This is the first of five posts on Docomomo Singapore’s proposals for the conservation and adaptive reuse of this pioneering modernist structure in Singapore. Our full Position Paper can be downloaded here.

This post contains the following sections (highlighted in red) from the full Position Paper:

1. Introduction

PPC launched its first two en-bloc sale attempts in 2018 and 2023. Docomomo Singapore published a statement in response and embarked on an advocacy campaign calling for the conservation of PPC, including walking tours showcasing the urban connectivity of the building’s City Rooms, and conducted workshops to reflect and cogitate on PPC’s significance and possibilities.

This Position Paper is a year-long cumulative effort of members and volunteers of Docomomo Singapore, who rigorously debated, researched and brainstormed about the past, present and future of PPC.

CONSERVING THE FIRST CITY ROOM

Conceptualised initially by Fumihiko Maki, pioneer of the Japanese Metabolist movement and Pritzker Prize laureate, the City Room refers to an interiorised public space for both planned and spontaneous events. The City Rooms of PPC played a crucial civic role as a community space sheltered from the tropical weather, hosting public talks, performances and exhibitions. PPC was a groundbreaking project that not only successfully materialised the concept of City Rooms, but also proved its viability.

CONSERVING THE HEART OF PEOPLE’S PARK

People’s Park Square, bounded by OG Building, People’s Park (HDB) and PPC, is lauded as “one of the most successful urban spaces in Singapore.” The designers of PPC modulated the building’s massing and street-level interface in response to the Square, creating a seamless network of connections to the interior streets and City Rooms of PPC, and through to the wider streetscape of Chinatown. Such sensibilities anchor PPC as a crucial placemaking node in the precinct and exemplar of community-oriented urbanism.

CONSERVING THE MODERNIST LAYER OF CHINATOWN

PPC was among the pilot urban renewal projects by the Urban Renewal Department, predecessor of the Urban Redevelopment Authority. Located on the site of the fire-razed People’s Park Market within the planning area of Precinct South 1 (S1), the mixed-use development was envisioned as the new nucleus of Chinatown’s community and small businesses. With the contemporaneous S1 project Pearl Bank Apartments demolished, PPC remains the sole private post-independence modernist landmark commemorating the success story of urban renewal and nation-building.

SUMMARY OF RECOMMENDATIONS:

Docomomo Singapore strongly advocates the gazetting of PPC for conservation, in recognition of its intrinsic architectural, urban and social significance as one of post-independent Singapore’s most important modernist buildings. Even in the event of PPC’s en bloc sale, rather than the conventional demolish-and-redevelop model, the environmentally sustainable approach of rehabilitation and adaptive reuse should be fully embraced.

KEY ELEMENTS & PRINCIPLES FOR RETENTION

This position paper has identified, at the urban level, PPC’s Podium and Slab massing along with its heterogeneous mix of uses, its internal City Rooms, and its urban envelope facing People’s Park Square, The Majestic theatre and Eu Tong Sen street as character-defining elements to be retained. Doing so preserves the legibility and integrity of the original architecture.

PROCESS & POLICY STRATEGIES

The strategy proposes a policy direction that aims to strike a balance between conservation and commercial prerogatives, with attendant incentives to spur the participation of private developers whilst ensuring that they see themselves as custodians of PPC - protecting the legibility of the complex whilst adapting it for refreshed relevance.

PROGRAMMATIC STRATEGIES

New programming should take into account the urban civic role of PPC within Chinatown’s ecosystem, and incorporate community-oriented spaces and small businesses, possible including existing ones. The programmatic reconfiguration of PPC presents an opportunity to address evolving societal needs. Tapping upon the proximity to the Singapore General Hospital (SGH) and the Outram transport network, one proposal is to integrate new assisted living facilities into the programme mix as a viable option of ‘aging in place, aging in community’.

BUILDING-LEVEL STRATEGIES

The building-level strategies illustrate the possibilities for intensification while ensuring that key elements of the building are retained. The Gross Floor Area (GFA) increase and locations proposed for intensification works, such as the existing carpark or the rear of the podium, lend flexibility and viability to new commercial needs.

