Sports, Nation-Building, & Global Modern Architecture in Singapore: Kenzo Tange’s 1972 Master Plan for the ‘National Sports Complex’ at Kallang
Written by Jacob Meyers based on information and materials generously shared with Docomomo Singapore by Tange Associates during an interview with Paul Tange (Chairman, Senior Principal Architect) and Yasuhiro Ishino (President, Senior Principal Architect) on 5 July 2024
Amidst uncertainty about the future of the Singapore Indoor Stadium (SIS), public interest in the iconic stadium’s history has grown. In particular, it is now relatively well known that the stadium, completed in 1989, was designed by Pritzker Prize-winning architect Kenzo Tange in partnership with RSP Architects Planners & Engineers. Less well known, however, is the much longer history of the idea of an indoor stadium in Kallang and Kenzo Tange’s involvement in master planning an earlier vision for the ‘National Sports Complex’ in the early-1970s. This article seeks to illuminate this longer history of the SIS, beginning at the idea’s birth alongside the National Stadium in the early-1960s, through to Tange’s little-known master plan of 1972, thwarted attempts to restart the project for a world-class indoor stadium in the late-1970s and early-1980s, and the final revival of the project and the re-appointment of Tange in 1985. Additionally, Tange’s master plan is compared to the various alternative state visions for Kallang proposed in the 1960s-70s by Public Works Department (PWD) and Urban Renewal Department (URD), as well as located within the broader narrative of international ‘star’ architects’ participation in Singapore’s rapid post-independence development.
Alongside archival research, this article has been written based on information and materials generously shared with Docomomo Singapore by Tange Associates during an interview with Paul Tange (Chairman, Senior Principal Architect) and Yasuhiro Ishino (President, Senior Principal Architect). Notably, Kenzo Tange’s 1972 Master Plan for Kallang Sports Complex, published publicly here with permission from Tange Associates for perhaps the first time, forms a significant but hitherto largely forgotten chapter in Singapore’s post-independence architectural history.
The Birth & Planning of the National Sports Complex
In the early-1960s, as Singapore was emerging into independent nationhood amidst political turbulence and communal strife, sports were seen as a key nation-building tool – a means to unite diverse communities in a common national cause, foster a culture of amicable competition and sportsmanlike values, and create a healthy and productive workforce. Regionally, newly independent states had also begun to develop monumental (and invariably modernist) national sporting facilities as bold symbols of nationhood and post-colonial cultural identity, including Stadium Merdeka (1957) and Stadium Negara (1962) in Malaysia, Van Molyvann’s National Sports Complex in Cambodia (1963), and Gelora Bung Karno in Jakarta (1963). It was amidst this local and international focus on sports’ nation-building role that plans were announced in June 1963 for a new ‘National Sports Complex’ at Kallang.
With a National Stadium seating 40,000 at its centre, the complex was initially envisioned as featuring a variety of ancillary facilities, including two indoor stadiums, a swimming stadium, tennis courts, and running tracks[1]. Located on the former grounds of Kallang Airport (closed in 1955), the site then known as Kallang Park was chosen for its expanse of open land (owing to the 300ha of land reclaimed for the airport’s historic circular grass landing zone), access to the city centre through the newly-constructed Nicoll Highway (1956), and proximity to the other major sporting facilities of post-war Singapore, including the Singapore Badminton Hall, Gay World Stadium, and the Singapore Swimming Club[2].
Despite delays owing to the tumult of merger and separation, construction of ‘Phase 1’ of the National Sports Complex at Kallang began in 1966 with the Public Works Department (PWD)-designed National Stadium. By this point, plans for the broader Complex – comprising Phases 2 and 3 – had grown to include a monorail system (possibly reflecting the early mass transit recommendations featured in Singapore’s Concept Plan, then being co-developed with UN Development Programme technical advisors), floating restaurants, a hotel, exhibition centre, amusement park, skating rink, and ferry service to Clifford Pier[3]. Notably, master plans from this period, likely developed by PWD, indicate the distribution of different facilities along a linear, central thoroughfare that followed the diagonal axis of Kallang Airport’s existing runway.
Fig. 3-5: 1967 URD Sale of Sites projects at Kallang Park as part of the National Sports Complex. (Source: Far East Architect & Builder, August 1967)
By 1967 these plans had evolved further, as numerous ancillary sites were put up for sale as part of the Urban Renewal Department’s (URD) first Sale of Sites, launched in 1967. Organised to cultivate private sector participation in ‘urban renewal’, early URD Sale of Sites programmes included in-house designs and numerous financial incentives to encourage developer take-up. At Kallang Park, numerous URD sale sites were launched with a view of supporting increased tourism, including a trio of floating restaurants, a multi-storey ‘amusement complex’, including a theatre and two skating rinks, a waterfront high-rise hotel, and an exhibition centre[4]. These plans would give rise to the iconic Oasis Theatre, Restaurant, Cabaret and Nightclub (1970), Wonderland Amusement Park (1969), Kallang Cinema (1978), and Kallang Leisure Drome (c.1974), albeit in locations and designs different from those originally proposed.
