Everyday Modernism wins the Colvin Prize: An Interview with author Jiat-Hwee Chang
In this interview, Jiat-Hwee Chang speaks to Hiba Alobaydi about Everyday Modernism: Architecture and Society in Singapore (2023), the publication declared as winner of the SAHGB Colvin Prize in December 2023.
Hiba Alobaydi: Firstly, congratulations on being shortlisted for the Colvin Prize! The Colvin Prize recognises outstanding contributions to the field of architectural history. Could you please share what project or research endeavour your submitted work of reference delves into?
Jiat-Hwee Chang: Thank you! Our book Everyday Modernism: Architecture and Society in Singapore is a documentation of the social and architectural histories of the modern built environment in Singapore. Through a series of “biographies” of buildings–from their “births” to their transformations in both their social perceptions and uses over time, and finally to their eventual “deaths” through demolitions and redevelopments–the book uncovers the many untold histories of the Southeast Asian city-state’s modernisation and urbanisation.
HA: All shortlisted works shed light on the historical and cultural contexts of architectural culture. Can you discuss any particularly compelling insights or discoveries made when penning your book?
JC: Singapore is a small city-state that has a built environment that is modernist through and through. In our book, we try to provide an overview of this modernist environment and connect the different facets of it.
One of the most compelling insights from researching and writing the book is the close connection we found between “heroic modernism”, the iconic modernist buildings in Singapore mainly designed by known and well-known architects in private practice that have received significant attention from the public, and “ordinary modernism”, the ubiquitous but taken for granted buildings in Singapore mostly designed by largely unknown architects working for various government agencies.
Not only do heroic modernism and ordinary modernism in Singapore influence each other in terms of spatial and formal conceptions, both are also shaped by similar government policies in urban planning and design and the broader imperative of the post-independent state to modernise socio-economically.
Former Sub Courts, 1975, accorded conservation status in 2013 and cannot be demolished.
Ang Mo Kio Swimming Pool Complex, 1982. The Ang Mo Kio Swimming Pool Complex was one of many public swimming complexes built by the Housing and Development Board in the 1970s-80s. It will soon undergo major renovations which will change its form irreversibly.
HA: The SAHGB's Colvin Prize celebrates both scholarly excellence and accessibility. How do you approach presenting complex architectural concepts, and your research journey, in a way that engages a broader audience while maintaining academic rigor?
JC: Only one of the creators – Jiat-Hwee Chang – is an academic. Justin Zhuang was trained as a journalist and he has written extensively on various design matters, including design history, for the general reader. Zhuang is also an experienced editor and his editing made what Chang wrote more accessible.
The format of the book also makes it easier to read. Other than the longer introduction, all the other 33 essays in the book are rather short, at around 1,000 to 2,000 words long. The essays are lushly illustrated by close to 200 archival images and nearly 100 contemporary photographs specially taken by Darren Soh. The diverse types of materials we showcased and relied on for research—from building plans to property advertisements and brochures, as well as newspaper articles—we hope show how architecture is part of everyday life in a city. We are fortunate to have received a grant from the National Heritage Board of Singapore to subsidise the production costs of the book that allowed us to sell a book with a large number of colour photographs at a fairly reasonable price. We should also add that the book is attractively (and innovatively) designed by the award-winning Singapore-based H55 studio to combine a large number of photographs with extensive texts.
HA: Could you share a memorable experience from the pursuit of your research for this book?
JC: Through our research, we have made many discoveries of the stories behind the seemingly ordinary buildings and structures that we encounter daily in this city we call home. One more memorable one is about the multi-storey car park that is so ubiquitous in Singapore today. But this was not so in the 1950s and 1960s as the population of cars was increasing. Drivers began urging the government to build multi-storey car parks in the city centre because of a lack of surface parking lots. When the first such facility was finally built in 1964, an elated driver penned a ballad for the car park! Such adulation is something one might expect for an iconic piece of architecture, if one is lucky at all, but this was for an anonymous building structure.
HA: Collaboration often plays a crucial role in academic and research settings. Could you share a noteworthy collaboration experience that exemplified the value of interdisciplinary teamwork?
JC: Chang is an architectural historian and his focus tends to be on buildings whereas Zhuang is someone who is interested broadly about design and design artefacts big and small. If Zhuang was not involved in co-writing the book, Everyday Modernism is unlikely to include built environmental artefacts in the sub-building and supra-building scales, such as playgrounds and pedestrian overhead bridges in the former case and expressways and a large park built on reclaimed land (East Coast park) in the latter case.
Soh, a sociologist by training, was our official photographer but unofficially also our best informant who constantly sent us prompts and tips. He has a vast first-hand knowledge of Singapore’s built environment from his daily work of travelling around the island to photograph different parts of Singapore from various vantage points.
These different views and training brought a multitude of perspectives and helped us see architecture as not just mute artifacts but containers of all kinds of stories. We’ve also continued this conversation up till today even though the book is complete!
Dover Pelican Playground. Animal-themed playgrounds like this one at Dover Road used to be commonly found all over Singapore. Most were demolished in the 1990s over safety concerns.
HA: Architectural history often involves exploring the connections between built environments and society. Can you please discuss how this project highlights the socio-cultural significance of architecture, revealing unexpected relationships or narratives?