PRECINCT-LEVEL STRATEGIES

The conservation of PPC benefits the larger precinct, beyond its building boundaries. It proposes to stitch up the various green networks within the Pearl’s Hill Masterplan and to strategically allocate additional GFA derived from the conservation of PPC for greater heritage and community use.

Docomomo Singapore
January 2025

2. Building Data

*1973, Aerial view of the Chinatown district, with People’s Park Complex outlined in red. (Source: Hong Lim Citizens Consultative Committee)*

3. Site & Building History

The Historical, Urban, and Architectural Development of PPC

This introductory essay provides an overview of the multiple ‘histories’ of People’s Park Complex (PPC): the birth of People’s Park as a key social space in colonial-era Singapore’s Chinatown, and later, its evolution into a bustling commercial space as ‘zan zyu baa saat’; the post-independence, state-led ‘urban renewal’ programme which precipitated the ‘rebirth’ of People’s Park alongside comprehensive redevelopment of its surrounds; and the architectural development of PPC as a new modernist nexus for Chinatown, shaped by the avant garde ideas of the young architects of Design Partnership.

*People’s Park Complex towering over the Chinatown precinct, 1973. (Source: Koh Seow Chuan via DP Architects)*

In drawing together the large quantity of information about PPC from both primary and secondary sources, we hope to present a clear and accessible (though inevitably incomplete) primer on the manifold narratives ‘contained’ within PPC – historical, urban, architectural – to frame the following Position Paper.

Further, we hope to elucidate the significance of PPC – the fundamental basis on which any meaningful act of conservation, and indeed intervention, must be made. This assessment of value will be made in the following ‘Statement of Significance’ chapter.

People’s Park in Colonial Singapore

The inception of Singapore’s People’s Park dates to 1881, when the Governor of the Straits Settlements Sir Frederick Weld announced that 15 acres of land at the foot of Pearl’s Hill would be given for the creation of a new People’s Park. This land was granted by the colonial government in return for the requisition of part of Dunman’s Green (present-day Hong Lim Park) for the construction of the grand French Baroque-style Police Courts (demolished c.1975).

In this period, the area identified in the 1822 Jackson Plan as the ‘Chinese Campong’ had developed into a dense urban quarter, bound by New Bridge Road on the west and Telok Ayer Street on the east, expanding south-west toward Duxton, Bukit Pasoh and the emergent ‘New Harbour’ at Tanjong Pagar. Southern Chinese immigrants settled in the area, organising themselves according to their geographical roots and corresponding dialect group, including the Hakka, Hokkien, Teochew, and Cantonese. Nearby, between New Bridge Road and Outram Road, rose Pearl’s Hill, which in the late 19th century housed Outram Prison, the British Military Commissariat stores and arsenal, and Pearl’s Hill Reservoir.

Opened in 1886, the new People’s Park served as an open reprieve for the public from the back-to-back shophouses across New Bridge Road. This sentiment was echoed by prominent businessman and community leader Tan Keong Saik at the Park’s opening, who thanked the governor “for dedicating so much land to the Chinese in Singapore”. Alongside Hong Lim Green and the Esplanade, People’s Park formed one of the few urban public spaces in late-19th-century Singapore.

From People’s Park to ‘People’s Market’

*People’s Park Market from Eu Tong Sen St, 1960s. (Source: NAS)*

With landscaped grounds featuring “ornamental plots and shrubberies”, public band performances, and fairground amenities including a ‘switchback railway’ (an early form of roller coaster), and ‘merry-go-round’ carousel, the early People’s Park was a centre of recreation. However, such programming likely privileged Europeans and the wealthier merchant classes. Its role as a key public space in Chinatown was further cemented with the opening of the People’s Park Railway Station along the Singapore-Kranji Railway in 1907.

