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All tagged Heritage
The building is 38 Oxley Road, and the question is whether it should be preserved or demolished. It has been standing since 1898 and has been at the center of Singapore’s ruling class as the eight-bedroom home for Lee Kwan Yew, Singapore’s founding father. Since his passing in 2015, a vicious public debate between his children about demolition or preservation has demonstrated the outsized political significance of the building, and the conviction with which Singapore has towards urban matters.
How could a building possibility hold cultural value? Architecture is not just about bricks and mortar. The structural design imbues ideologies and beliefs into our built environments, and from that our human responses are what define us. Culture comes from the peculiar habits and ongoings that are afforded by the places we call home, which is why Dakota Crescent is of such great significance to the history of architecture.
Pulau Ubin is a small island northeast of mainland Singapore accessible to tourists by bumboats from the Changi Point Ferry Terminal. The boat is the first environment to signal the island's identity. The fare is a mere $3 per ride, and passengers are to sit on a basic wooden bench facing each other. It appears like a miracle that anything in Singapore could be in such a condition considered the harsh domination of modernity in mainland Singapore. There are none of the HDB flats and expressways so common to the city. The island’s identity is as an escape into the past, but its very existence is dependent on Singapore’s Modernity.
