new_spaces_07_GB

38 Sights and Scenes
of trees. Ever since the 1960s, Singapore’s
bureaucrats have been looking for
suitable plants all over the world.
Kay Ngee Tan’s projects always begin
with two rituals. When he thinks he has
intuitively grasped the character of a
building, he draws imaginary pictures of
it with a coloured pencil on loose sheets
of paper. “I always use this two-coloured
pencil, which is blue on one side and red
on the other. This lets me express two
aspects of the building at the same time,”
he says. And as though the survival of his
creativity depended on these coloured
Façade technology
The residential buildings
in Taipei’s Hu linduan
quarter show similarities to
computer circuits and
an aerial view of the city.
pencils, he uses only the best kind, which
he has fl own in from a renowned
stationery shop in Tokyo. The second
ritual is a period of months during which
he and his 12-person team in Singapore
research the planned construction site’s
history. “This creates trust between the
client, the architect, the local people, and
of course the people who will move into
the fi nished building,” he explains. The
results of this research into the site’s past
fl ows into the architectural design, and
the building can then be smoothly
integrated into its surroundings. The team
also uses programs such as “Google
Earth” for its historical research. Once
when Tan was preparing to create a new
façade for a building complex in Taipei,
the capital of Taiwan, he noticed that the
aerial photographs of the city that he was
using in his research revealed construction
patterns that resembled computer
circuitry. Tan fi ltered out these patterns
and integrated them into his design. For
villas along a lake in Hangzhou, south of
Shanghai — a region known for its
mystical bamboo forests — the architect
used the ringed pattern of bamboo
trunks. He also created pedestrian bridges
similar to those seen in paintings made
in the 13th century by the artist Huang
Gongwang, who used to live there.
So it’s no wonder that the new bread factory
Tan recently designed in Singapore,
which is called “BreadTalk”, resembles a
pile of baked goods. During his student
years in London, Tan’s special fi eld of
interest was “the language of originality”.
Today he still regards it as the foundation
of every successful design. If he’s not
sure what he thinks about a certain issue,
he sits down and writes a book, and in
some years he writes several. One of
them was Magnetic Fields of Cities,
which received an award in Singapore as
one of the ten best works on architecture.
In this book and elsewhere, Kay Ngee Tan
deals with buildings and their infl uence
on their immediate surroundings.
“Singapore is a society governed by
certain rules, but that doesn’t mean
Singapore as a whole is ‘square’,” Tan
says. “There’s an incredibly exciting
subculture here which dares to address
controversial issues such as the problems
faced by minorities, compulsory military
service or freedom of the press. This is
possible in the small experimental theatres
that evolved from the tradition of
Chinese drama. I often create the stage
designs for these plays. It’s true that
these events are attended by fewer than
200 people, but they have an impact on
our city’s cultural life,” says Tan with a
smile. “Just 200 people — imagine how
much they can accomplish in Singapore.”
www.kayngeetanarchitects.com