At the turn of the 20th century, People’s Park began to evolve from an elite recreational space to one defined by local mercantile activity. Itinerant street hawkers selling fresh produce, meat, cooked foods, sundries and small wares proliferated in 19th and early-20th century Singapore, providing a source of income to lowly-skilled new immigrants while satisfying the consumption needs of the working classes. Around People’s Park, Cantonese hawkers were dominant, many of whom peddled their goods within the park grounds.

While street hawking was a key feature of everyday life for the masses, the Municipal Council and members of the local elite held ‘the hawker problem’ in disdain. They attributed it to street vendors’ poor levels of hygiene, congestion, and secret-society related crime. To regulate hawkers, the Municipality enacted an often-flouted licensing system, while relocating hawkers to consolidated locations and permanent market structures.

As part of this regulating drive, part of People’s Park was designated for hawkers’ use with a permanent shelter built by the Municipality in 1923. While the formalisation of hawkers’ activities in People’s Park angered hygiene-obsessed colonial authorities, who lamented the replacement of open space and fresh air with “eating sheds, stalls and impedimenta”, it enmeshed the Park more deeply with the local economic and social life of Chinatown – represented in the subsequent emergence of its vernacular dialect name, zan zyu baa saat, or the ‘People’s Market’.

Catalysed by the establishment of the first hawkers in People’s Park in the early-20th century, the People’s Park Market expanded rapidly, eventually subsuming the park grounds completely. It became the “mercantile nucleus of Kreta Ayer, an essential component generating economic vitality and social life within one of the most populated and traditional Chinese downtown enclaves”.

*People’s Park Market, 1962. (Source: NLB)*

By 1930, the bustling market was open both day and night; by 1940, vendors numbered at 323, making it Singapore’s largest market; and by 1949, in the wake of the Japanese occupation (during which the market continued to operate) the market housed over 984 stalls. In the post-war period, a prominent textiles trade also emerged, where locals and tourists alike could purchase imported Indian and Japanese fabrics. Alongside the famous Bugis Street, Albert Street, and Hokkien Street, People’s Park became one of the thriving centres of vibrant urban commercial street life that so characterised 20th century Singapore.

The role played by People’s Park as a vibrant mercantile hub located in the heart of Chinatown came under threat in December 1966, when a fire ravaged a large portion of the crowded market. While affected stall owners were rehoused in a temporary ‘Singapore People’s Park Textiles and Sundries New Market’, the government of a newly independent Singapore accelerated its plans to redevelop the area as part of a sweeping ‘urban renewal’ programme.

Independence & Urban Renewal

By the time Singapore achieved full internal self-government from the British in 1959, the city-centre, and particularly Chinatown, was chronically overcrowded. Some 140,000 people lived in a 2km2 area, with streets reaching densities of up to 2,470 people per hectare. Many lived in subdivided cubicles – sometimes shared by more than one family – within back-to-back shophouses that lacked adequate sanitary facilities.

Crowded living quarters led similarly to congested streets, which served simultaneously as laundry, living room, and daycare, alongside hordes of itinerant hawkers peddling their goods. The impetus for improving living conditions was made clearest by the endemic spread of diseases, including tuberculosis, among city dwellers.

The newly-elected People’s Action Party (PAP)-led government embarked on a programme of sweeping physical development. Through the establishment of the Housing & Development Board (HDB) in 1960, the government fulfilled the nation’s most-pressing ‘emergency’ housing needs in its first ‘five-year plan’, completing nearly 55,000 units by 1965. Such early piece-meal urban development of the city fringes was subsequently followed by the rehabilitation of the city-centre through a concerted programme of ‘urban renewal’.

Charles Abrams, Kobe Susumu and Otto Koenigsberger’s Ring City Plan, 1963. (Source: UN Report via Stephen Dobbs and Loh Kah Seng, ‘The Origins of Urban Renewal in Singapore: A Transnational History’, Journal of Urban History, 49 (1), 2021.)