Fig. 6: Master Plan for the National Sports Complex at Kallang published alongside Sale of Sites projects. (Source: Far East Architect & Builder, August 1967)
Notably, the larger plan for the National Sports Complex published alongside the URA Sale of Sites differed markedly from the earlier PWD plans. The linear thoroughfare, running along the axis of the runway as an extension of Old Airport Road, had been dropped in favour of a perimeter road system and grand central pedestrianised plaza. Similarly, key public facilities such as the swimming pool, restaurants, amusement complex, and hotel, were moved to the site’s western seafront edge, while sporting facilities, including a running track, tennis courts, and an arrow-shaped indoor stadium, were located at the northern boundary of the site, alongside Mountbatten Road, Nicoll Highway and Guillemard Circus. The plans also show an ‘E.D.B Industrial Estate’, referring to the stretch of the Geylang River’s bank where the Economic Development Board (EDB) established shipbuilding yards in 1964 (several structures of which remain extant), providing insight into the area’s historic role as a centre for maritime industry[5].
While planning for these large-scale physical developments was underway, the role of sports in the independent nation-building project was also being formalised with the foundation of the Sports Division in the Ministry for Culture and Social Affairs in 1966. Overseen by pioneering Singaporean statesman and long-time advocate for the sporting community Minister for Social Affairs Othman Wok, the Sports Division would be responsible for the promotion of sports among the population, including organising nation PE lessons, managing high-profile events such as the Singapore Grand Prix and the annual Pesta Sukan, and selection of Singaporean athletes for national overseas competition[6]. By the early-1970s, the status of sports was elevated further with the succession of the Sports Division by a dedicated statutory board, the National Sports Promotion Board (NSPB). Notably, the NSPB would oversee the construction and management of the first sports facilities in Housing & Development Board (HDB) New Towns, including Queenstown Sports Complex (1970), and Toa Payoh Sports Complex (1974)[7].
Kenzo Tange & Singapore
It was in this context of lofty ambitions for sporting facilities in Singapore, both at the National Sports Complex at Kallang and beyond, that Prime Minister Lee Kuan Yew developed a close working relationship with famed Japanese architect Kenzo Tange. Lee and Tange had first met in 1970 while each receiving honorary doctorate degrees, in law and science respectively, from the University of Hong Kong[8]. Tange had risen to global fame in the 1960s, both as a protagonist of the Metabolist movement and for his monumental, modernist built work, including the Yamanashi Press & Broadcasting Centre (1966), Kagawa Gymnasium (1964), and perhaps most famously, the Yoyogi National Gymnasium (1964). Notably, by the end of the 1960s, Tange’s practice had developed an increasing focus on international master planning projects, including for Skopje’s City Centre (1965), Flushing Meadows Sports Park (1967), and Osaka Expo ’70 (1970), showing a growing concern with the role of the architect at the emergent scale of ‘urban design’ that would be reflected in his earliest work in Singapore.
Fig. 7 (Left): Lee Kuan Yew (Far Left) and Kenzo Tange (Left) studying a map of ongoing development projects in Singapore. (Source: The Straits Times, 29 December 1970) Fig. 8 (Right): Permanent Secretary (Social Affairs) Othman Omar and Kenzo Tange (Right) signing an agreement for the master planning of the National Sports Complex at Kallang. (Source: The Straits Times, 26 September 1971)
It was perhaps owing to a mutual, well-documented faith in the need for rigorous technical planning to organise society, a shared non-western, distinctly ‘Asian’ cultural orientation, and the serendipitous timing of Singapore’s ongoing national development drive – matching the ambition of Tange’s urban plans for which there were few global opportunities to realise – that drew Lee and Tange together following their chance encounter in Hong Kong. After another meeting in Tokyo, Lee would invite Tange to Singapore for a three-day visit in December 1970[9]. During this highly publicised trip, ‘Prof Tange’ would become a household name in the local press, in which his comments on the Ring City Plan (which would be adopted a year later as the foundation of Singapore’s first Concept Plan), and lecture at the University of Singapore’s Architecture Faculty were chronicled in detail[10]. With his recognition no doubt boosted by these high-profile public visits, Tange was given his first commission in Singapore a year later, in 1971: to develop a master plan for ‘Phase 2’ of the National Sport Complex at Kallang[11]. Tange’s appointment was made official at a signing ceremony attended by Tange and Permanent Secretary (Social Affairs) Othman Omar in September that year[12].
