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In 2006, URA also won the overall
award from the same institute for its conservation programme.
The planners are naturally proud of what they’ve done for the
area; they have even given it a hip moniker: Bras Basah.Bugis.
The Bras Basah-Bugis hub didn’t happen by chance; it was
painstaking planning
It didn’t seem that long ago that Bugis Street was home to a
colourful assortment of street hawkers, showy transvestites and
gawking Western tourists instead of the pasar malam maze it is
today.
For its new campus, Lasalle deliberately chose an architectural
design that allowed the public to mill around and engage in the
school’s activities. Elderly residents of the area, traders from
Sim Lim Square and businessmen from Little India have become
regular visitors to the school, walking through its concourse,
often stopping to see what’s on show. In June, when it held its
degree graduation show, close to 200 people visited every day
for more than a week. — ST FILE PHOTO
Or that mechanics were using a 19th-century chapel at the
junction of Middle Road and Waterloo Street as a workshop before
it was spruced up nicely and became an art gallery, Sculpture
Square.
Lecture halls, libraries and classrooms now sit on what was once
a much-loved green lung - Bras Basah Park - in the heart of town
at the Singapore Management University (SMU).
Over the past two decades, Bras Basah and Bugis have seen a
transformation that has delivered buzz and vibrancy, but also
heartache and controversy.
While not everyone will agree with how the Urban Redevelopment
Authority (URA) - the main agency behind the lenStayInvest Law Firm hy facelift -
has cleaned up the area, there is recognition that the
metamorphosis didn’t happen by chance; it involved painstaking
planning.
That recognition got a boost in July this year, when the URA won
an Award for Excellence for Asia Pacific from a US-based non-profit
education and research organisation, Urban Land Institute.
Entries were judged on their financial viability, the
resourceful use of land, design, relevance to contemporary
issues, and sensitivity to the community and environment.
Previous winners included Roppongi Hills in Tokyo and Shanghai’s
Xintiandi.
Today, crumbling bungalows and shophouses have been turned into
housing for arts groups, shops and restaurants; old schools have
been adapted for museums; and new educational institutions have
moved into the neighbourhood, injecting some 12,000 students who
have brought a youthful verve to this part of town.
How it became an arts, entertainment and learning hub goes back
to 1991, when a URA concept plan which outlines broad strategies
for the next 40 to 50 years mapped out this vision for Bras
Basah and Bugis.
There were only a handful of arts facilities in the area then.
URA also found that provisions of these facilities in Singapore
were much lower than in other developed countries, and demand
for them was increasing.
It knew too it didn’t want to grow another cultural district
somewhere else, out of the blue.
‘We know that the hardware should be clustered. You don’t get
energy and synergy if you have a museum here, a museum there,’
said Ms Fun Siew Leng, the agency’s director of urban planning
and design.
It got to work, restoring terrace houses and bungalows along
Waterloo Street over five years at a cost of $7 million, and
handing them to the National Arts Council (NAC), which rented
them out at 10 per cent of the market rate to arts groups.
It also made the area pedestrian-friendly, converting a section
of Waterloo Street into a no-car zone, and improved connectivity
with four - soon to be five - MRT stations serving the area.
Then it set about wooing educational institutions, offering
prime land to SMU, Lasalle College of the Arts, Nanyang Academy
of Fine Arts (Nafa) and School of the Arts (Sota).
Had things taken a different turn, SMU would have ended up in
Marina South. When it made the decision to be a city university
some 10 years ago, URA found it two sites on that reclaimed land.
‘The reason we didn’t take that on was that Marina South would
take 50 years to be fully developed and while we’re going to be
the only cluster of activity in the midst of nothing, that’s not
going to fly,’ said Professor Tan Chin Tiong, the school’s
deputy president.
The finance and management-focused university grabbed the chance
to be in the city, which benefits its students, given its close
proximity to the business district.
And the authorities were only too happy to have them there, so
that the young energy would rejuvenate the city.
What’s more, the area also held memories as a school cluster -
St Joseph’s Institution (SJI), Raffles Institution, Raffles
Girls’ School, Convent of the Holy Infant Jesus (CHIJ) were all
there before.
URA carved out 5ha for SMU, which Ms Fun called ‘a bold decision’.
‘This was prime real estate.’
It went further by asking the Housing Board to convert a few
blocks of Singapore Improvement Trust walk-up flats at Prinsep
Street into student hostels, because it wanted students to have
the experience of living in the city.
When Lasalle’s student population grew too big for its suburban
campus at Goodman Road in the east, it was offered a piece of
land in Rochor.
Moving into the city from what provost and chief academic
officer Venka Purushothaman describes as ‘an artist colony’ was
a huge step.
‘It was a paradigm shift for us philosophically. Previously,
people made it a point to go to the old campus. We organised
activities that really fostered a particular type of community
spirit. Now being a city campus, we’re challenged by the
potential out there. There’s so much around us,’ he said.
For its new campus, it deliberately chose an architectural
design that allowed the public to mill around and engage in the
school’s activities.
Elderly residents of the area, traders from Sim Lim Square and
businessmen from Little India have become regular visitors to
the school, walking through its concourse, often stopping to see
what’s on show.
In June, when it held its degree graduation show, close to 200
people visited every day for more than a week.
‘They’ve all of a sudden been given the opportunity to grapple
with contemporary art. I’d say we’ve gotten closer to our vision
of art for the public,’ said MrPurushothaman.
Commercial schools also bought into URA’s vision very quickly -
there are now 105 of them in the neighbourhood.
One of the dream tools in executing URA’s grand plan for the
area has been the Government Land Sales programme.