Dissatisfied with the conservative urban plans of the post-war colonial authorities and faced with limited local city planners, Singapore requested technical assistance from the United Nations (UN). In 1962, the first UN technical assistance advisor, Norwegian architect-planner Erik Lorange, arrived in Singapore. Among his most significant recommendations was for concerted public sector involvement in urban redevelopment (in contrast to the laissez-faire reactive development control approach of the colonial-era 1958 Master Plan), including enacting legislation to support state acquisition of land for private development. He also advocated for a “positive policy of guiding, encouraging and giving aid to private redevelopment within the frame of comprehensive renewal scheme”.

Lorange proposed a “two-pronged centrifugal” framework for city-centre redevelopment, separating the city into 21 precincts numbered according to their priority for renewal. He recommended that ‘pilot projects’ be undertaken at the northern and southern extremities of the city, corresponding to the area around Beach Road and Pearl’s Hill, which were labelled precincts North 1 (N1) and South 1 (S1), respectively. Both had a large proportion of state-owned land and manageable densities, which facilitated easier resettlement and new development. These ‘pilot projects’ would ‘absorb’ the residents and businesses that required resettlement as the government moved toward the more crowded, and largely privately owned, city-core areas.

Lorange’s recommendations were appended by those of a second UN technical assistance team, comprising Otto Koenigsberger, Charles Abrams and Susumu Kobe. Published in 1963, the ‘KAK’ team’s report suggested that development be undertaken through ‘action programmes’ – coordinated multi-agency efforts including land acquisition, housing construction, resettlement, job creation, infrastructural works, and private development.

While individually limited in scale as precinct-level development projects, multiple action programmes could be undertaken in parallel, eventually completing a mosaic of city- and island-wide redevelopment according to an overall ‘ring city’ plan.

The Redevelopment of People’s Park

*Park Road Redevelopment, Housing & Development Board, 1967. (Source: HDB Annual Report 1967)*

Equipped with the recommendations of UN advisors, the Singapore government set in motion the process of comprehensive renewal. In 1964, a three-man Urban Renewal Unit was formed within the HDB. By 1966, the Unit had expanded into the Urban Renewal Department (URD), which comprised 76 staff led by architect-planner Alan Choe. The same year, the Land Acquisition Act was passed, giving the state sweeping powers to acquire privately-owned land “for any public purpose” at effectively below market prices. By 1966, 90% of the land in precinct S1 had been acquired by the state. This included the purchase of the historic Outram Prison for S$4.5 million, and the resettlement of 2,376 families and businesses.

The urban renewal in precinct S1 started with the construction of numerous large-scale public housing developments to facilitate resettlement, including at York Hill, Bukit Ban Kee, Outram Road, and Chin Swee Road. Many of these projects notably pioneered the implementation of mixed-use “strata zoning” within a single development. This included the Park Road Redevelopment (today known as People’s Park), completed around 1967 on a portion of the former People’s Park site. Containing a commercial podium (into which People’s Park Market proprietors were relocated), a residential block above, and a separating “void deck” featuring elevated recreation spaces, Park Road represented the wholesale vertical transplanting of dense urban life into a rationalised, modernist, mixed-use building. Another was the Outram Park Complex.

By 1967, with sufficient public development for resettlement, the government shifted attention to private development. The role of the private sector in urban renewal was conceived as crucial for the generation of economic growth and jobs – particularly in the context of commercial, office, and high-end residential projects. In contrast to mass housing provision, the government viewed state-market collaboration as the most efficient form of development.

*Outram Park Complex, Housing & Development Board, 1968. (Source: HDB Annual Report 1967/8)*

However, such private developments were also designed to serve a redistributive role. The government sold the public land with 99-year leaseholds. This kept land effectively in long-term state ownership and provided crucial public revenue to undertake “other social and other improvement schemes needed for urban renewal”. Together, this system of state ‘sales’ of long-term leaseholds would foster economic growth driven by the private sector, secure land as a crucial source of public revenue, and provide long-term planning flexibility.

