World Architecture Festival, Singapore 2014

I was in Singapore at the World Architecture Festival as a judge and delegate. We have only entered WAF once and were shortlisted with Portobello Dock. I am not sure why, but we have not entered a scheme since, so when Paul Finch suggested that I should come to Singapore this year I did not need to think too hard about it.

In many ways Singapore can be seen as a template for the modern city state. In thirty years it has grown from 1.6m to 5.4m people and at the same time has increased the amount of green space by 11%. It was the first City to introduce the idea of congestion charging, it is investing in public transport and is aware of the value of that most precious commodity, water. There is some good and innovative contemporary architecture too, the integration of green space in tall buildings for example. However it lacks the grit of Hong Kong, there is something of the Truman Show about the place.

2000 delegates from across the globe gathered here for three days of talks, crits and debate, as such WAF successfully represents World Architecture. It draws some big name speakers. Rocco Yim was the main stage speaker on Wednesday. He is a clever and thoughtful architect from Hong Kong, his HKSAR government buildings in Hong Kong are at the centre of the current protest that has brought the city to a halt. In a city that reclaims the sea to create top value real estate it is a testament to Rocco Yim’s vision that he has created a big public space at the heart of government. It is disguised as a park, but he surely knew that it would be a democratic space for the people of Hong Kong. Here is an architect who really does understand public realm.

Richard Rogers gave both an insightful review of his career and outlined where urban planning needs to go if the world’s cities are to have a sustainable future. His keynote address on Thursday explored themes that many other speakers at WAF touched on. The issue of public realm is high on his agenda too. Rogers went on to outline his vision of a compact and sustainable city, he has no truck with the “new town” movement, singling out Milton Keynes for criticism as a place that initially failed because it was populated by “one class”, no rich, no poor.

Rogers points out that London is growing at the astonishing rate of over 100,000 people per year, his plea for growing sustainable neighborhoods and promoting brownfield development is embodied in the London Plan he helped to develop. London is, with New York, one of the two true global cities, and in the top four wealthiest cities in the world, yet it has three of the poorest boroughs in the top twenty across the world. As Paul Finch Pointed out, Rogers has pushed architecture up the political agenda, and his influence convinced Tony Blair to create the London Assembly that has co-ordinated design and planning strategy for the city as a whole.

In this forum architects ignore public realm and the social dimension at their peril, but few seem to really understand it, many post rationalize it, so it is particularly interesting to consider public realm in a city like Singapore. Here it is mostly internalized and driven by shopping. In fact WAF itself is held in the vast Marina Bay Sands complex, designed by Moshe Safdie it is a casino lead retail development with a convention centre, and the three towers and a baguette hotel that has become an iconic symbol of modern Singapore.

Safdie gave the keynote speech on the final day, again pleading for architects and city planners to confront density and the public realm. He believes that Marina Bay Sands is the public realm of the future, it benefits from views, sunlight and an engagement with outside space. I can understand the intention, but I would point out that even Westfield Shepherds Bush does that. Is it a genuine public realm? In my view it is only driven by the insatiable appetite of the international brands to have space in every possible shopping centre location. Safdie’s talk started with his Expo 67 Habitat housing in Montreal, which was a ground breaking innovative solution to dense dwelling. His fine descriptions of recent re-appraisals of this idea in China make me wonder if he peaked 50 years ago.

After three days of immersion in projects from across the globe I began to realize that there is, for perhaps the first time, an International Style, bombastic, computer generated and often bland. Forms, shapes and patterns that are perhaps more relevant to the worlds of product design and fashion, than to the built environment, public realm finally resolved now that we have CGIs that produce photo perfect trees and people. It underlines the gulf that has opened between the architecture of western Europe and the rest of the world. In London most of us grapple with the historic city and we often have to work with an established public realm. In less democratic environments that are urbanising at an alarming rate the architectural issues of place and space are just as important, but the results are very different.

It must be said that the great thing about WAF is that it showcases really original and sustainable work that we in the west do not often see, from countries like Vietnam, New Zealand and India. Very often this is the sort of work that the jury system at WAF recognises. In some ways it is not a level playing field, for example in the Old and new category, a modest house in Shanghai by Nori and Hu with a questionable social and political agenda was preferred to more complex urban schemes in western cities.

The European and UK architectural scene feels sidelined here, perhaps this is not a bad thing, our Starchitects get enough accolades and have plenty of opportunities for backslapping at home.

Oh, incidentally the World Building of the year is….