Fig. 8: Master Plan for National Sports Complex, Singapore (Schematic Design Stage), 1972. (Source: Tange Associates)
Developed between 1971-72, Tange’s plans would depart once again from the PWD and URD plans developed in the decade prior. Tange retained the central thoroughfare along the historic runway axis, now appended by perpendicular cross streets leading to different facilities in a manner reminiscent of the ‘tree-branch’ planning approach present in other projects, including the famous Plan for Tokyo (1960) and Nanyang Technological Institute (1986). At its centre, the plan accommodated the soon-to-be completed National Stadium, while ‘branch’ roads provided access to a range of ancillary facilities corresponding to the future Kallang Cinema (1978) and Kallang Leisure Drome (c.1974), and smaller-scale sporting facilities at the site’s northern edge. Skirting the perimeter of the site, Tange took the liberty of replacing Mountbatten Road and Guillemard Circus with a new elevated highway system featuring several large interchanges – perhaps a product of a well-documented preoccupation with traffic circulation and an ethos of regularly ‘going beyond the brief’[13].
Apart from circulation and general layout, the focus of the plan lay predominantly in landscaping, the design of two indoor stadiums, and an indoor swimming pool[14]. Areas around the sporting and entertainment facilities were envisioned as a lush park landscape, including a ‘reservoir lake’, while a large public plaza was planned at the foot of the National Stadium. To the south, at the present-day location of the Singapore Indoor Stadium, a partially covered swimming complex was proposed, elevated on a plinth and surrounded by a ‘shore garden’. Most radically, a pair of circular and dramatically interconnected indoor stadia were located on the waterfront, extending partly over the water’s edge.
Notably, the Tange’s proposals for Phase 2 of the National Sports Complex reflected growing ambitions by the Government to host increasingly high profile international sporting events. Already slated to host the 1973 SEAP Games, in 1972 Singapore made and won a bid to host the 1978 8th Asian Games[15] – an event whose requirements would have exceeded the capacity National Stadium and would require the construction of the additional stadia proposed by Tange, which the government had committed to completing by 1975[16].
Cancellation & Revival of the Indoor Stadium
Despite these lofty commitments, by the following year, Singapore’s sporting ambitions, and Tange’s plans alongside them, would soon fall victim to global economic and political headwinds. The emergence of the Oil Crisis in late-1973, compounded by instability in exchange rates, significantly destabilised economic conditions in Singapore, causing inflation to rise to 30% by early-1974. Concurrently, the lead-up to the 1974 Asian Games were plagued by geopolitical and security conflicts, with meetings marred by protests and walk-outs by various states[17]. In these circumstances, Singapore withdrew from hosting the 1978 Asian Games in November 1973, terminating Tange’s contract with a reported payment of $1 million for work already completed[18]. In justifying both the Asian Games’ and Kallang Sports Complex’s cancellation, Minister for Law, Minister for National Development, and Chair of the Singapore National Olympic Committee (SNOC), E.W. Barker, explained that high costs and construction industry shortages meant that resources had to be prioritised for Singapore’s ongoing public housing construction programme[19]. Without Tange’s stadiums, Barker noted, Singapore was insufficiently equipped to handle sporting events at the scale of the Asian Games.
Fig. 9: Preliminary design for the ‘Lion City Coliseum’ by Swan & Maclaren, c.1981. (Source: The Straits Times, 5 March 1981)
In the decades that followed numerous failed attempts were made to restart the project for an indoor stadium at Kallang. Ministers, including continued-supporter E.W. Barker, publicly campaigned for an indoor stadium again in 1975 and 1979, but by 1981 financial and construction industry constraints were again cited as reasons that one would not be built[20]. Nevertheless, rising dissatisfaction with Singapore’s limited indoor sporting facilities, particularly from indoors sports associations, coupled with a growing regional sporting events sector, briefly galvanised the private sector to attempt the task. Between 1980-81, the Canadian-funded Coliseum Company proposed to build the ‘Lion City Coliseum’ – an indoor stadium for 18,000-20,000 people – on the present-day site of the SIS[21]. Despite reportedly having made arrangements with the Government to purchase the land and works advancing to the stage of designs being prepared by local architectural firm Swan & Maclaren, the private sector proposal soon faltered due to financial issues.
Finally, in 1983-85, nearly twenty years after first being proposed, an indoor stadium at Kallang found renewed political traction, in a campaign led by the Chair of the Singapore Sports Council (formed through the merger of the NSPB with the National Stadium Corporation, presently SportSG) Dr Tan Eng Liang[22]. At the launch of this campaign, long-time supporter of the project E.W. Barker proclaimed that “we must not give up hoping that this multipurpose indoor stadium will be built someday”. These calls were formalised in the Second Phase of the Master Plan for Sports Facilities, launched by the SSC in 1983[23], and bolstered with the support of the Singapore Tourism Promotion Board (STPB), who came out in favour of an indoor stadium in 1984, noting the absence of large-scale performance venues following the closure of Alfred Wong’s National Theatre (1963) the same year[24]. Following the approval of funding for the project by the Government in August 1985, Kenzo Tange was reappointed as the architect of the new stadium a month later, marking his return to the Kallang site master planned by his firm 13 years earlier[25].