The government’s ‘Sale of Sites’ programme was launched in 1967. It offered 14 sites for tender, including part of the People’s Park site in precinct S1, precinct N1 (the ‘Golden Mile’), Kallang Park (on land historically occupied by Kallang Airport), and River Valley. To incentivise the participation of a still-nascent local property development sector in and draw in foreign investors for whom Singapore was an untested market, the URD developed a set of comprehensive development incentives. They included property tax exemptions and discounts, development charge waivers, reduced financing requirements, and priority approval of building plans. Notably, each sale site also came with ‘simulated plans’ developed by URD that specified proposed uses, plot ratios, building setbacks and other urban design guidelines. Developers and architects could adopt, amend, or propose alternatives to the simulated plans. Architectural innovation was incentivised as a key consideration alongside economic factors in awarding sales tenders too.

*People’s Park Sale of Sites Scheme, Urban Renewal Department, 1967. (Source: Far East Architect & Builder, August 1967)*

On the People’s Park site, the URD ‘simulated plans’ for ‘flats/shopping complex’ in the form of a four-storey commercial podium topped by three slab blocks comprising 324 flats on the 111,500 sqft site. Typologically, the proposal resembled other mixed-use “strata zoning” developments that the HDB was undertaking elsewhere in precinct S1 and beyond. Like the nearby Park Road Redevelopment and Outram Park Complex, for example, the URD People’s Park scheme featured naturally ventilated corridors and large central airwell courtyards, above which an elevated recreation and void deck space served as a buffer between slab blocks above.

However, the scheme was not adopted by the winning bidder of the site. Glass merchant-turned developer Ho Kok Cheong instead offered a fundamentally different scheme designed by the young architecture firm known as Design Partnership (DP). They aspired to recall a sense of the lost People’s Park in the new development, publicly stating their ambition to “recapture and recreate the atmosphere [of People’s Park] on a larger and more sophisticated scale”, honouring a place that had “become legendary in the hearts and minds of the citizens of Singapore as a place of gaiety, life and activity.” Seizing the opportunity presented by the state-led urban renewal, DP put forth their vision of a People’s Park Complex – one that mediated between unprecedented scales of physical development and a keen sensitivity for the continued social vitality of ‘Asian’ urban life.

Pioneering Post-Independence Ambition

DP was formed in 1967 by partners William S.W. Lim, Koh Seow Chuan, and Tay Kheng Soon. All had previously been part of Malayan Architects Co-Partnership (MAC), which was founded by William Lim, Lim Chong Keat, and Chen Voon Fee in 1960. The three founders of MAC, educated at elite architectural institutions in Britain and the United States in the 1950s, formed the firm with a shared vision of adapting modernism to form a culturally distinct architectural vocabulary for an independent Malaya. Despite its short seven-year existence, MAC produced a diverse body of work – formally bold and imbued with powerful cultural and intellectual ambition. They constituted some of the most significant examples of independence-era modernism in Singapore and Malaysia, including the Malaysia-Singapore Airlines (MSA) Building (1967) and Singapore Conference Hall & Trade Union House (1965).

Owing to differences between partners and a turbulent political climate as Singapore first merged and then separated from Malaysia, MAC disbanded in 1967. Lim Chong Keat would go on to form Architects Team 3 (AT3), while William Lim co-founded DP with his former MAC colleagues Tay Kheng Soon and Koh Seow Chuan, as well as staff members Gan Eng Oon and Chee Soon Wah. Like MAC before it, DP embraced a collective rather than hierarchical organisation, inspired by the likes of Walter Gropius’ The Architects Collaborative and the Architects Co-Partnership in Britain.

While DP’s earliest work constituted projects carried over from MAC, such as Orchard Telephone Exchange (1969), the commission for People’s Park Complex was among the firm’s earliest independent projects. It arrived in the same year as the office’s formation. Reversing the conventional client architect relationship, DP’s partners reportedly convinced glass merchant Ho, with whom they had previously worked with as a supplier, to organise a bid for the People’s Park sale site.

Equipped with skills acquired as a Fulbright Fellow at the Department of City & Regional Planning at Harvard University, Lim undertook an economic feasibility study for Ho to determine the commercial viability of the site. While the initial results were “not favourable”, through “more comprehensive analysis” Lim made the case that the development would “generate a new nucleus within the whole fabric of the city core” and thus presumably surpass existing development models.

