Paul Rudolph in Singapore 🇸🇬
A short layover led me to finally visit this Brutalist icon in Singapore
Hi! 👋
I spent the last two days in transit, coming from Chiang Mai, with a long layover in Singapore.
And an even longer flight afterward, from Singapore to Berlin: 14 long hours in a low-cost airline, in a seat with no window, no entertainment screen, and no food or drinks to distract me. Not to mention, it was packed. Total hell, but hey, I'm home now, so no one is complaining. 🏡
So due to all this moving around, today's edition will be a short one. No big article this time.
Safdie's little waterfall at the airport: yes, it is mind-blowing.
My little odyssey, however, did allow me to spend some time in Singapore. After writing the TFA Guide about Singapore last year, it remained a city I wanted to revisit. So I took the few hours I had for some food in and a bit of walking around.
And, finally, I went to check The Concourse, the weird Brutalist tower from Paul Rudolph, the lack of which was an admitted gaping hole in my little guide.
Paul Rudolph's career led him to spend its last two decades designing in Asia, mostly across Hong Kong, Indonesia, and Singapore, until his death in 1997.
In Asia, Rudolph found himself in a context that was eager to embrace his modernist ideas against its colonial past. Clients had money and were willing to do crazy stuff.
Rudolph got the message and went on to play: he experimented with interwoven balconies and floorplates forms, vast open spaces, pre-fabrication, the relationship with its surroundings. He made a lot of cool, weird, iconic buildings over there.
The Concourse, in Singapore, is one of them. Designed as a "tropical skyscraper," its mass is elevated from the ground floor by massive, tall columns. Like a tower on stilts. Its shifting slabs, communal gardens, wide overhangs, and inclined curtain wall panels, protect from the sun and heat of Singapore and create a distinct, iconic building in its skyline.
I found it kind of empty for a Saturday afternoon. It could be its location, cut off from the bustling streets of Little India by the wide Beach Road. But it could also be because it is just not that inviting. I found the black inclined windows give it a stand-offish character. They are the same all over and are so high up and inaccessible one can only wonder what happens behind them.
Also, while the super tall columns lifting the building's mass does create a lot of open space around its base, their sheer scale makes these spaces unwelcoming. They were cavernous, empty and desolate. Kind of sad, actually.
My impressions may be skewed by it being a weekend. It is mostly an office tower, anyway. Heck, even the COVID-19 might have had an impact on The Concourse's emptiness. Although I was very impressed by the sheer scale and well-rounded concept of Rudolph's brutalist icon, it left me wanting - it was very harsh and felt out-of-reach.
But it was good to see and experience it. So, while in Singapore, do go check it out.
BTW, it is right next to I.M. Pei's "sharp" Gateway towers and Ole Scheeren's funny Duo towers. And the wide-angle lens on the iPhone is really fun.
With that, I leave you with two links that I read on my way to Singapore and are exceptional insights into this weird and fantastic country.
Challenges and Pitfalls of the Technocratic Art
by Adam Garfinkle
Having succeeded beyond its expectations, Singapore doesn’t seem to know what to do next—except to keep on driving ahead, pedal to the metal.
Accounts on everyday life in Singapore, which can sometimes be a bit over-the-top regulated and micro-managed. Singaporeans are expected to be not merely law-abiding, but also neat, polite, productive and reproductive.
The Story of Singapore
by David Perell
As American productivity has stagnated and its citizens have become complacent, Singapore’s seen remarkable growth. Americans cannot copy Singapore — only draw from their experience. That, though, is an intelligent decision.
David Perell is a young American writer whose work I've been following lately. His article on Singapore offers a great overview of how it became the place it is today.
I am considering reducing the frequency of this newsletter to semi-weekly. Last week's edition resulted in many unsubscribes, which left me a bit surprised. So, I want to experiment a bit. Maybe a bi-weekly schedule will let me deliver more value and high-quality content to everyone. We'll see.
(I have to mention, it also did get some love, and I thank the readers who wrote me back 😚)
That's it this week.
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Greetings from Berlin 🇩🇪
Best,
Daniel