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Author Tay
Kheng Soon
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1990 Conceptually,
architectural aesthetics has been dominated by the visual language of
solids and voids, volume and mass, and surface and plane for a long time. Yet this
design language, pervasive as it is, is only one design language among
others. The perfectly weather-tight enclosing system came to its full
development in aesthetic terms during the 30's when both expression and
manufacturing capability converged to fulfill both intention and realisation.
The demand for and the supply of various panels, plate glass and extruded
or rolled metal components which hitherto was not available confirmed
the new aesthetic. Architects saw in the new materials the possibility for mass production using the new aesthetic as a radical departure from the stale stylistic revivals currently in vogue. The idea of a break with the past appealed to the designers of the time. Besides being an ideological statement, translated into architecture, the neo-plastic idiom was ideally suitable in solving the need for total climate enclosure while creating the illusion and the actual possibility of plasticity in space with the visual and real interpenetration between the inside and the outside. With the invention of the curtain wall, the hard edge, finite statement of architecture since the 30's has become associated with Modernity itself. The curtain wall served the purpose of total closure and at the same time provided the means of defining a luminous lightweight skin of a building, totally devoid of any reference to all the architecture preceding it. It was the final repudiation of history and it satisfied the revolutionary modernising zeal of the times. It also put an end to drafty buildings and light and spaciousness flooded into all modern buildings. The ultimate scaleless bland box had come to pass. It is not surprising how entrenched the planar aesthetic is even though architects are always striving towards freedom and creativity in design. Only when it is realised that this particular language is derived from the need for total exclusion of extremes of climate by using modern, manufactured components will the dominance of this aesthetic be eroded. The erosion will open up the scope of consideration of other architectural languages suitable to equable climates as in the tropics. This is probably another reason why tropical aesthetics in the design of buildings has been slow in developing. Theoretical
Considerations of a Tropical Aesthetic Language The possibilities are endless, only limited at the present time by adverse local environ-mental factors imported into buildings from inadequacies in the town plan. In terms of the development of form, space and surface treatments, this leads to spatial differentiations by layering and the development of transitional zones with various degrees of transparencies. These have already been noted by some architectural writers and theorists in Asia (see Maki on the Japanese concept of space, and also Taniguchi). In relation to surface treatment, the layers may therefore be conceived architecturally as meshes or fretwork patterns and trellis screens. The use of these devices produces a totally different architecture from that of the planar wall. The other formal aspects such as profile and edge are also important. How a building engages the often cloudy sky in soft diffused light is a matter to be studied. Without the
predominating contrast of light and shadow against blue sky as in Mediterranean
architecture, tropical architecture has to contend with often hazy and
uniform light conditions. This should provoke a positive and creative
response rather than pining for conditions which just do not prevail. The building
section takes precedence over the plan as the generator of building form
and as the basis of design thinking. The tendency of the elevations of
a building to be an extrusion of the plan is dispelled once the roof predominates
and the walls are merely partial enclosures, no longer required to be
the absolute limit of the interior space of a building. Indeed, walls
as such do not need to be aligned vertically nor do they have to be on
one plane. They can be quite freely positioned as required and to achieve
whatever effects desired. A whole new range of spatial possibilities in
design is opened up with many life-style opportunities made available
as a consequence. This is particularly significant in the example of high-rise
buildings where the tendency of con-temporary designs has been to regard
the building as a vertical prismatic extrusion. This, as has been discussed
earlier, has been the synthesis between new technology and the need for
climatic exclusion. The result of this concept has been also to exclude
the possibility of utilising the external surface of the building as a
space resource and to allow interpenetrations between the inside spaces
of the building and the outside space. Immediately, when line and mesh replace solid and plane as the ordering system of architecture, the procedures in the design conceptualisation process itself change. Forms are no longer extrusions from plan or occlusions of platonic shapes or juxtaposi-tions of solids. They are compositions of layers both vertically and horizontally arrayed with elaboration through inter-mediating spaces. A plastic flow of space, both real and implied, becomes available as a design language. The fundamental contradictions between the desired tropical design response can now be freely developed. Otherwise, tropical design continues to be compromised by the ghost of Northern box aesthetics. Practical
Difficulties in Establishing the New Aesthetic Agenda The ancient,
relatively high-density urbanised settlements found in Majapahit in Central
Java and in the Kingdoms of the Khmers in Indochina did develop settlement
forms to the limit permitted by the technology of their times, but these
are nowhere near the densities needed in the period of rapid urban expansion.
As such, the floor space ratio (also referred to as the plot ratio) in
the ancient cities did not exceed 1.5 times the land on which the buildings
stood. There are existing contemporary, dense urban settlement patterns
(also of plot ratio 1.5) with their concomitant architectural type developments
which can be seen in the squatter settlements of Klong Thoy in Bangkok.
The ubiquitous shophouse developments of Singapore, the Straits Settlements
and Kuala Lumpur did produce a distinctive architectural typology and
urban form, but their densities are also not more than plot ratio 1.2
to 1.7. Thus, unless radically new technologies or new design geometries
are introduced, the limit of density of traditionally-derived buildings
and layout forms is around plot ratio 1.5. The modern
metropolis with densities exceeding plot ratios of 1.5, ranging to as
high as 15 in places such as Hong Kong and Tokyo in the Asian area is
a post World War II phenomenon. It came about as a result of the intensification
of trade and the globalisation of financial and other service operations.