*Section of People’s Park Complex, Design Partnership, 1971. (Source: Far East Builder, April 1971)*

Formally, the design of PPC appeared deceptively simple – a large four-storey commercial and office podium extended over the site’s total footprint, topped by a perpendicular 30-storey slab block. While the ‘podium and slab’ typology bore similarities to MAC’s previous work (MSA Building), HDB and URD projects (Outram Park Complex), and international examples (Gordon Bunshaft’s iconic Lever House), PPC was distinct for its humanistic and civic ambition. These values were most visible in the architects’ decision to carve out of two large interior atriums, the ‘City Mall’ and ‘City Room’, as generous urban spaces at the heart of the building.

These unprecedented interior-urban spaces defiantly resisted the market-driven logic of maximising leasable area. They were designed for the gathering of “people from all classes, different walks of life, young and old, poor and rich”, recalling the sense of a vital, egalitarian, urban space embodied by the old People’s Park. In committing to the provision of large-scale civic space within the building, the design responded to ongoing architectural debates about the compatibility of large-scale modernist development with ‘human life’, resonating with the work and concerns of a group of European architects critiquing modernism known as Team X. These theoretical positions were broadly articulated in the prolific written output of Lim and the articles and lectures of the Singapore Planning and Urban Research Group (SPUR), whose founding members included DP’s partners alongside planners, policy makers, and academics.

The City Room was inspired by the work and writing of Pritzker Prize-winning Japanese architect Fumihiko Maki. A protagonist of the Japanese Metabolist group that championed urban-scaled architecture responsive to the dynamism of contemporary urban life, Maki conceptualised in the late 1960s, such large, interiorised unprogrammed, and “unspecified spaces that stimulate spontaneous events”.

*Conceptual sketch of a ‘City Room’, Fumihiko Maki, c.1970 (Source: ArchadeLDN via Twitter)*

Lim had met Maki at Harvard’s Graduate School of Design (GSD), alongside notable urban planner Jacqueline Tyrwhitt, both of whom he remained closely connected to after graduation. Lim was a regular contributor to Tyrwhitt’s journal Ekistics, while he co-founded the Asian Planning and Architectural Collaboration (APAC) with Maki and other Harvard-trained architects under Tyrwhitt’s tutelage from 1969. It was in this rich and interconnected intellectual climate that Maki’s ideas, likely by way of Lim, filtered through to the young architects of DP. One of its partners, Koh, recalls in interviews a pamphlet published by Maki about ‘City Rooms’ circulating within the office, possibly referring to a short publication produced by Maki while teaching at Harvard in 1970. Notably, images of the crowd-filled PPC atrium bear a striking similarity to the theoretical multi-level City Room illustrated by Maki just a few years earlier. Maki also reportedly visited PPC during its construction and exclaimed: “We theorised, and you people are getting it built”, while Tyrwhitt noted that PPC represented “commercialism with a human face”.

*Early design-stage ground floor plan of People’s Park Complex showing the ‘City Room’ and kiosks. Design Partnership, c. 1967. (Source: Far East Builder, February 1968)*

A ‘City within a Building’

*Early design-stage section of People’s Park Complex featuring ‘turret’ conical roof elements. Design Partnership, c.1967. (Source: Far East Builder, February 1968)*

To further cultivate a sense of vibrant urbanity, the architects engaged in deft modulation of interior spaces at the human-scale. Thus, the atriums, of a size never seen before in Singapore, were intended to be simultaneously “large, intimate and informal”, crossed by bridges, overlooked by balconies, and faced by interior glazed elevations. Alongside freestanding kiosks (possible formal allusions to street hawkers), a plethora of illuminated signage, architect-designed public furniture and multi-coloured prismatic lamps, the total effect was an intense, vibrant, and crowded interior streetscape.

