Tower Gallery

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TOWER GALLERY Sharne Sulaiman Chaw Chih Wen



for the common man of the future


Copyright Š 2017 by Sharne Sulaiman All rights reserved. Published in Singapore by shiraz by Sharne Sulaiman. Printed in the Republic of Singapore. 10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1

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History 1822 The Jackson Plan shows area unchartered. 1823 The Bugis are relocated from Kapong Glam to Kampong Bugis. 1825 A semblance of settlement is recorded.

1839 Names of roads are first sighted. Jalan Chonding- Skewed Road. Jalan MalintangAdjacent/Perpendicular Road. Jalan Sumpit- Blowpipe Road. Jalan Passar- Market Road.


1843 Rochor Market appears.


1846 Shophouses are clustered towards the Northeastern corner.


1854 Shophouses reach Southwestern corner. Road names change. North Bridge Road, Minto Road, Palembang Road, Java Road, Crawford Street. 1881 Industry is recorded on beach front.


1893 Industry grows to include shipyards and a foundry.


1927 The beach grows and accomodates more industry. 1958 A master plan to bypass Beach Road with Nicoll Highway via Merdeka Bridge is drawn.



Tabula Rasa 1967 Crawford is slated as part of Singapore’s island-wide urban renewal. Demolition begins for the Golden Mile developments. 1969 Planned blocks 1-9 are recorded. Western halves of streets are retained. 1972 Streets are completely removed. 1975 Beach Road Food Centre is completed, as are all HDB blocks. 1976 Mixed use commerical towers are built.


Intensity A flurry of development on site in the short span of 5 years has resulted in the architecture seen at the site today. What is present is an accumulation of divergent aspirations wishing to impose their versions of social and capitalist ideals. This is evidently felt in the clashing gridlines that occupy the site.

DIVERGENT ASPIRATIONS Total number of gridlines: 204

Predicted number of gridlines: 9728 Total number of intersections: 11,546 Expected number of gridlines: 214 Number of intersections in excess: 1818 (18.7%)


COMMERCIAL

VARYING TYPOLOGIES and MORPHOLOGIES Golden Sultan Plaza

Beach Road Food Centre

9 Beach Road

City Gate

8 Beach Road

7 Beach Road

1-6 Beach Road

14 Beach Road and Multistorey Carpark

Textile Centre

18 Beach Road

19 Beach Road

12 Beach Road

15 Beach Road

17 Beach Road

RESIDENTIAL

Masjid Hajjah Fatimah

INSTITUTIONAL

Kampong Glam Community Centre

The varying typologies as well makes the site aqcuire a sense of intensity. Each building is programmatically estranged and in tension with each other, each a monument and monolith to its own ideals. A culture of chaos arises from this.


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life and death


RESPO


PONSE



In this environment of tabula rasa, successive waves of fires and rebuilding, a “promethean enterprise” ingrained by the political climate of the late 1960s, is a willed absurdity (Koolhaas, 1995). The site’s divergent aspirations, seen from its wildly varying typologies built within a short duration of 5 years, are indicative of a collective delirium. These situated within a tight rectangle of about 520 m by 300 m give it an intense quality. The site’s historical madness, internalised by its residents, is expressed in its patina of the normalisation of insanity.



The new architecture must discern the insanity within the intensity. The new architecture must entwine itself with the site’s constant renewal, breaking free from the obligations of creating an eternal presence. It must stand as an unmoving observer, memorial almost, to the site’s past, present, and future. It must ensure a sense of separation yet inclusion in the site. But to withstand the test of time it must itself be imprinted by it- it must be able to observe or capture, or at least actively having the potential to do so, the future of the site. The



patination of time already evident in the site will continue in the new architecture. The placement of a community art museum requires questioning the nature of community. In an absurd inversion of inherent significance, the plural community is most fundamentally composed of the singular individual. Community is an ‘imagined’ rather than specific form of social interaction- it is shaped by individualist cognitive and symbolic structures. (Anderson, 1983) Community is realised upon an individual’s actu-



ation of role. Is community art by community? Is it art for the community? Or is community art from the community? To explore these questions the new architecture must serve as a reflective vessel to reveal the tension between self cognition and communal action.


