Singapore Conference Hall and Trade Union House
The Singapore Conference Hall and Trade Union House was designed by Lim Chong Keat, William S.W. Lim and Chen Voon Fee of Malayan Architects Co-Partnership, based on their competition-winning entry in 1962. The architecture was conceived as a highly integrated solution to the complex site, programmatic, and environmental requirements.
The original building was dominated by a large butterfly roof that unified two main elements of the building underneath: the auditorium with conference hall facilities on one side, and the facilities of the trade union house on the other. Only glass curtain walls separated the interior and exterior, so a naturally ventilated concourse placed between the two elements was visible from the outside. The overhanging cantilevered roof and two long strips of louvred screens from which it hung protected the glass curtain walls. These features also allowed the curtain wall to stop short of the roof, leaving gaps for hot air to escape, thus creating natural air movement that ventilated the concourse. The building was regarded as an “innovative attempt at evolving a modern tropical design language”¹ in Singapore and Malaysia that has not been matched since.
Location: 7 Shenton Way, Singapore 068810
Architects: Lim Chong Keat, William S.W. Lim, and Chen Voon Fee of Malayan Architects Co-Partnership
Year: 1965
Status: Gazetted a National Monument in 2010
¹ Tay Kheng Soon, “Trade Union House and Singapore Conference Hall at Shenton Way,” Singapore Architect 212 (2001). This is high praise indeed from Tay, who had tried to develop a vocabulary of modern tropical architecture for several decades. See Jiat-Hwee Chang, “Deviating Discourse: Tay Kheng Soon and the Architecture of Postcolonial Development in Tropical Asia,” Journal of Architectural Education 63, no. 3 (2010); and Tay Kheng Soon, “The Architectural Aesthetics of Tropicality,” in Line, Edge & Shade : The Search for a Design Language in Tropical Asia; Tay Kheng Soon & Akitek Tenggara, ed. Robert Powell and Tay Kheng Soon (Singapore: Page One., 1997).
Adapted from Chang, Jiat-Hwee. “Race and Tropical Architecture: The Climate of Decolonization and Malayanization.” In Race and Modern Architecture, edited by Irene Cheng, Charles L. Davis, and Mabel O. Wilson, 241–58. Pittsburgh: University of Pittsburgh Press, 2020.
