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All tagged History
I’m back in California. It has been disorienting to move back, adjust to both a nine-hour difference in time zones, and the new normal of living with lockdown in a town I had never really been familiar with, despite bordering the town where I grew up. So I wanted to share just a few of the photos from this series, and put into text the emotions I had during the process. I hope to create a more robust portfolio of this work later. For now, I want to focus on texture.
For today’s post, I again want to be brief so that I can get to the point and share my photography. Last December, in the before times, when travel felt sensible, I visited the Vietnamese port city of Hoi An. The historic center has been a UNESCO World Heritage Site since 1999, as it retains much of the same infrastructure and architecture from its history as a significant trading port from the 15th to the 19th century. This photo series represents a morning in town.
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.
Today's post is an Archive Dive into my February visit to the Taj Mahal. As usual, I’ve gone to the National Library and poured through many books on the Taj Mahal, Mughal Architecture, and Indian Architecture in general. From these books, I will share a selection of informative quotes. From this, I hope to explain why the Taj Mahal sticks out among all the contenders as being the most beautiful building in the world.
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.
SINGAPORE—Toa Payoh has an outsized role in the history of Singapore’s urban planning. When construction started in 1964, it was expected to set the course for the future of public housing, which is now how 80% of the citizens are housed. The aesthetics, form, and planning for the area have set the tone for the Singapore heartlands. It followed Queenstown’s lead by becoming the second public housing satellite town, and the first to be planned and built entirely by the Housing & Development Board (HDB).
