Contents
	Orchard Road: The Hyper-'Longkang' of Consumption
	The City in the Magazine
	No.8 Cluny Park
	The World of the Mama Shop

EDITORIAL Consume!

This issue is more about architecture than we would admit. Consumer culture and architecture are inextricably linked. Consumer culture is an indisputably dominant feature of contemporary society and architecture is a prominent part of it. Architecture can be defined as a commodity since it can be bought, sold, rented, constructed, demolished and renovated in post-recession Singapore, the cycle is even more specific: architecture (space) is produced, bought, used, upgraded, then sold en bloc, so that some other new architecture can be commissioned, produced, produced, bought, used, upgraded and so on. The consumption of space in this instance is primarily quantifiable as the number of square metres or floor area one buys. Besides this, one also buys into a lifestyle provided by the 'design' of the buildings and environment of such speculative architecture: architecture as an object of consumption in the formation of identities and subjectivities.

We are speaking about a narrow band of architecture production of course. But the same strategies for consumption happen also in similar ways in all other types and categories of architecture at several levels. Shopping malls, shops, bars and restaurant interiors are upgraded every now and then just to provide fresh images ad commodified environs for active consumption. Thematisation of interiors is a common enough strategy. For example, the former modern museum-like interior of Raffles City has been retrofitted into a themed mall with palm trees and water features. One trendy bar along a popular entertainment strip even changes its theme every three months. Even entire districts can be themed - first Chinatown, next Orchard Road. Orchard Road could become a Potemkin Champs Elysee, if that is what the tourism authority sees it in its new proposals for upgrading the city's main space of consumption. The recent festival for buskers there could possibly be the first of its kind in the world.

Besides Orchard Road, other spaces of consumption include the local 'mama' shop with its myriad of things cramped in a cubby-hole, and Sungei Road, a "market at the margins". Both are brought to our attention here in this issue. To return to the consumption of spaces , not only is architectural space being consumed, its 'design', details and 'features' become highly desirable stuff for the expedient reproduction of social identity. The clinched use of classical columns and design motifs to derive 'style' is now far more innocent compared to the contrived use of timber screens and Bali Java stones, as we observe their proliferation and legitimatisation as authentic materials for a 'tropical' architecture.

This is in part aided by the regimes of propagation by print media. At the last count, there are more than 20 interior and architecture magazines published locally not to mention the several dozens from foreign sources, Increasingly, it is the image of architecture that is being consumed, through magazines, books and newspapers. Manipulated images show preferred architectures in beautifully composed and controlled photographs, complemented with 'orgasmic' purple prose. These magazines have become a catalogue of ideas for homemakers and even architects. Thus a relatively limited range of ideas get produced and reproduced ad nauseam. Architecture reduced to imagery, far more than the real thing, allows an extremely quick and direct way for it to be consumed and its ideas to be propagated. The Singapore Architect does not pretend to do otherwise. It recognises the fact that architecture in the age of media, has its other non-material dimension. In this issue, Shinzo Uemoto further hypothesises that the role of the editor of a magazine these days is homologous to the role of the architect or city planner, in the way that the non-material dimension of the city is framed.

Not satisfied with mere images, we pack our bags to Europe, America and Japan (since these are primary sources of international architectural images) for our Grand Tour to see the real thing. We bring back slides (more images), anecdotes, and wonder-filled experiences. Architecture tourism is consumption at a sophisticated level. The holiday resort experience then take this idea to its distance. Not only do you see architectures, now you could live in them. Resort architecture, then, truly are hyper-real, lobotomised other architecture where the high culture of indigenous architectures are co-opted and repackaged for tourist consumption.

Are there complications when high culture is located within the arena of consumer culture? At the current exhibition of art works by some artists showing within the context of the Raffles City Shopping Centre, specifically mimicking the strategies and operations of the window display, Sanjot Kaur Sekhon tries to bring up some of such complications. What is the position of the artist when art is co-opted and repackaged as 'adjacent attraction' to increase more visits and more consumption in the shopping centre? Another moment where high culture and populist consumer culture find easy bondage: the surprising staging of a McDonald's exhibition at the Singapore History Museum. It is surprising, for lack of self-reflection about the issues embedded in the legitimatisation of consumer culture in the space of a national history museum. Our writer, CJ We Wan Ling asks: "what is the role of a national museum plays?" The designers of the McDonald's exhibition, WOHA Design, further stoke the debate by pointing out rightfully that the impact of McDonald's on Singapore society and culture should be considered and seriously examined. "The fact that Singaporeans are more interested in toys, videos and pop culture rather than 'serious' history is interesting and not addressed. A trading country only 34 years old, populated by a value-adding, information-technocrats, should be allowed to be interested in commerce, popular culture, media and marketing in its history museum."

It seems easy enough for architecture to be absorbed by consumerist culture in this way; or better, to instrumentally serve particular ideologies. Historically, this has been seen and repeated over and over again; in the medieval cathedral, the Imperial Palace in China, the socialist constructions in the former Eastern Bloc, the high capitalist corporate towers, the fantastic world of Las Vegas and now the euphoria of millennium celebrations. The ideological function of architecture is inevitable and historically contingent. In our present predominantly consumerist culture, the only ideology seems to be about MORE consumption. Is 'good' architecture or 'good' design only about adding economic 'value' to the product to be consumed? Is being 'design oriented' merely about product differentiation, to allow a more pleasurable, easier way to consume products? Could it include, embody other concerns: it does this and this and this and this …..

Perhaps, all this also points to these questions: "what is the value that architecture adds" and "what is the role of the architect in the practice of architecture?"

Tan Kok Meng
Chief Editor