This intensification of the city and the influx of immigration into cities
in a short period saw the advent of high-rise, high-density buildings,
establishing themselves within the traditional pattern of the cities in
the tropics. Where new towns or urban redevelopments were started, their
concepts were based on developments taking place in Europe and particularly
in Britain. The new town policy of Britain formed the basis for the new
towns being planned and built in Singapore from the 60's onwards. The
architecture on which these plans based their density assumptions were
also not reviewed. The lack
of intellectual capacity to appraise the new architecture's implications
has already been noted. The entire professional, administrative and building-investing
public was and still is swept away by the momentum of change. But there
is now the occasion to re-look at all the design assumptions. Singapore
is ideally suited to attempt to break through in evolving more relevant
ideas on architecture and urban planning for the tropics. So long as
the tropical economies are totally tied to the economic imperatives emanating
from the developed nations, they will not have the confidence to chart
new grounds and new approaches. The universities in the tropical world
are still degree mills and conveyor belts of ideas derived from the intellectual
power houses of the north. The issue of developing a more geographically-specific
aesthetic design language must address human cognition at the fundamental
level before it can establish itself as a valid language. Besides cultural
hegemony, the reason why the North's closed surface aesthetic is so acceptable
despite the fact that it is so inappropriate is because it is cogent and
coherent as a design language. It possesses the ability in differentiating
elements with which to articulate form and space, sequence and rhythm. The northern
design language has turned out to be an elaboration of planar and volumetric
aesthetics in the main. This aesthetic was developed during the Modern
Movement. Although the Modern Movement was a liberating force through
its discovery of the autonomy of the structural or objective level of
aesthetic languages in all the arts, it is sad that this did not take
place in the Third World. This possibility, through understanding the
objective level of form-making, should have facilitated a freedom to develop
alternative design languages. Instead, the surface features of Modern
Aesthetics served to symbolise Modernism itself! Western hegemony
and the dominance of its architectural and artistic media has significantly
contributed to the non-western nations' architects to dampen their own
ability to respond to their own climatic and cultural imperatives, much
less develop their own aesthetic language. The climatic
origins of form have been so obscured from consciousness by hegemonic
forces so that today, the obvious need for a tropical architectural aesthetic
language has to be stated. While there is agreement on the relevance of
the agenda, all the design instincts and professional interest positions
are actually arrayed against any vigorous commitment to its realisation.
Everyone knows that the contemporary language of modern architecture is
not valid as a universal aesthetic language and yet it will persist for
some time to come. The beginning of the search for a new tropical aesthetic is initially an intellectual exercise. The desire to replace the dominant aesthetic will come about only with economic self-confidence and with it, the desire to build a new cultural self-assuredness. The nature of the economic system is also a contributing factor in the evolution of a new culture. In today's world, all economies are interdependent to a degree. It is therefore a natural consequence that within all economies, there will exist at least two sectors - the national and the trans-national. This phenomenon has been well-described as the dualistic economic relations between the metropolitan and the bazaar economy. The dualistic relations are reflected spatially in the city, and one might add, in the architecture as well. Although
spatially, the city is differentiated in terms of where the international
sector operates from and where the bazaar economy is situated, the architecture
of the local sector increasingly shows the importation of international
symbols into its architecture, even displacing features which have traditionally
been useful as climatic adaptations to be replaced by so-called modern
features. Singapore's major buildings have unashamedly adopted Northern-Modern
styles. The new aesthetic
has to reckon with imperatives in the industrial manufacturing process
itself. The extent to which these imperatives are independent of culture
and choice is problematical. To what extent does the manufacturing process
itself privilege certain forms as distinct from the infused aesthetic
preferences? Is the manufactured product a self-affirming symbol of hegemonic
success so successful that it is now beyond access to consciousness? If
the deconstruction of the modern-western edifice can distinguish the difference
between the forms inherent to manufacture and those preferred culturally,
then there is a possibility for aesthetic liberalisation and scope for
real alternatives. The challenge to the development of the new tropical
aesthetics is therefore predicated on both an understanding and appreciation
of the inherent characteristics of the tropics as the aesthetics of shade
and shadow as well as a parallel process of deconstructing modern-western
hegemonic aesthetics and culture. Another driving
force has emerged in Asia, that of National Identity. In architecture,
this has taken the form of featuring cultural and historical styles in
essentially modern buildings. In multi-cultural societies like that of
Singapore, this approach is very difficult. Moreover, the state cannot
show bias towards any cultural group nor is the featuring of all cultural
groups in one building a viable proposition. Even in situations of relative
cultural homogeneity, the antecedent building forms are not suitable for
contemporary purposes without undergoing severe distortions and compromises.
The many examples of attempts at this approach have proven less than satisfactory
from the aesthetic coherence criteria. This is the psycho-political-aesthetic dimension which underlies the question of deriving and propagating a new tropical aesthetic. This is why it is incredibly difficult. Initially, because the issue is not even easy to make conscious and then one has to battle the subjective commitments and investments which powerful and influential individuals have made with the dominant aesthetic hegemony. Almost the entire establishment in Singapore consisting of policy-makers, investors and their architects have implicitly defined their standards within the aesthetics of the West. |
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