’s interior as early as 1828. The neighborhood has since grown to become a foothold for Indian culture within Singapore. Today, the area is a vibrant cultural experience for outsides, with a palpable display of community within the context of pre-independence urbanism and architecture.
Today’s post is an archive dive to my November 2018 trip to the outback. Specifically, these images were captured in Perth’s John Forrest Park. With a name like that, it seems predestined to have a nature reserve named after you, but for him, there was yet more reason. He was the first Premier of West Australia and the first Australia-born land surveyor. In this role, he did his job and explored significant portions of Western Australia.
The newfound love for Brutalism is symbolic of a new appreciation for its place in history as a cheap method of providing housing during a period where young people are having an increasingly difficult time finding homes. In this vein, the Barbican reminds us that it will take people fighting against the odds with the government for there to be any significant change in the urban landscape.
