State of Buildings

version 1: 2013, version 2: 2015
recipient of Heritage Project Grant (National Heritage Board)
recipient of Kumpulan Akitek Prize (NUS Department of Architecture)

in collaboration with Kelly Koh and Pettycache
concept: The State of Buildings project brings spaces from across Singapore’s timeline into productive relationships.
involvement: co-founder, editor

stateofbuildings.sg brings spaces from across Singapore’s timeline into productive relationships. These connections reveal not only histories, but also fundamental Singaporean orientations that hopefully arouse contemplation about its future.

We relate to Singapore’s spatiality at two scales: the person (building), and the nation (city). We search not only for the tales behind architecture, but the human encounters that surround them. Appreciating that Singapore is a construction, a brand with a unique development history, we aim to unpack how ideas of nation are tied to intimate narratives. We hope that the inquiry of either, brings about a new understanding of both ‘Singapores’, our State of Buildings.

We invite readers to use the things we call heritage, memory and nostalgia as ways to confront the present, and consider where Singapore’s is headed.