JC: We organise our essays in Everyday Modernism around six key verbs–live, play, work, travel, connect, and pray. Under each verb, we focus on typologies that have fundamentally changed the ways we carry out the associated activities. One of the unexpected narratives that came up in our research is that school buildings that were designed to be flexible and to accommodate changes turned out to be perceived as rather inflexible and outdated, such that they had to be demolished or undergo large-scale renovation when curriculum and pedagogy evolved.
HA: The Colvin Prize recognises innovation and advancement in architectural history scholarship. How do you incorporate cutting-edge research methodologies or technology into your work to expand the boundaries of knowledge in the field?
JC: As noted earlier, we use the concept of “building biography” to go beyond the constructional completion of buildings to explore how buildings are used and reused, designed and modified to accommodate different social lives. The building biographies in our book go beyond what might be characterised as “production-centric” narratives of architecture that focus on intention, design and creation to include “use-centric” accounts of architecture that explore malleable interpretation, maintenance, renovation, repair, and obsolescence. In so doing, we seek to connect the simple, abstract architectural language of modernism with the rich social lives it engenders.
Block 168A Queensway is a one of a kind double curved public housing block built by the Housing and Development Board in 1973.
HA: Can you reflect on a pivotal moment or mentor in your research journey that inspired you to pursue architectural history and ultimately led to your nomination for the Colvin Prize?
JC: Jiat-Hwee Chang was inspired by the work of Anthony D. King to pursue his doctoral studies in architectural history. Trained in sociology, King was one of the first scholars to study the histories of British colonial architecture and urbanism seriously. King’s path-breaking work in the field, especially his book on the global history of the Bungalow, was a major influence on Chang’s doctoral research on tropical architecture (published as A Genealogy of Tropical Architecture: Colonial Networks, Nature and Technoscience, 2016). Chang also has the good fortune of being taught and advised by C. Greig Crysler, one of King’s students during his graduate studies. After researching colonial tropical architecture, Chang turned his attention to the more recent built environment, including ordinary modernist structures in Singapore which led to Everyday Modernism.
For Justin, trying to make sense of the downfall of Pearl Bank Apartments, an iconic condominium tower, helped him understand architectural history went beyond the completion of a building, but also its life and death. The journey of retracing how this development launched in the 1970s as an architecture marvel and a pioneer of luxury, high-rise apartment living, became rundown over time and eventually demolished, showed how architecture was as much about its creators’ intentions but also its reception over time. The death of the building because of poor maintenance but also its value as a property, also provided insights as to why Singapore’s built environment is the way it is today.
Darren started his photography documentation process of the modernist environment in Singapore when he and his wife had a son in 2012 and he came to a realisation that there would be many spaces and buildings in Singapore he could only show his son in photographs and not in real life because they were being redeveloped. It was also a natural progression from his day job as an architecture photographer making images of new buildings for his clients. From then on, he has developed an almost obsessive approach to systematically photographing as many pieces of modern architecture in Singapore before they are either changed beyond recognition or demolished.
Pearl Bank Apartments, 1976, demolished. Built in 1976, Pearl Bank Apartments was once the tallest residential building in Singapore. It was sold to a developer in 2018 and subsequently demolished for redevelopment in 2020
HA: Engaging with the public is an integral part of the SAHGB's mission. Could you share an example of how you've communicated your architectural research to a wider audience, fostering greater awareness and appreciation of historical built environments?
JC: Since the publication of the book, we have given a few public talks and interviews. We have also done a podcast episode to publicise the book. We have also set up an Instagram account for the book. But in terms of social media, Soh’s significant following on both Facebook and Instagram helped us publicise the book and promote greater awareness of historically built environments. His regular posts on both platforms about lesser known modernist buildings accompanied by his images have often been well received. It is also possible that his sharing on social media platforms led to a full-house turnout at our book launch and also contributed to our book being featured prominently in the major newspapers in Singapore.
Our partnership with institutions such as the National Library of Singapore and Asia Research Institute in the hosting of book events also helped us to reach out to bigger audiences.
HA: Looking ahead, what do you perceive as the most pressing challenges and exciting opportunities in the field of architectural history, and how does your project contribute to its continued growth and relevance?
JC: From our perspective as Singapore-based researchers, architectural history is a very niche field with very few researchers and a small audience linked primarily to the architectural profession. It is important for us to expand the field and engage with the general public. There are many people outside the architectural profession who are interested in the built environment. We just need to make our work relevant and accessible to them.
The approach we have taken in Everyday Modernism is to collaborate across disciplines with non-specialists, frame architectural history not as narrow professional discourse but in terms of broader public interest, write in an engaging and accessible manner, and deliver the research findings in a visually attractive manner so that our interdisciplinary research in architectural history can reach a bigger audience.
Jiat-Hwee Chang is associate professor at the Asia Research Institute and the Department of Architecture, National University of Singapore.
Justin Zhuang is a writer and researcher, and co-founder of Singapore-based writing studio In Plain Words.
Darren Soh is an award-winning photographer.
Everyday Modernism is published by NUS Press (Singapore)
On the left: SAHGB’s president, Elizabeth McKellar, announcing the winner of the Colvin Prize.
On the right: Darren Soh and Jiat-Hwee Chang in their acceptance speech for the Colvin prize.