The civic focus continued in the design of the residential slab block. Its alternating sets of one- and three-bedroom units had common access corridors and lift landings every five floors that were designed as “streets in the air” – an explicit reference to the work of Alison and Peter Smithson, two influential post-war British architects who taught Lim when he studied at the Architectural Association (AA) in London. Notably, the ends of each ‘street’ featured a communal service yard and larger “community area”, designed for flat-dwellers and their children, where “inter-mixing and communal living on a small and intimate scale will be encouraged and fostered”. Each ‘street’ and its corresponding community areas also served to break up the external massing of the 30-storey slab, creating the distinct appearance of six stacked lower-rise volumes.

*Early design-stage interior perspective of People’s Park Complex showing ‘turret’ roof design and ‘City Room’. Design Partnership, c.1967. (Source: Far East Builder, February 1968)*

Further, in early design drawings, the slab block rose above an artificial ground plane constituted by the podium’s roof, which was envisioned as lushly planted and featuring additional communal facilities such as a creche, meeting rooms, game rooms and open-air play space housed in the underside of the residential block. This dense colocation of diverse programmes across the podium and slab – including retail, office, residential, and communal, and civic spaces – alongside direct allusions to the urban realm (the ‘City Room’ and ‘streets in the sky’) – realised the long-held modernist ideal of a ‘city within a building’.

In addition to its civic ambitions, early designs of PPC embodied a climatic sensitivity that resonated with discourses surrounding the adaptation of modernist architecture to develop buildings for independent Malaya. In particular, PPC’s podium was first envisioned as wholly naturally ventilated. It had a porous interface with the surrounding streetscape and public plaza, as well as monumental rooftop ‘turrets’ (reminiscent of enlarged versions of those found at Le Corbusier’s 1953 La Tourette Monastery).

These turrets, shown in early sections, models, and perspectives, were meant to draw natural light into the enclosed atrium spaces, while facilitating ‘stack effect’ ventilation. It had a similar approach to the naturally lit and ventilated atrium also originally envisioned at Golden Mile Complex (GMC).

Unlike at GMC, whose natural ventilation was never realised due to fire enclosure requirements, the ambition to create a naturally lit and ventilated interior retail space was partially realised at PPC. While the ‘turrets’ were omitted in subsequent design revisions, presumably due to cost constraints, Koh notes that for a period after opening, PPC’s atrium was not air-conditioned, with natural light and ventilation complimented by interior planting. The natural ventilation created an unbroken sense of porosity between the street, urban square, ‘City Mall’ and ‘City Room’, which was eventually lost after the installation of an air-conditioned envelope in later years.

*Early design-stage model of People’s Park Complex featuring ‘turret’ conical roof elements. Design Partnership, c.1967. (Source: Far East Builder, February 1968)*

The structure of PPC also represented an innovative use of large-scale reinforced concrete pre-casting method pioneered by DP in collaboration with structural engineer Dr Y.S. Lau. Lau had previously worked with MAC, and later DP, on numerous projects, including the Orchard Telephone Exchange (1969), where they developed a novel pre-cast waffle slab and façade panel construction system. While Orchard Telephone Exchange featured great attention to detail, including exposed granite aggregate finishes cast directly in the mould, the requirements for PPC were more prosaic – reducing costs and ensuring efficient use of labour. Lau and DP developed a simple system of ribbed pre-cast reinforced concrete cladding panels, dimensioned to be hand-carried by a single worker, to enclose the podium and the side walls of the slab block. Beyond pre-cast cladding panels, PPC featured a variety of structural systems to support different spatial requirements: the large expanses of the ‘City Room’ were covered by a waffle slab to create a column-free atrium, while the residential slab featured reinforced concrete cross-walls with floor slabs supported on lateral beams to enable unobstructed dual-aspect flats. Notably, the entire building was left in off-form, fair-faced concrete finish, adhering to the modernist precept of honest material expression – a feature painted over in the mid-1990s.

