Singapore has been in a partial lockdown since 7 April, because of COVID-19, which means Issue 116 was produced while everyone was working from home. We are happy to report that it was smooth process, and are grateful to the newsmakers, advertisers and freelance writers for cooperating with us to make this happen. Gracing the cover is Sinan Books Poetry Store, an unexpected find of an adaptive reuse project by Wutopia that saw the conversion of a Russian orthodox church in Shanghai, China into a home for literary tomes. Dominating its interior is a dramatic steel bookcase structure that follows the outline of the walls and ceiling in the main hall. Sinan Books is obliquely connected to the feature story on conserving Singapore’s modern built heritage as an example of how to creatively respond to and reinvent a building’s programme. The first piece in a year-long series spotlighting this important topic, it offers the architectural perspective and analyses what the fuss is all about.
