| Instructor: Dr. Jeff Webb |
Singapore Songlines
Read the following texts:
Koolhaas, Rem. "Singapore Songlines: Portrait of a Potemkin Metropolis,
or, Thirty Years of Tabula Rasa." The City Cultures Reader . Eds.
Malcolm Miles, Tim Hall and Iain Borden London: Routledge, 2000. 22-25.
(Course packet).
William Gibson, "Disneyland
with the Death Penalty," Wired Magazine, Sep/Oct 1993.
Preparation:
Both Koolhaas and Gibson are critical of Singapore--Gibson savagely so--yet
often their criticisms seem to rest on questionable assumptions. For instance,
Koolhaas, an influential architect, who has actually designed buildings in
Singapore, suggests that the fast pace of change in Singapore "makes
architecture impossible" (22). The city, he says, has no "geometric stability,"
by which he seems to mean that it lacks an abiding center like the "grid" that
preserves Manhattan's "autonomous identity independent of landfill" (22).
"Singapore's proliferating geometry...emerges surprisingly, seemingly from
nowhere, and can be canceled and erased equally abruptly" (22). In other words,
the city is not hierarchically patterned into foreground and background, center
and periphery; it is all the same, "an imperfect collage: all foreground, no
background" (22). Leaving aside the question of whether Singapore actually has a
center (though I don't know what would you call the signature skyline of the
downtown if not a center), we should note that Koolhaas assumes that a city
should be more than just "foreground." But why should it? So that it has the
sort of "authenticity" (a word Koolhaas favors) that historic centers guarantee
European cities (24)? What makes a city "authentic" anyway?
Gibson's essay is certainly entertaining. But it also contains evident
examples of cultural bias. Can you identify places where his rather narrow
American perspective and/or his limited understanding of Singapore's recent
history have produced unfair or shallow criticisms? Do you think he has some
good points?
Writing Assignment: At this point you should have a
reasonably good idea of what you'll be writing about for the third paper.
I need two things from you today: 1) a selection of five or six passages
that will be key to your argument (type out each passage in full), and 2) beneath
each passage a bulleted list of precise observations about the passage.
Your lists--think of them as preliminary close readings--should in each case
be as thorough as possible. This is a big job, but an important one:
these observations will constitute an important part of your evidence for your
essay.
Further Reading (please contact me if you find materials that
should be added to this list):
From
Bauhaus to Koolhaas, a Wired Magazine interview with Rem Koolhaas.
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