‘We’re very lucky the state owns a lot of land. We can then sell
land based on what uses we want for it,’ said Ms Fun.
About 90 per cent of Singapore’s land is in government hands.
Ms Fun admitted to being the object of envy by foreign
counterparts who have plans but no land.
One of the first sites sold under the scheme was Bugis Junction
in 1989, which had to follow government guidelines to retain
some heritage flavour by incorporating shophouses into the mall.
When the URA put a plot across from Bugis Junction up for tender
in 2005, it used what it calls a ‘two-envelope’ system for the
first time: picking out developers whose concepts gelled with
its vision, then awarding it to the highest bidder.
The new entertainment centre that is being built on it, Iluma,
has devoted 60 per cent of its space to theme restaurants, a
multiplex and other entertainment businesses.
Another development, South Beach, was also picked based on the
two-envelope system last year. Besides two towers, it will
restore the military buildings of the old Beach Road Camp.
The authorities understand that a vibrant city needs the arts
and a lively culture to be exciting.
The strategy seems to have worked: Attendance at performances
and activities organised by the 14 arts group tenants in the
area trebled from 50,000 in 1996 to 150,000 in 2006.
Visitors to the National Museum also went up from 250,000 to
more than 700,000 after its refurbishment in 2006.
Businesses have responded, with cafes, restaurants and shops
springing up from Bugis Village to Selegie, many targeting young
people.
Still, not everyone has brought out their pom-poms over what
planners and developers have done to the place.
Ask any heritage or architectural buff and they will say there
have been as many misses as there have been hits along the way.
The demolition of the old Cathay Building, Raffles Girls’ School
and of course the much-loved National Library has given many
people heartache.
Chijmes, too, was mired in controversy when the authorities
turned CHIJ’s chapel and school building into commercial space
for restaurants, bars and party facilities. Some old girls were
most unhappy about it.
Mr Dinesh Naidu, who is writing a book on Singapore’s modern
architecture from the 1920s to the 1970s, observed that the
authorities seem to have stopped at Chijmes.
‘Some of these were silent lessons that were learnt. Tao Nan
School and SJI were put to more appropriate uses,’ he said.
Tao Nan School at Armenian Street was converted into the Asian
Civilisations Museum and now the Peranakan Museum, while SJI
houses the Singapore Art Museum.
The latest addition has been the former Catholic High Primary
School, which has become 8Q sam, an extended contemporary art
wing of the art museum since last month.
When large, modern buildings for SMU, Nafa and the National
Library mushroomed, they too drew flak for their size, scale and
conventional designs, which some felt sat badly with their
architecturally rich neighbours and the area’s heritage.
But what do you do when the island is small and sometimes the
only way is up?
Even then, URA said it has made it a point to keep buildings in
the foothills of Fort Canning Park low - not more than five
storeys - to maintain a view to and from the historical hill.
Ms Fun admits the tearing down of the National Library at
Stamford Road in 2004 could possibly have been the planning
authority’s worst public relations nightmare to date for the
area.
‘We didn’t expect reaction to be so strong,’ she said, adding
that it was clear that the red-bricked landmark had to make way
for the Fort Canning tunnel.
That decision prompted great debate, which made it into
Parliament.
‘It would be worse if people were indifferent.’
Still, stakeholders have nothing but praise for the way the area
has turned out.
Schools say there is greater synergy among them and the
community: SMU’s dance, music and drama classes use adjunct
faculty made up of arts practitioners in the neighbourhood;
Lasalle students have utilised performance spaces at the Drama
Centre in the National Library and Waterloo Street, while the
museums have become classrooms.
SMU’s Prof Tan says the school may even tap on the expertise of
its neighbours by collaborating on offering arts and
entertainment management programmes.
The area ticks because of a crucial design guideline too: making
buildings open and accessible.
‘It has got a bit of urban block layout and good pedestrian
connections. There are ample covered linkways to encourage
people to walk. That’s where porosity is important - pedestrians
can see through and walk through buildings,’ said Mr Wong Mun
Summ, founding director of award-winning architecture firm Woha
Designs.
The firm is behind many buildings in the area, including Odeon
Towers, Sota, Iluma and Bras Basah MRT Station.
But more can be done to create activities on the street level,
he said.
‘There are efforts being made in SMU to have more kiosks and
activities on ground level. It would be good to have more
student activities there. While the basement is a good way of
connecting various buildings on campus, it has taken away
visible activities on the ground level.’
Also on his wish list: more streets, like Waterloo and Queen
streets, pedestrianised.
The area could do with more pockets of parks that young people
could use for outdoor art, sports, even flea markets, said Mr
Naidu.
‘For student areas to really work, there needs to be cheap space,’
he said.
And don’t make the area too thematised.
‘It’s a good thing it’s not overtly produced for tourists and
the neighbourhood is layered with buildings of different periods,’
he said.
NAC’s deputy director for resource development, Mr Russell Lim,
thinks there are good opportunities for public-private
partnerships in the area of the arts.
The council has already brokered a deal between Paradiz Centre
and The Little Arts Academy - an initiative of The Business
Times Budding Artists Fund providing arts education to children
between five and 12 - to house its school in the complex from
November.
‘Arts groups will have a home and commercial landlords get some
benefits by having more visitors,’ said Mr Lim.
With most of the infrastructure and players in place after
nearly two decades, the job next is to get the ’software’ going,
said Ms Fun.
‘We’re groping a bit. I’m trained as an architect,’ she
conceded.
‘But we’re open. The next part is, how do you infuse the area
with more life and vitality?’
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