| Instructor: Dr. Jeff Webb |
Change and Memory
Read the following texts:
Tan Kok Meng. "Orchard Road: The Hyper-'Longkang' of Consumption."
Singapore Architect, 204:99. 96-99. (Course Packet).
Turnbull, David. "Soc.culture; Singapore." Architecture of Fear. Ed.
Nan Ellin. New York: Princeton Architectural Press, 1997. 227-239. (Course packet).
Booth, Wayne. The Craft of Research. "From Questions to Sources."
64-72.
Preparation:
These two works investigate the costs of modernization in
Singapore. In "Orchard Road: The Hyper-'Longkang' of Consumption,"
Tan Kok Meng, the editor of Singapore Architect, suggests
that the incessant "upgrading" of Orchard Road implies a desire
among planners for an "immaculate rebirth" (99). This desire
might remind you of Le Corbusier's injunction to build the
city of tomorrow "IN THE OPEN" rather than in the midst of
an existing city whose structures might impede the rational
organization Corbusier so passionately advocates (175). (Compare
both these views with the architect Rem Koolhaas's characterization
of Singapore as a "tabula rasa," or blank slate, in"Singapore
Songlines: Portrait of a Potemkin Metropolis, or, Thirty Years
of Tabula Rasa" [Course packet].) Yet is it really possible
to start afresh, to control the sources of the city in this
way, to plan it so completely? On Orchard Road, according
to Tan, "the collision of systems and values; economic, cultural,
social and political; the faint resonances of its past lives,
charge its coherently ducted structure into a hyperstructure
that potentially remarks what this city is all about" (96).
Tan seems to be suggesting that the "coherently ducted structure"
of the planners becomes in actuality a "hyperstructure"? What
does he mean by "hyperstructure," or, as he puts it in the
title, "hyper-'longkang'"? In thinking about this question
consider the way that Tan has chosen to organize his essay
on the first page: two rows of pictures (which are much more
striking in the glossy format of SA) with a neat channel
of text between them. (Notice the the left margin of the the
text columns is unjustified). What does this graphic organization
of text and image suggest to you? Think also about how various
words circulate in the essay: "orchard," "tiger," "surgeon"
(or "surgical"). What different meanings do they acquire in
the essay and what does this have to say about the possibility
of maintaining a coherent structure with strict borders? Finally,
what is the fate of memory in the Singapore Tan describes?
Will it go the way of the Angsana tree? If so, what would
replace it?
The organization of David Turnbull's essay is, like Tan's,
thought provoking. He has chosen to arrange the essay into
sections that often have no explicit connection. The section
entitled "Amnesia," for instance, consists exclusively of
a quote taken from the Guardian, the UK-based newspaper
(232-3). (See also the section entitled "Scars" [238].) What
do you think his purpose is with this unorthodox organization
and what does it have to do with amnesia? (Turnbull is an
architect, so you can bet these structural features of his
essay have meaning.) And what, more generally, is his assessment
of the state of remembering in Singapore? More than once he
mentions that "in Singapore the streets are safe" (239; see
also 227 and 231), a fact that he associates with amnesia.
What is the relation between safety and amnesia?
Assignment : 1. Come to class with your top three
choices for an essay or article from this
list to present during week 12 . 2. Please develop in
a paragraph a question about (or problem in) one of the assigned
readings for today, and email this question to your classmates
and me prior to class. It doesn't need to be fancy. By "develop"
I mean that you should not only provide enough context so
that your question makes sense to the reader, but also address
the issue of why it is a question worth asking.
Further Reading (please contact
me if you find materials that should be added to this
list):
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