Amidst a global turn against large-scale modernist development in the early-1970s, PPC stood out as a resounding success, recognised both locally and internationally. Attesting to the vibrant social life hosted within the ‘City Room’, Singapore Herald editor Francis Wong (whose offices were also located in PPC) described the dense confluence of working class couples, young families, and the elderly, congregating in PPC and declared “I know of no other private building in Singapore (or public one for that matter) in which commercial functionalism and social welfare are so happily combined”. Similarly, Pritzker Prize-winning Dutch architect Rem Koolhaas’ 1995 essay ‘Singapore Songlines’ praised PPC more broadly as representative of a brief avant garde, calling it along with the surrounding buildings along Eu Tong Sen Street “one of the most ideologically stretches of city in the world”.

A Place for the People

This essay has sought to elucidate the multiple histories of People’s Park Complex: spanning the historical origins of People’s Park as an early space for recreation and mercantile activity in Chinatown, its transformation into a pioneering testbed for Singapore’s post-independence urban renewal programme, and its design by the progressive architects of Design Partnership. However, this essay excludes the social history of People’s Park Complex, which is no-doubt a key source of value and area deserving of further study. Any conservation effort should strongly consider the importance of the communities and memories anchored in the building, alongside the value of its physical form. Nonetheless, this Position Paper’s focus on policy and physical approaches to conservation and reuse still establishes a common understanding of the site’s rich and diverse history. Hopefully this lays the foundation for a sensitive, meaningful, and well-informed process for determining the future of People’s Park Complex.

PPC Position Paper Working Group and Contributors

Bibliography & Further Reading

Asian Building & Construction. 1975. “Singapore project retains way of life.” Asian Building & Construction, April 1975. Hong Kong: Far East Trade Press.
Centre for Liveable Cities. 2014. Urban Systems Studies – Land Acquisition and Resettlement: Securing Resources for Development. Singapore: Centre for Liveable Cities.
Centre for Liveable Cities. 2016. Urban Systems Studies – Urban Redevelopment: From Urban Squalor to Global City. Singapore: Centre for Liveable Cities.
Centre for Liveable Cities. 2021. Urban Systems Studies – The Government Land Sales Programme: Turning Plans into Reality. Singapore: Centre for Liveable Cities.
Chang, Jiat Hwee, Ho, Weng Hin & Tan, Kar Lin. 2018. “Adding value without demolition, rebuilding: Regenerating Singapore’s modernist icons.” The Business Times. Singapore: The Straits Times, 6 April. Accessed 22 January, 2025. https://www.businesstimes.com.sg/property/adding-value-without-demolition-rebuildingregenerating-singapores-modernist-icons.
Chang, Jiat-Hwee, Justin Zhuang, and Darren Soh. 2023. Everyday Modernism. Singapore: Ridge Books Singapore.
Chang, Jiat Hwee, Ho, Weng Hin & Tan, Kar Lin. “Conserve a building, save the planet.” The Straits Times. Singapore: The Straits Times, 12 November. A24.
Chin, Soo Fang. 2023. “People’s Park Complex being studied for conservation, may impact collective sale.” The Straits Times. Singapore: The Straits Times, 22 December.
Choe, Alan. 2017. “The Early Years of Nation-Building: Reflections on Singapore’s Planning History.” In 50 Years of Urban Planning in Singapore, edited by Heng Chye Kiang. Singapore: World Scientific.
Chua, Beng Huat. 1989. The Golden Shoe: Building Singapore’s Financial District. Singapore: Urban Redevelopment Authority.
Dobbs, Steven, and Loh Kah Seng. 2023. “The Origins of Urban Renewal in Singapore: A Transnational History.” Journal of Urban History, 49 (1): 60-84.
Docomomo Singapore. 2019. 8th mASEANa International Conference Singapore 2019. Accessed 21 January, 2025. https://www.docomomo.sg/happenings/8thmaseana-international-conference-singapore-2019.
Docomomo Singapore. 2023. Docomomo Singapore Statement on People’s Park Complex. Accessed 21 January, 2025. https://www.docomomo.sg/happenings/docomomo-singapore-statement-on-peoples-park-complex.
DP Architects. 2018. DP Architects: 50 Years Since 1967. London: Artifice Press.
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The Pearl of People’s Park: A Position Paper on the Conservation of People’s Park Complex (Part 1 of 5)