Conclusion: The Emergence of Global Architecture in Singapore
By the time the Singapore Indoor Stadium opened in 1989, Tange had completed numerous high-profile projects in Singapore, including the Marina South Master Plan (1983), OUB Centre (1986) and Pickering Operations Complex (1986). Significantly, the 1972 Master Plan for the Kallang Sports Complex thus marked not only the beginning of Tange’s prolific output in Singapore, but also an early milestone in international ‘star’ architects’ involvement in the country’s post-independence physical development more broadly. Alongside the OCBC Centre (1976), designed by Chinese-American architect I.M. Pei, Tange’s master plan can perhaps be understood as marking the first emergence of a model of international architects designing nationally significant projects, alongside Singapore-based project architects, that would be followed by the likes of Kisho Kurokawa, Zaha Hadid, and Moshe Safide, in the following decades[26]. This international ‘turn’ is perhaps made clearest by the enlistment of Tange to undertake master planning for the National Sports Complex following those already produced locally by the PWD and URD, with a clear ambition to leverage the famed Japanese architect’s technical expertise and international credibility. In this way, the Master Plan for Kallang Sports Complex not only reflects the sporting ambitions of a young independent state and the evolving local and regional political role of sporting facilities, but a historical moment in which fundamental and lasting shifts in Singaporean architectural culture were taking place – toward internationalism and the engagement of global ‘star-architects’ to fulfill ambitions of a ‘global city’ image.
[1] ‘Layout for S$10-million stadium’, The Straits Times, 27 June 1963.
[2] ‘Wok 'sinks' first pile for complex’, The Straits Times, 8 December 1966.
[3] ‘S’pore’s Giant New Sports Complex’, The Straits Times, 14 January 1966.
[4] ‘S$90 million Urban Renewal Projects’, Far East Architect & Builder, August 1967.
[5] ‘Govt to Give Loans to Local Shipbuilders’, The Straits Times, 20 April 1964.
[6] ‘Sports dept will begin operation mid-year’, The Straits Times, 20 April 1966.
[7] Lim Tin Seng, ‘Singapore Sports Council’, Singapore Infopedia.
[8] ‘Plugging the Brain Drain’, The Straits Times, 19 February 1970.
[9] ‘Top architect meets PM Lee’, The Straits Times, 29 December 1970.
[10] ‘Singapore Impresses Prof Tange’, The Straits Times, 30 December 1970.
[11] ‘Stadium job for Prof Tange’, The Straits Times, 23 September 1971.
[12] ‘Famous architect to design $50 mil Kallang sports complex’, The Straits Times, 26 September 1971.
[13] Interview with Paul Tange and Yasuhiro Ishino, 7 June 2024.
[14] ‘$60m Kallang stadium ready in 1975: Wok’, The Straits Times, 23 October 1971.
[15] ‘Wok: We Will Make 1978 The Grandest’, The Straits Times, 27 August 1972.
[16] ‘$60m Kallang stadium ready in 1975: Wok’, The Straits Times, 23 October 1971.
[17] ‘Politics & the Asian Games’, New Nation, 19 September 1973.
[18] ‘Games: Why S'pore said 'no' to 1978’, The Straits Times, 1 November 1973.
[19] ‘Facilities inadequate to stage A-Games’, The Straits Times, 2 November 1973.
[20] ‘Barker: No indoor stadium for 1983 Games’, The Straits Times, 4 December 1981.
[21] ‘Proposed $100 m indoor stadium’, The Straits Times, 5 March 1981.
[22] ‘The great indoors’, The Straits Times, 30 April 1983.
[23] ‘SSC back indoor stadium idea’, The Straits Times, 23 August 1983.
[24] 'We need arts centre and indoor stadium to attract tourists' says STPB director’, Singapore Monitor, 29 January 1984.
[25] ‘Tange to design indoor stadium’, The Straits Times, 24 September 1985.
[26] Notably, the awarding of the Singapore Indoor Stadium to Tange was the subject of highly-publicised controversy. The Singapore Institute of Architects (SIA) argued that an open competition for local, rather than foreign, design leads should have been held, particularly in the context of a faltering local building industry and shortage of projects. See ‘Architects are upset by decision’, The Straits Times, 28 September 1985; ‘Why we decided on Kenzo Tange – SSC’, The Straits Times, 5 October 1985.