COLLAGE In an attempt to understand the site in a more personal manner, I embarked on an experiment to experience the delirium myself in the context of renewal and patina. I found an A3-sized plate of copper and decided to corrode it with acetic acid (or vinegar). I created a special fume box to suspend the plate to let the gases work their full effect on the copper surface. After tarnishing it for a day, I’d clean off the blue oxidation with a scrub. This would be the renewal after an organic process of patination. And every day over the course of a week I’d do this- tarnish, clean, tarnish, clean.


And every day before cleaning the plate I’d cut out a piece of it as if to say I were excising a memory from this piece of work. After a while I discovered that this endeavor was wholly absurd and almost pointless; its cyclical nature was bringing the work no where, yet the gradual diminishing of the plate was mocking my conscientious efforts to complete the process till it was complete. In a demonstration of the pieces’ inherent stories of themeselves, and of their historical relationship to each other, I arranged them arbitrarily, suspended in mid-air, as a collage of their narratives.


ARCHITE


ECTURE


Tower For the architecture to surveil and observe the site (in order for it to make sense of the incomprehensible delirium), the historical profiles of each site are extruded upwards infinitely. This is a response to the capitalism of the site: tabula rasa will once again infect it, and it is highly likely that the next buildings to spring up will be taller towers, intensifying use of land through increased plot ratio in a continuation of the Singaporean capitalist pursuit.

Since the community art museum is programmatically divided, it must be linked with a relationship to survive in the site’s hostile and uncertain future. A visual relationship between the three indulges in a little game: Imagine as the taller, newer developments rise up replacing what exists on site, the museum towers grow upwards in response to that, re-establishing their relationship of separated programs when one tower may not function without another.



Key spaces are arranged at the top of each tower to ensure the visual relationship is established for the community art museum’s survival. They are created by tetrahedral modules enclosing the space. Vertical circulation is provided by means of an elevator. The

design for the community art museum is only but a snapshot in time- immediately after opening the public will begin to transgress the architecture, reappropriating and shifting the modules as they so wish, slowly changing the spaces designed for them.





HOW TO

The Tower’s TETRAHEDRAL modular system is the quickest and easiest way to organise all spaces. Choose from an extensive range of suggested combinations or personalise your own unique layout. TETRAHEDRAL can grow and adapt as your wants and needs change – whether you’re tired with the lighting or just want to erect a new partition. Your action is a record of time. For the finishing touches, choose lighting and fittings from the democratic PANEL TO TUBE series.


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FUTU


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In a regression so peculiar to human nature, and the site, the community art museum is no longer a participatory one. Instead, masses arrive to consume the next shock art. This time, a performance artist takes a 93m leap of faith towards certain doom, as crowds gathered on buildings below applaud his rush to an end. His life’s work is imprinted in concrete with flesh and bone.



To sustain the museum, the operations are taken over by a draconian government, who intends to make every success. Artists are dragged from graduation ceremonies directly to the printing press, infants manufacturing child-like art. Despite these disgusting abductions, it is all conducted in the highest point on Crawford Street.



Residents carve the tower to reclaim the river, pumping in 23,556 litres of water while sterilizing it. This elevated water body is packed with sightseers and thrill seekers. Indeed, beneath them is just a 12mm thick sheet of glass. They soon realize “true fun� is best experienced under their bellies- in the river that provided the water. The quest to rearrange the tower continues.



The institution decides to reinvent itself by printing not in 2 dimensions but in 3, and the extended network of robots soon gain sentience. It is believed that the structures are no longer able to bear their own weight as they continue to compete in height, reacting automatically to newly rising towers in the neighborhood. A seedy establishment calls the abandoned archives, dark and opaque, home. In a grotesque fashion, the printers printing themselves above mirrors the sodom below.


A site is held hostage by its deliruim. Through his project Tower Gallery, Sharne Sulaiman, tutored by Chaw Chih Wen of Hyphen Architects, attempts to discover what a commmunity museum can be. In a wild culmination, this book pieces together photographs, drawings, essays, diaries, of a compact corner of Singapore city- Crawford. The juxtaposition of words and images illuminates the condition of architecture, technology, and architectural education today.


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